'PLEASE DON'T GO TO WORK'

"Daddy, please don't go to work today," says Mountie Howard Adams'
11-year-old son.

Howard has just told him what happened out west.

"I didn't want him to hear about it at school," the cop tells
me.

"He took it pretty hard."

They talk a while. Don't worry, dad will be okay, that kind of
thing.

Then Howard goes to work at the RCMP detachment in Milton, where he is
an acting corporal.

I bet a lot of cops are having talks with their kids.

Especially Mounties.

Funny how that red serge is knit so deep in this country.

John Fortune, 30, parks his truck full of raisins and walks
cap-in-hand into the sprawling Newmarket detachment.

"I just wanted to tell you all how sorry I am," he says through the
security glass.

The duty guard smiles. "I'll pass it on," he says.

Beside him is a bouquet of violets -- "Deepest Condolences" -- from
Newmarket Toyota down the road.

"Just a terrible thing," Gwen Jones, sales and leasing, tells me
later, in the showroom.

"They're family people, like us. And they're out there on the line
every day."

Cpl. Peter Ready, for instance, heads into the cold sunshine, past the
flags at half-staff.

"Devastating is the word," he says of reaction to the news from
Alberta. "Members taken at such a young age."

Sgt. Chris Lavin has 28 years in the force. "You have to stay safe,"
he says, "but there are so many factors. You can't second-guess what
happened out there."

Inside, a chaplain makes rounds. The force has a Members' Assistance
Program. You can ask for a shrink or a priest.

Mounties really are a different breed. My former father-in-law was a
staff sergeant, so I know a bit of how tight-knit they are, even more
than city cops.

History, the hat, the horses, the military feel, Sgt. Preston, the Mad
Trapper, are parts of it. Mounties Always Get Their Man.

It appeals. Just ask that fella with the fresh-scrubbed face, tawny
tie and backpack.

Bryan Wilson, 16, is on a work program from Newmarket's Sir William
Mulock Secondary School, doing gofer stuff for the fraud squad.

"I've wanted to be a Mountie since I was a little kid," he says, and
the tragedy in Alberta has not changed that.

Newmarket is a police town. The York Regional force is 10 minutes
away, on Yonge St.

The shock ripples there, too.

"But by the grace of God, there go I," says Const. Kim Killby, a
youthful 42, but already a 20-year vet.

"It's like if a plane crashes, every other pilot, flight attendant and
passenger in Canada feels the impact.

"Every officer in the world feels this. Anyone who does this for a
living knows the potential is there."

I find Deputy Chief Eric Jolliffe signing books of condolences for the
four Mounties' families at Taylor Funeral Home's Newmarket Chapel.

The deputy was a young cop in Edmonton in the '80s.

York Region, you may have read, has its share of marijuana
grow-ops.

And cops there have made their share of appeals for tougher laws and
sentences.

"Now is not the time, though," Jolliffe tells me.

It is a time to mourn.

If you are up there, the chapel, 524 Davis Dr., is open 9 to 9, Monday
to Friday, and 9 to 5 weekends. Manager Codi Shewan says the books
will be there for two weeks.

By then, marijuana laws and grow-ops will have been much debated. This
though they had little to do with the horrors at that Quonset hut in
northern Alberta.

Jim Roszko was a psycho who hated cops. Sooner or later he was going
to try to take them out.

He could have been growing potatoes for all the difference it
made.

It hardly matters.

"This is something none of us has ever had to deal with in our years
of service," says Cpl. Adams.

I hope his son comes to terms with it, too.