With 26 years as a police officer under his belt, Marc Downey-Damato has a lot of stories to tell – and a lot of practice telling them. But the retired detective says that reading and hearing his story written and read by students in Jocelyn Brown’s creative writing course hit him in a completely different way.

“As I listened to the students, I found myself getting a bit emotional – that doesn’t happen when I tell those stories myself,” he says. “It was powerful and an opportunity that most people don’t have.”

The power of storytelling – and the potential to work it into a career – is exactly what Brown hoped students would take from the work-integrated learning opportunity. During her Fall 2023 creative writing course, students created interview plans, conducted research and held three interviews with their seven Edmonton Police Service veteran partners. 

Pamela Carter and Emily Woods, who both worked with Downey-Damato, wrote about his day-to-day policing experiences in different ways. 

“When I got to the interview, I ignored the questions I’d written in advance, and the conversation just flowed,” says Carter. “I’m used to my writing coming from inside my own head, but this experience showed me that I can interview people, have real conversations and help people share their stories – because this is really his story, not mine.”

Getting more stories of day-to-day policing out there to help people understand law enforcement in their cities and communities was the inspiration behind this project, says Nathan Romas, Edmonton Police Service officer and The Quiet Professional podcast creator. Romas pitched the idea for students to partner with veterans while interviewing MacEwan psychology professor Dr. Sandy Jung about her research with the Edmonton Police Service. When Dr. Jung brought the idea back to MacEwan, the Department of English embraced it and Brown developed the CRWR 317 work-integrated learning opportunity for students to connect with and share policing stories from retirees. 

“A lot of the work in policing goes unnoticed, and that’s okay, but it is nice to see more of these stories coming to the forefront so people can get a better understanding of policing,” says Downey-Damato. “This was a great opportunity to share and be a mentor in a completely different way.”