J. L. François Carrière was an officer in the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...

, who drowned on duty. On February 10, 2011, the

Department of Fisheries and Oceans Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO; french: Pêches et Océans Canada, MPO), is a department of the Government of Canada that is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs in support of Canada's economic, ecological and sc ...

announced that a new vessel was going to be named the CCGS ''Constable Carrière''.
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- The vessel was one of nine vessels in the new Hero-class patrol vessels, all of which will be named after Canadian heroes.

RCMP career

Carrière applied to the RCMP in August 1987 at the age of 33. He was a married man with two young children. He was stationed in

Prince Edward Island Prince Edward Island (PEI; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is the smallest province in terms of land area and population, but the most densely populated. The island has several nicknames: "Garden of the Gulf", ...

for the first four years of his RCMP career. In 1993, Carrière was transferred to the detachment at

Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia Cole Harbour is a former village and current community located in Nova Scotia, Canada that is part of the Halifax Regional Municipality. Geography It is situated 6 kilometres east of the central business district of Dartmouth and takes its ...

. While there, Carrière, who had been an amateur scuba diver, applied to be a police diver. While working as a scuba diver with the RCMP Underwater Recovery Team in

Cape Breton Cape Breton Island (french: link=no, île du Cap-Breton, formerly '; gd, Ceap Breatainn or '; mic, Unamaꞌki) is an island on the Atlantic coast of North America and part of the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The island accounts for 18. ...

, searching a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, Carrière died during an underwater inspection. The ''Donia Portland'' was a large freighter, and Carrière was one of a team of five inspecting the vessel. He reported problems with his breathing apparatus, although his gauge showed he still had air in his tanks. Another diver who went to assist him lost contact with him due to murky water. He seems to have been unable to follow a line the divers were attached to the surface, because the buoy it was attached to had been dragged underwater. An investigation attributed his death to flawed procedures and equipment malfunctions, and the RCMP paid a large fine. Dive rules were explicitly changed so every diver was assigned a "buddy", in order to prevent deaths of this kind in future.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carriere, J. L. Francois 1956 births 1997 deaths Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers