From the Archives: Dreams, scholarships take ex-Mountie Kevin ...

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Published Feb 11, 2025  •  4 minute read

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Kevin Brosseau, a former senior RCMP officer was named Canada’s ‘fentanyl czar’ on Feb. 11. From 2012-2016 he was a commanding officer with the RCMP and from 2016-2019 he was deputy commissioner. He grew up in Alberta, and studied at the U of A. This profile was originally published in November 2002.

Even as a shirt-tail kid, herding cattle, doing chores, his mind was always working.

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In the summers, growing up on the family cattle ranch, he’d slip off some days to an uncle’s cabin on Moose Lake, and they would sit around talking about the law, the beauty of it, the perfection.

“I guess that’s where it started,” says Kevin Brosseau, whose mind, sharp as a pocket knife, has taken him from the 4-H club in Bonnyville to the halls of Harvard, where for the past two months he has been studying law in classrooms once haunted by Kennedys and Kissinger, and dozens of Nobel Prize Laureates.

The 35-year-old Metis man, who graduated last year at the top of his class at the University of Alberta law school, got there by winning a few prizes of his own: a prestigious $15,000 US Fulbright Foundation Scholarship, a $9,000 Law Society of Alberta scholarship, a $15,000 National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation award.

He’ll need all that and more.

He had to re-mortgage his Edmonton home when he made the $100,000 financial commitment it takes to earn Harvard’s one-year master’s program in law.

“When I walked through the main gates of Harvard Yard and realized the people who have walked here before me, I almost had to pinch myself,” says Brosseau, a former RCMP corporal.

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“The 115 people in this program include judges, parliamentarians, senior lawyers and other incredible people from 59 different countries. It’s taken me a long time to feel comfortable.”

He’ll get used to it, says David Percy, dean of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law. When Brosseau finishes his master’s program, he can write his own ticket. “He’s in the happy position now where the world is his oyster,” Percy says. “He’s able to do anything he wants.”

Brosseau admits he’s fortunate. The youngest of seven children, his close-knit family taught him to make good choices and the 4-H club taught him the value of hard work. Then there was his uncle, Georges Brosseau, an Edmonton lawyer who taught him to love the law.

“Our cattle ranch was right next to Moose Lake where my uncle had a cabin,” Brosseau says.

“I can still remember those summers when I would sit around with my uncle and he would tell me about the law, about the people he was helping and the satisfaction of being able to effect change and make a difference in someone’s life.”

Along the way, there were sports coaches and RCMP officers, whom Brosseau also counts among his mentors. In high school, he spent time with local officers, riding around in their patrol cars, enthralled by their tales of the emotional rewards small-town cops could get from helping people.

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When Brosseau enrolled at the University of Alberta to study for a BA, he knew he would go on to study law someday. When he graduated in 1988, he told himself “not yet.”

“I wasn’t in the frame of mind to go on,” he says. “I was only 20 or 21 and wanted to try something else first. When a friend suggested the RCMP, I went to K-Division headquarters in Edmonton and signed up.”

Brosseau told himself he would serve two years, then go back to university. Two years stretched into nine as he served in a series of small communities — Williams Lake with its seven reserves, Whitehorse with its strange mix of tourism, frontier and traditional native lifestyle. That made him think about his Aboriginal heritage. It was something he had rarely done before.

In Williams Lake, Brosseau noticed the subtleties of dealing with native people. He learned the small things a good RCMP officer can do to help them mesh with modern society.

That exposure fuelled Brosseau’s dreams. Eventually, he asked for a leave of absence to study law. After graduating with the gold medal for highest marks, he articled with his uncle Georges, a former chairman of the Edmonton Catholic School Board. He had already set his sights on Harvard.

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“I’m doing my thesis on a comparative analysis of the Canadian versus the U.S. response to aboriginal issues,” he says. “It’s something you can’t do in Canada.”

Brosseau wanted Harvard for what it could offer. Harvard wanted Brosseau for the same reason.

“The level of legal education we’re receiving in Edmonton is world-class and is definitely perceived that way, not only here at Harvard but by the major international law firms on Wall Street,” he says. “They’re looking hard at U of A graduates.”

When he finishes, Brosseau will return to Canada — at least for one year.

Returning to the country of origin is one of the conditions of a Fulbright Foundation Award. Brosseau doesn’t mind. He wants to play a role in shaping First Nation policing in Canada.

“I’m now in discussions with the RCMP about employment in their policy centre but I’m not sure that’s going to be it,” he said. “You come to a place like this and the doors just open up and the opportunities seem to multiply.”

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