‘None of us will ever be the same’
First responder returns to pay respects, praise the heroes on his team
Less than 48 hours after a white van wreaked carnage on Yonge St., Sgt. Dave Ouellette returned to quietly pay his respects to the dead.
“I think the easiest thing to say is none of us will ever be the same,” he said, as rain plunked down on the Olive Square memorial near Yonge St. and Finch Ave.
“I can’t even describe it by words. It’s described by tears, more than words.”
On Monday, Ouellette was among the first in an enormous team of officers to respond to the rampage that killed 10 and injured 16. On Wednesday, standing at the memorial, passersby approached him to say hello, to say thank you or to shake his hand.
“Sir,” a young man said, “thank you very much for being there for us.”
When that first call came through, Ouellete sped from Leslie St. and Finch Ave. He arrived to chaos, and the sounds of screaming. Officers from Toronto police’s 32 and 33 divisions arrived at the sprawling scene to help whoever they could.
“You start putting things together — by little bits of information to start, and then when officers first start arriving, and calls for help from other officers, we start to realize it’s more than just an accident.”
The story, Ouellette said, is not about any one officer, but about the city and the first responders as a whole. “There is no individual hero in all of this,” he told the Star, “just a magnificent group of human beings from the three arms of the emergency services.”
A lot of that, in his view, came down to training.
“We have great leaders in our organization; we have great specialized units in our organization, but that front line, those uniformed officers and the communications, the dispatch involved, those 9-1-1 operators, they are the gem that makes this work.”
As he talked to the Star, Ouellette at times fought back tears, his eyes shadowed by a uniform cap. Being at the memorial — where he laid a small token down amid flowers — was therapeutic, he said.
Monday had been gruelling for him, and the other first responders.
“Twenty. Twenty hours,” he said. Hearing thank yous echo across Toronto meant a lot, he said. “It reminds us why we do what we do. That there is a calling, and we swore an oath, and moments like that shine away moments that don’t.”
In his 20 years, he added, the force had come a long way with peer support and managing stress from tough days on the job.
“I’m proud to be part of the city of Toronto. No where else would you find so much unity, from different cultures, from different ways of life, different walks of life — all understanding that a bad day doesn’t define us.”
“There is no individual hero in all of this . . . just a magnificent group of human beings from the three arms of the emergency services.” SGT. DAVE OUELLETTE