Wearing grey sweatpants, Pingoaktuk Kolola appeared haggard at first court appearance on first-degre

Thousands of mourners gathered in Brockville, Ont., Tuesday as Cst. Douglas Scott was buried in his home town with full regimental honours.

Scott, 20, died in Kimmirut Nov. 5 while responding to a complaint about a drunk driver. He had been shot in the head with a high-powered rifle and his body was found in his car.

"Doug earned the red serge, he wore it with pride. Any police force would have been lucky to have him. He was the quintessential police officer," Cst. David Charette was quoted telling mourners by CanWest News Service.

"He had been raised to be the kind of guy you wanted to hang out with, the kind of guy you would call when you needed a hand. Doug was constantly asking if he could help."

The Brockville Recorder and Times reported the city's downtown core virtually shut down for Scott's funeral, which drew more than 2,500 police from across North America. Brockville is a small city of 22,000 located an hour's drive from Ottawa.

Pingoaktuk Kolola, the 37-year-old Kimmirut man accused in Scott's shooting, appeared in an Iqaluit courtroom Nov. 9 on a charge of first-degree murder.

Looking haggard and wearing a blue mock turtleneck and grey sweatpants, Kolola sat handcuffed as the Crown sought and received an order forbidding Kolola from communicating with seven potential witnesses in the case.

During the 10-minute hearing, eight uniformed Mounties sat in the gallery. Kolola's next court appearance is Dec. 4.

Meanwhile, residents of Kimmirut held a ceremony in Scott's memory at Qaqqalik School on Nov. 11, Remembrance Day, attended by Premier Paul Okalik.

Qaqqalik principal Larry Collins said counsellors have gone into classrooms to try to help students better understand the tragedy. Collins said Kolola has relatives who work at the school who "are finding this really, really tough."

"Everyone is trying to support each other because it's a two-pronged sword. We're dealing with the death on one side and then of course the family of the person who's accused of doing it," he said.

"It's tough for the community to bear this cross."

At a news conference in Iqaluit last week, RCMP Superintendent Tim Cogan told reporters Kolola's family asked the force to extend their condolences to Scott's family.

"They're feeling pretty bad," said Akeego Ikkidluak, the hamlet's senior administrative officer.

Condolence books for Scott's family were set up at the RCMP's V Division headquarters in Iqaluit, and at numerous locations in Ottawa, Kingston and Brockville.

The Brockville Community Foundation has established a memorial fund in Scott's name that will donate money to projects in the Brockville area that are important to the Scott family. Donations can be made online at www.bcfdn.ca or sent to the Brockville Community Foundation, 9 Broad Street, Suite 204, Brockville, Ontario K6V 6Z4.

Investigators tried last week to reconstruct the series of events that led to Scott's death. Close to 20 Mounties, including members of the RCMP's major crimes unit in Edmonton, its forensic lab in Regina and a traffic collision reconstruction expert from Peace River, Alta., descended on the hamlet.

Those Mounties have gone home, and the Kimmirut detachment is now back to its usual staff of two.