'He was all smiles, all smiles, all the time'
by ROY MacGREGOR
October 16, 2007
OTTAWA -- It was a day in which the entire country could use a soother.
Overcast and chilly, former prime ministers still knifing each other, talk of the government falling, or wanting to fall - and eight-month-old Alexis Marie Worden, contentedly sucking on her blue soother, completely oblivious to it all.
The news reports would say she was at Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica, but she knew she was really only in her mother's arms as they stood on the curb of Sussex Drive, waiting. Had she looked up, she would have seen a box of red geraniums, still in bloom in a fall that has yet to see first frost.
It was cold enough, however, that strange men in red uniforms - adult versions of the small serge and gold-braided suit she was wearing - were hurrying about in search of tissues to wipe her nose and blankets to cover her little shoulders.
She heard the motorcycles and watched, fascinated, the flashing red lights as they pulled up. She heard the pipers and the heavy, heartbeat march of polished boots.
Her own new black shoes would easily pass inspection.
She saw the red-coated men on horses ride slowly by but would not have noticed that one rider was missing - or known why.
She saw the pallbearers form at the back of the long black station wagon but would not have understood why one man was carrying a lone Stetson on a pillow.
It was a hat like her father wore, but at 6 foot 3 he couldn't possibly be under it.
She herself was often much higher than her father's head, a squealing, screeching baby being tossed in the air by a big man who never seemed to stop smiling in their backyard far away in Hay River, NWT.
Now there was no one to toss her. And no one she could see was smiling this day.
They came by the thousands to Ottawa to bury RCMP Constable Christopher Worden, little Alexis's father. He was only 30 years old. He and wife Jodie Lamers Worden planned, he told friends, to have so many children after Alexis that one day they would fill a bus and be enough, boys and girls, to form a football team.
He had so many plans. A trip in the new motorhome. Fishing trips. Snowmobiling trips. Winter campfires in the backyard while he showed Alexis the Northern Lights that sometimes flicker like fluorescent sheets over the Hay River sky.
But all those plans crashed to the ground Oct. 6 outside a suspected drug house at the edge of a tough section of Hay River sadly known as Disneyland. He was alone. It was just before dawn. Bullets were fired. And not much else is known apart from the fact that a little girl lost her father before they even really got to know each other.
One man has been arrested. Another man has been charged as an accessory. And while that may one day bring justice, it cannot bring the big, smiling father back.
The tragedy brought thousands of uniformed men and women to Ottawa for the funeral. There were so many police and soldiers about, and so many ordinary citizens, that they overflowed the basilica and filled the basement and, still, hundreds had to watch the service on a giant screen set up against the National Art Gallery across the street.
The Minister of Public Safety, Stockwell Day, came, as did new RCMP Commissioner William Elliott and recently resigned commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli.
It was not a day for talking about government or policing problems. It was a day, rather, for understanding why this country, perhaps alone in the world, proudly holds up its police force as its symbol to the world.
"It's put aside," said Sergeant-Major Bob Gallup of Fredericton, who met the Worden and Lamers families on the steps and led them into the huge church. "Everything else can wait. This is a healing period."
Former deputy prime minister Herb Gray came because Chris Worden's sister, Cathy, once worked in Gray's office. "It's just so sad," he said.
Ottawa police Constable Tim Murray was there to direct traffic, but also to pay his respects to "a fallen brother".
"He was a new father," Murray said. "He had his whole life ahead of him."
Captain Jeremy Pressnell of the Kingston garrison came and walked despite a bad limp from an injury after his second tour of Afghanistan.
"So many ramp ceremonies," he said, the emotion beyond covering up. "Too many."
Pressnell wasn't the only one thinking that the world feels increasingly violent. Wayne and Pat Adams came from their home in Ottawa because this was about the Mounties and the North. Wayne spent 35 years in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the best years, both agreed, were in places very much like Hay River.
"But back then," said Pat Adams, "people were only killed in accidents."
Their niece runs a tanning salon in Hay River and had known the big Mountie who seemed the friend of everyone in town - except, of course, the one who gunned him down.
"She said he was all smiles, all smiles, all the time," Adams said.
It was much as he was described in two eulogies, one delivered by his good friend, Constable Mike Carter, the other - in a remarkably clear voice - by sister Cathy flanked by brothers Michael and Peter.
They spoke above a flag-draped casket and a huge photograph of their friend and brother in full RCMP dress - smiling, of course.
Carter spoke of his friend's "contagious smile" and "charisma." To his large circle of friends, he was "a rock." Even those he arrested seemed to like the big Mountie, and Carter choked up as he recalled leaving Hay River late last week and seeing ribbons up on every house in town.
He said his friend had once boasted, over a campfire, that his daughter would look like her beautiful mother - but he got that one wrong.
"Instead," Carter said, trying to smile, "she looks just like her beautiful father."
Cathy Worden talked about the big football star who co-captained the team at Wilfrid Laurier University, but who also played the violin and who, when he went off to RCMP Depot in Regina, began playing the glockenspiel in the marching band because, as he told her, it gave you extra privileges in the mess hall.
She spoke, magnificently, not about his passing but about how "he truly continues to live" in everyone he touched and, most importantly, in the little girl he leaves behind.
It was a service that ended perfectly, not with prayer but with a resounding rendition of
O Canada - "
We stand on guard for thee ..."
And outside, with the sun teasing, Pat Adams thought about all the years she and Wayne had been in the North and how lucky they were.
"It could have been us," she said.
It was on this day.
All of us.
SOURCE - The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, October 16, 2007, Page A9
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Be careful out there, Mac.
Art
Now there was no one to toss her...
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