final credits - marc bourdages
On July 7th, 2006 two RCMP officers responded to a disturbance call on Main Street in Spiritwood, a small town about 140 kilometres west of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
Constables Marc Bourdages and Robin Cameron soon found themselves pursuing a fleeing suspect down country back roads past fields of grain and cattle nestled among stands of aspen, pine and black spruce.
The chase ended when Cameron and Bourdages were shot. The suspect fled into the thick Saskatchewan bush. RCMP issued a warrant for Curtis Alfred Dagenais.
Bourdages died July 16th, 2006 at age 26, just two hours after his partner, in a Saskatoon hospital.
Marc Bourdages was originally from Saint-Eustache, Quebec and had been with the RCMP for just over 5 years.
He was previously posted in Lac La Biche, Alberta, and Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan before joining the Spiritwood detachment in 2005.
Bourdages was married to a fellow RCMP officer, also posted in Spiritwood, and the couple had a nine-month-old son.
Among his peers, Bourdages wasn't just known as a top officer. He was also known as a "fearsome bullet" on the ice.
The die-hard Montreal Canadiens fan had such a knack for hockey that his presence on the ice was often dreaded by opponents.
"I heard other guys . . . sometimes griping about it, because he's good to the point where guys couldn't catch him when he had the puck," Lac La Biche RCMP Staff Sgt. Colin White recalled.
Bourdages moved to Lac La Biche, population 2,700, in 2000. He worked out of the Alberta detachment until the fall of 2003.
White said he first met Bourdages in 2002 and quickly realised he was a talented officer.
"When I first came to Lac La Biche, (on) one of my first night shifts, Marc took me out in the police car with him and he showed me around in town and also in various communities in the rural area," White said. "He showed me all the trouble spots so I would be aware of where the hot spots were in this whole detachment area and where all the different bad guys resided and what kind of crimes they were into.
"He was a really good policeman, really smart."
Another officer who knew Bourdages in Lac La Biche was Sgt. Darren Simons.
“He was a city boy that came to the country and he adapted very well,” Simons said. “He was extremely popular and there’s not a member that ever worked with him that didn’t love him as a brother. He was a joy to be around.”
Simons was golfing with Grace Johnston, the mother of slain Mayerthorpe Mountie Const. Leo Johnston, when he received the news of the Saskatchewan shooting.
Simons is highly critical of Canada’s justice system.
“This kind of thing is going on too frequently and we all don’t think that anything’s being done about it,” Simons said.
Grace Johnston, whose late son casually knew Bourdages, said the latest deaths were painful for her.
“This never should have happened again,” she said. “It brings the pain back home.”
Grace maintains her claim that the justice system takes far too gentle a line on violent offenders.
“Until they stop being soft and until the parole board stops releasing them and until they start sentencing them properly, is anything going to change?”
Const. Natasha Bourdages, who worked alongside her husband Marc at the Spiritwood detachment, said at a press conference held after Marc died,
"The last thing of course that I very much want to communicate is that on behalf of myself, who is a co-worker of Const. Robin Cameron, that my husband Marc and she were colleagues as well as friends and that they enjoyed working together. It was no surprise to me that they were on shifts together that evening. On behalf of myself, our family and the Bourdages, we wish to extend our sympathies to the Cameron family for their loss of their daughter and of our friend."
Natasha Bourdages was also identified by various sources as Natasha Szpakowski and Natasha Spukowsky.