I’m Dave Marentette, a Staff Sergeant with the RCMP and a graduate student in Counselling Psychology at Yorkville University. Through The Resilient Frontline, I explore what resilience and empathy mean in real service and leadership.
Service and Strength
For more than twenty years, I have served across Canada, leading and supporting frontline teams. I have stood in hard places where endurance and empathy define real strength. This site shares what I have learned about resilience, leadership, and the human side of service.
Learning Empathy
For most of my adult life, I believed strength meant stoicism. Staying quiet, hiding emotion, and holding steady felt like the right way to cope. I was wrong. Therapy taught me that my strength is empathy. That lesson inspired me to help others in service professions, including fellow RCMP members, find balance and healing.
How I’m Wired
I have always sensed when a room feels off. Tone, posture, and expression reveal more than words. I absorb the emotions I see in others, which can heal or weigh me down. Learning that I am an INFJ helped me understand this trait. Feeling deeply helped me connect with victims and communities, but it also made the work heavy at times.
Why I Study Counselling
After two decades in policing, I chose to study psychology to understand how the brain and body respond to stress and trauma. I want to use that knowledge to help people in service recover, adapt, and thrive.
Strength, to me, now means being grounded, learning, and doing the work to grow.
A Life of Service
I come from a military family. My father retired as a Major in the Army. My oldest sister is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force. My middle sister is a Sergeant in the Air Force. Service runs deep in our family.
I have been a volunteer firefighter, coach, husband, father, and lifelong public servant. I share that bond with police, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, and soldiers. The heart of it is to connect service and mental health to better support those who serve.
Beyond the Badge
Outside of work, I am a husband, father, and student. I enjoy hiking with my wife and children, time with our dog, and quiet evenings. Lately, landscaping the mountains, gaming, and sketching are things that ground me.
Thank you for visiting. I welcome your thoughts, ideas, and feedback. Every act of empathy matters, and hearing yours does too.
Read more about my work and writing on the Resilient Frontline Blog.