Heather Marshall’s new feature introduces new officers
MANITOULIN—With this week’s edition of The Manitoulin Expositor, a new column, ‘On the Beat,’ profiling Island police officers, is making its debut. The monthly column will be written by Heather Marshall, who will be familiar to Expositor readers.
“I wrote ‘Newish to Manitoulin’ for four years (with her last column published last December), where I interviewed new residents to Manitoulin Island,” Ms. Marshall said. “I was finding it harder to find people that wanted to tell their personal stories.”
When she knew that ‘Newish’ had run its course, “Right away I pitched the idea of a police column, talking to officers and telling their personal stories,” said Ms. Marshall. “In my previous column I had interviewed a couple of Manitoulin OPP police officers. The back story on that was that I had got pulled over for speeding by one of the officers, and after I was given my speeding ticket I asked the officer, ‘are you new to the Island?’”
“After meeting these two officers I became friends with several more police officers and was invited to a number of birthday parties where I was fortunate to meet many more interesting officers,” continued Ms. Marshall. “There has been a bit of a changing of the guard involving police officers. It used to be that officers came and stayed on the Island, and there has been a fair amount of officers who have retired over the past few years. In addition, with the expansion of Indigenous police services there has been many more officers join the ranks.”
“The beauty of this column is that it will include both indigenous and non-Indigenous officers and new officers as well as those who have been on the Island, some for many years,” said Ms. Marshall.
“And I had done an interview of Ron Gignac, the new Chief of Police for Wikwemikong Tribal Police Service,” she continued. “He has a fascinating story and is a really nice man. He is such an interesting person and has done so many interesting things in his life. I also had the pleasure of meeting his lovely wife.”
“The whole idea of the column is to shed light on how the police forces are changing and attracting a whole new generation of police officers, some home grown and some from far away,” said Ms. Marshall.
Ms. Marshall added, “I am a retired senior who loves meeting people and telling their fascinating stories. I do this for fun. I probably have enough story leads to fill a monthly column until Christmas.”
