HUNTER: Heartbreaking goodbye to hero cop Marc Hovingh
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The first cop funeral I covered was in Timmins in 1995.
OPP Const. Ken Roy was killed in a car crash while on duty leaving behind a wife, children and heartbroken colleagues. He was 27-years-old.
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The cop who kept me up to speed on the story, Phil Shrive, was himself killed in a crash eight years later.
In the intervening years, I have covered police funerals in New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and all points in between. There is never a silver lining to them — it is always clouds.
Thick, black and depressing.
On Saturday, the sunny skies on Manitoulin Island could not brighten a community’s profound sadness and despair.
It was time to say goodbye to OPP Const. Marc Hovingh, the second Canadian cop to die in the line of duty in Canada in 2020.
On Nov. 19, the 28-year veteran of the service was shot to death on a property in Gore Bay. It was a routine call for an “unwanted man.”
“Routine” ended in death for Hovingh and the unwanted man.
A cop’s life can end that way, underscoring the old maxim about war that it is “interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror.”
Cops say the triggerman was Gary Brohman, 60. He died too but the less said about him the better.
Hovingh, the hero cop — married with four children — was laid to rest on Saturday.
A GoFundMe has been set up to raise money to help the much-loved officer’s family.
Family, close friends, OPP brass and Premier Doug Ford were in attendance at the service held at Manitoulin Secondary School in the First Nations community of M’Chigeeng. But because of COVID-19 restrictions, the service was livestreamed.
OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique told mourners that the beloved cop tackled his job with “bravery and resolve” and was “nothing short of heroic.”
His life, the province’s top cop said, was “meaningful.”
“I stand before you today with a broken heart, asking myself how, how it is possible to be so sad but yet so proud at the same time,” Carrique said. “We are grateful and forever indebted to you for your service.”
Speakers referred to Hovingh as a “gentle giant” who made his community a better place.
His wife Lianne thanked mourners and recalled a ride-along she once took with Marc. Her husband’s supervisor had egged her on to encourage him to write more tickets.
One motorist he stopped had been having a tough year, another’s wife was pregnant. No tickets were issued by Marc Hovingh.
“He pulled over a third car that day and I asked ‘what’s the point if you’re just going to let him go?'” Lianne laughed.
“He told me that he didn’t know what that person was going through and what kind of day they were having and that he had a chance to make their day better by letting them off with a warning.”
His brother Hans called him “a man of kindness, of gentleness and of love” who had a fondness for animals his whole life.
But one November day in this cruelest of years, Const. Marc Hovingh left his family and did not come home.
That is what cop haters don’t understand. Every time officers leaves home they run the risk of routine work careening off the rails.
Most people don’t have to face that daily reality.
Hovingh did and by all accounts his policing career was a triumph, marked with humanity, decency and grace — things we should all aspire to.
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