Sergeant Shaun Coady (RCMP) recently returned to PEI after being away for over a decade; he’s pictured here with his wife, Christina, and their two children, Euan and Aleka.
Hello, Shaun! Can you tell us about your family?
I’m the current Acting District Commander of the Kings District RCMP in Montague, PEI. I’ve been with the RCMP since 2006. My wife, Christina, is a new employee at VAC. We have two children: Euan is 4.5 and Aleka is 14 months.
We moved back to PEI in 2019 (Christina and Euan) and 2020 (Shaun).
What does being a RCMP family mean to you?
We’re on our 7th posting; we’ve changed provinces 4 times. PEI is home to me so it’s awesome to get back home (it took me 14 years to do so). The MFRC has been awesome for Christina. As you can expect with the 7 moves, you don’t always have that built-in friend group, plus she’s not from PEI originally (she’s from Halifax), so getting back here she avails of the services and events to meet people.
Tell us about a few challenges about being an RCMP family that either you’ve experienced now or you have in the past.
The climate toward policing in general has changed dramatically, even in the 16+ years I’ve been in. We tend to be careful or cautious about who we associate with, so we tend to have to stick together.
Military and RCMP families have those shared experiences and can relate to each other very well.
We’ve had some challenging postings where they’re been incidents that have led to us relocating. We’ve dealt with threats. That has a huge impact on our family dynamic. So any support is welcome support.
For Christina, it’s a challenge for her to start a new job every time we have a new posting.
Tell us about some of the joys that come from being an RCMP family.
It’s awesome. I wouldn’t change it for the world. We have our fun. And the RCMP community is amazing—I don’t think we would have enjoyed our isolated posts without that. You have an instant family wherever you go. We get to share in the experiences and adventures with others, and we’ve gotten to live in places we never thought we would (e.g., Fogo Island).
Can you talk to us a bit about what the MFRC has meant for your family? Especially since not every MFRC offers services for RCMP families?
There’s been nothing external like this in any of our other postings. You get to know the other families and create your own support group, but nothing government-funded or official capacity.
It’s a great fit for us. We try to partake in as many events as possible. The bulk of our posting were rural isolated areas where we had a built-in RCMP family, but when we moved to bigger centres, everyone has their own responsibilities so to have this central hub is really great.
It’s so hard to find the motivation to leave home with small kids, so having this is just incredible. We really appreciate it and we try to support the events as much as possible. We see the value in them, and I encourage our members to get out and partake. It’s so important to have that sense of community.
It’s a safe environment for us. I can enjoy myself and not feel like there are prying eyes, judging us.
Welcome back to PEI 😊