‘There is no closure’
Families of deceased military college students demand answers
The mothers of three Royal Military College students who died two years ago say they are angry and frustrated that the Department of National Defence has not released the results of an internal inquiry into their sons’ deaths.
Formal hearings ended in early 2017, and the families of 22-year-old Harrison Kelertas, 20-year-old Brett Cameron and 19-year-old Matthew Sullivan were told a final report would be released soon after.
More than a year later, however, they are still waiting.
The investigation was extremely complex, involving 90 witnesses and 30,000 pages of documents, and the results are currently undergoing a legal review, with the hope they will be released later this summer, said Lt.-gen. Charles Lamarre, the chief of military personnel.
“I wish I was in a position to say that we have finalized the whole legal review,” Lamarre said. “But, unfortunately, it’s still taking us some time.”
The mothers of the three students, who until now have remained largely silent, are demanding to know what happened to their sons — and what is being done to prevent similar
tragedies.
“We are now at this point extremely frustrated, extremely upset,” said Brett Cameron’s mother, Angela Cameron-jolly, fighting back emotions as she spoke about her son. “There is no closure. The details of my son’s death are still ‘suspected suicide.’ That is unacceptable as far as I’m concerned. And yes, we’re waiting. And we’ve been very patient.”
Kelertas, Cameron and Sullivan were all military cadets as teenagers and had a longstanding interest in attending the prestigious Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont. They were also all accomplished in their own way.
Kelertas, who grew up in Hudson, Que., was a skilled fencer, competing nationally in Canada as well as the U.S. and Europe, which he continued when he arrived in Kingston in 2013 to study and his pursue his dream of becoming an infantry officer.
Cameron started his studies at RMC in 2014 after serving as an air cadet in London, where he pursued an early passion for flying. Music was also a critical part of his life; he was a graduate of a local choir school.
And Sullivan, a swimmer, was the top cadet at his unit in Saint John, N.B., before heading off to RMC, also in 2014, to pursue his childhood dream of a military career.
“You have to be the top of the top to get into RMC to begin with,” said Alexandra Sullivan. “They were either all top academics, top in their sports or top in their army chain. They all had high points.”
The Defence Department ordered a formal board of inquiry shortly after Kelertas’s body was found in his college dorm in April 2016, only weeks before he was due to graduate.
The cause of death was listed as suspected suicide.