North Bay Detective Constable Brad Reaume is well known in North Bay for his fight against opioids.
It’s a battle he’s been fighting for years and the officer is no stranger to tragedy as a result of someone dying from an opioid overdose.
His 32-year-old brother Perry died of an opioid overdose in Haileybury in November 2006.
A skull was found a year later and tests proved the skull belonged to Perry Reaume.
At the time Reaume was a police officer in Windsor and now he had two young children who will never know their uncle Perry.
Reaume recounted this story Friday morning at the North Bay Parry Sound District Health Unit building where he received a glass plaque from the North Bay and Area Drug Strategy Committee.
The plaque thanks him for his years of work and his never-ending fight to keep drugs like Fentanyl off the streets.
Pat Cliché, the chair of the drug strategy group recounted how she met Reaume.
It was September 2013 when he and another officer visited her and said there is Fentanyl on the streets of North Bay and he needed her help to tackle the problem.
Cliché says a partnership and friendship began with Reaume that day.
“He’s an amazing and compassionate young police officer,” Cliché said.
Reaume says while it’s nice to be recognized there are people left behind who become victims after a friend or family member dies from an overdose.
He says there are grandmothers raising grandchildren, parents who no longer have children in their lives anymore and children who don’t have parents again because of drugs.
“I just sat at court with a woman who lost her two daughters seven months apart because of opioid abuse,” Reaume said.
“I’m glad to receive this award, but I’m glad to take this opportunity to recognize those (victims) as well.”
Reaume says opioids are an epidemic.
The goal is to try to intervene in people’s lives as early as possible so the progression of substance abuse is stopped.
Reaume says as bad as opioid use is in North Bay, it’s far worse in neighbouring communities like Sudbury.
“Sudbury experiences a death every eight days,” he said.
“We’re not even close to that yet. We are pushing back hard enough that we’re making an impact.”
Part of that push back involves increasing public awareness on the dangers of opioids.
Pat Cliché says Reaume is working on a drug strategy program to introduce the dangers of drug abuse to school students at a very young age.
It’s too late to teach students about the dangers of drugs when they’re in high school so Cliché says that awareness has to start an earlier age.
Reaume was humbled by the award.
And it took some doing to get him to the health unit building to accept it.
Reaume is on vacation and Police Chief Scott Tod had to trick him into coming with him to the building on a specific matter that couldn’t wait.
The ruse worked.
Tod said of Reaume people know him as the go-to officer when it comes to opioid matters.
The police chief says Reaume has impacted and affected many lives in the community for the better.
And Cliché added after the presentation “I’m glad he belongs to us”.
