I am currently in Grade 12 at Bellerose, and thus I have seen quite a lot of what goes on at this school over the past few years. However, none of this has had as much of an impact on me as a person as interacting with Const. Dave Henry has had.
My first time speaking with him was at the beginning of the school year, when my girlfriend and I were being harassed by the guys considered the "cool kids". Henry gave me some advice that day that I still hold in my heart, and advice that has allowed me to put up with the harassment without being too bothered by it.
The next time I interacted with Henry was at the beginning of second semester. By this point, part of me was convinced that Henry was only so loved because he was easy to deal with. I hadn't seen him tackle problems head on. Part of me believed that he let people off. This interaction was caused by my own actions and the actions of a friend. Instead of being harassed, we were the ones doing the harassing. The way that Henry talked to us that day proved my beliefs wrong. It wasn't that Henry didn't try to fix problems. It was that his influence had simply lowered the amount of incidents taking place at Bellerose.
After all of this, the memory that most stands out to me about Henry was his taking part in the Bellerose Concert Band and Choir tour to Banff in mid-April. During the tour, Henry treated us all as his equals. He played an elementary school concert with us, he talked with us, he laughed with us and he truly was one of us. He ended up not only coming to our condo for meals, but also contributed to our grocery bill. How many cops are you going to meet that would do something like that? For most of them, paying for and eating meals with teenagers would be a task not worth taking part in. This is something that sets him apart from the others.
For those of us who lived in that condo for four days, Henry proved himself to be not just the school resource officer, he is also a friend and I would not be surprised in the least bit to hear the same sentiments echoed by most of the other students at Bellerose. He simply is the best cop out there and Bellerose is extremely lucky to have him as our resource officer.
Trevor Norris, St. Albert
