Joey Payeur
While she walks her beat, Kristina Bombay also walks a fine line between hope and despair every day.
The 29-year-old from Rainy River First Nation is coming up on the one-year anniversary of her first career posting as a law enforcement officer for the Pikangikum Police Station in Pikangikum First Nation, located 100 km north of Red Lake.
It’s been a year like no other in her life.
“I have this feeling so strong inside me of wanting to help,” Bombay professed while back in this area during her time off earlier this spring.
“I have such a good rapport with the community,” she noted. “People call the detachment and specifically request me to come when there’s a problem.
“But there’s also frustration and sadness,” Bombay lamented.
“You have a reserve of 3,000 people and it’s the same people committing the same crimes.”
Bombay is fully aware of the way Pikangikum is depicted in the media as a Canadian version of a Third World nation.
“It’s true there is no running water, no sewage system, all dirt roads on the reserve, and no road access to the reserve itself–you’ve got to fly in or take a boat,” she remarked.
“It’s so sad to see as a First Nations person myself,” she conceded.
But Bombay is quick to say there are plenty of good things and great people on the reserve, too.
“I think the media representation of what life is like in Pikangikum is overdone,” she noted.
“All you hear about is the bad stuff; you don’t hear about the good stuff–the elders, the laughter of kids.
“We have ‘Project Journey’ [an offshoot of ‘Project Sunset’ currently underway at Crossroads School in Devlin] and we also run an OPP kids’ program, kind of like a D.A.R.E. program but updated,” Bombay explained.
“It’s based on dealing with issues like drugs, alcohol, social media, and relationships.
“They’ve got an arena up there and the kids love to travel for hockey tournaments,” she added.
“And there’s lots of dedicated teachers up there at the school helping these kids along.”
Bombay makes it a priority to try and be an inspiration for the young people in Pikangikum in the same way she was inspired to become a police officer when she was just nine years old.
“I grew up with alcoholism within our household of five kids. We were poor,” she recalled.
“I remember how a Treaty #3 officer back then, Cathy Kowal, who ended up being a positive role model in my life,” Bombay said.
“She would take me on marathon runs and try and broaden my experiences.
“It made me think that that’s what I wanted to do,” she added. “I wanted to have that same impact on First Nations’ girls and boys.
“If there’s even on person I can make an impact on, it’s good to know that I can help them change their life and give them hope.”
The element of hope is something that’s in short supply on a reserve which Bombay said has the highest police call volume among all of Northwestern Ontario.
What she has to deal with on an all-too-regular basis is like a rundown of someone’s worst nightmare.
“Domestic violence, sexual and other types of assault, suicides, mental health issues,” she cited.
“And then there’s your petty thefts and break-and-enters.”
Pikangikum also still is reeling from a house fire there in March, 2016 that claimed the lives of nine family members ranging in age from 51 years down to three children, the youngest being just five months old.
“The one officer I work with now has been up there for six years and was there that night,” Bombay noted.
“The house was already engulfed in flames and there’s no fire station on the reserve.
“He said there was nothing you could do but stare and watch, knowing there were people in the house but not even knowing how many,” she said.
“You go in people’s houses and you still see lots of sadness, lots of mourning about it,” Bombay added.
“People still have the pictures of those who died on their walls.”
While Bombay knows it will be hard to leave Pikangikum one day, she also believes she will need to say farewell at some point for her own well-being.
“There’s only so much sadness one person can handle and seeing it every day when I’m up there, it gets to me,” she admitted.
“A normal person should only see so much of that before it’s time to move on with their career.
“I deal with child suicides and, one of these days, it’s going to be one of my little girls that I really, really care about and I think that would be the end of my career–I couldn’t take that.”
The single mother of one has her sights set on eventually getting posted to her home area, or at least closer to it.
“I want to be with my daughter, to be able to go to bed in my own home,” Bombay said.
“She’s getting older. I want to be a mom, too.”
