Quebec Police Chief Claims Deceased Constable Was Part of ‘Family’

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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The young constable shot dead in northern Quebec last week was remembered by his relatives and fellow officers, who claim to have always considered him as a part of their family. Nearly several hundred mourners were present in an Ottawa cathedral for paying their regards and wishing farewell to Constable Steve Dery, who became a gunshot victim while on-duty last Saturday night while he was responding to an emergency call made from a home in the community of Kuujjuaq.

Dery, whose father was an RCMP officer, grew up in Ottawa neighborhood and was in the middle of three brothers, one of whom serves as city firefighter. Dery recently turned 27 this month. During the service, a Mountie and family friend read a heart-breaking letter from the deceased constable’s father, Gilles Dery, who remembered playing hockey and baseball with his son, and described him as “a great police officer” and “a hero.” The police chief of the Kativik Regional Police Service, Aileen MacKinnon, asserted that working in a small isolated northern community, where everyone knows everyone, had united the force as a family. MacKinnon mentioned that “I lost one of our boys doing the thing he loved,” and “as a force, as a family, we mourn the loss of a fellow officer.”

The funeral was conducted with complete conventional police honours, which comprised of a march of almost 700 policeman down Sussex Drive to the cathedral. Another officer was wounded in the attack that claimed Dery’s life.