LANIGAN — For Lanigan’s newest RCMP officer, it was his father’s law enforcement career in conservation that inspired his own pursuit of a uniform.
Cst. Braden Stan was raised in Swift Current, where he grew up hunting and fishing with his father.
“It was always neat growing up when dad would always get dressed in his uniform and go out for the day, and I always looked up to that,” he said.
Stan, 26, began his first placement at Lanigan’s RCMP detachment on March 18, assigned to the position seven days after his graduation from the Regina Depot Division Academy.
At the academy, “they kind of spoon feed it to you a little bit,” Stan said. “But once you get on the field, you are a police officer. They expect you to do the work and to be efficient with it.”
He said that was the first lesson he learned. There was a highway incident in progress when Stan arrived on his first morning.
“So it was ‘grab your stuff and go, we're going.’ I was kind of thrown right into the fire, it seemed like,” he said. “But it was good. Very interesting.”
Today, Stan is on general duty, where he said he hopes to become well rounded as an investigator and police officer.
“You get to do a bit of everything, which I think is important – especially for a long career,” he said.
That career will hopefully include being a member of an RCMP search and rescue team, said Stan, given the outdoor work with ATVs, boats and snowmobiles, as well as human tracking.
Stan expects to be in Lanigan for at least five years. Prior to his posting, he had only ever driven through on the Trans-Canada Highway.
“It kind of seems like home, and some of the smaller communities we have around Swift Current,” he said. “The way people respond and act is a lot like home.”
For himself, wife and two boys, the people of Lanigan have “been really polite, nice and welcoming in the community.”
