MONTREAL—The Royal Military College of Canada is investigating the sudden deaths over the last four months of four students who attended the prestigious school last year.

Two officer cadets, aged 20 and 22, died within days of each other on the school’s Kingston, Ont., campus. The deaths occurred in April and May.

Then in June, RMC graduate, Sub-Lt. Eric Leclerc, 39, took his own life at CFB Borden, near Barrie, Ont., where he was on a training course five months after finishing his RMC studies.

The most recent death occurred this month in Saint John, N.B., and involved a 19-year-old officer cadet who was being medically released from the military.

Officials did not comment on the possible causes of death for any of the men.

“The deaths are currently under investigation. It would probably be inappropriate to talk about them right now,” Brig.-Gen. Sean Friday, the school’s commandant, said in an interview with the Toronto Star and La Presse last week.

“Losing a cadet ... is the single most devastating thing that could happen to us all. We are all deeply affected by that,” Friday said.

“We’re focusing on making sure that we do everything possible to wrap our arms of support around the family and friends of the officer cadets during an exceptionally difficult time for them.”

Royal Military College, Canada’s version of West Point, is the academic training ground for the young men and women who will go on to become commissioned officers in the Canadian Forces.

The Canadian Armed Forces is conducting a single official investigation — known in military parlance as a Board of Inquiry — into the deaths of the 19, 20 and 22 year olds, as all three were enrolled at the school. The families declined interview requests for this article.

A separate inquiry is being conducted into Leclerc’s death since he was no longer enrolled in the college and was assigned at the time of his death to CFB Trenton. Nicole Rioux, Leclerc’s mother, said her son’s death was a suicide. The Board of Inquiry began its work last Wednesday, a spokesperson for CFB Trenton said.

There is no timeline for the investigations to be completed, but Friday, RMC’s commandant, said he hoped the inquiry into the deaths of the three students would be finished within months.

Rioux doesn’t know what led to her son’s suicide. “The toughest part was behind him,” she said of Leclerc’s military training. “He left with his secret.”

RMC plans to introduce a “resilience training” program for students, something that has been in the works for the last year.

“It’s a learning program for the officer cadets that make them personally more resilient to stresses and adversity so that not only do they bounce back from adversity but even potentially be able to thrive in adversity and stressful moments,” Friday said.

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Still, there is heightened awareness as students begin returning to the campus, said Jean-Marc Noel, an RMC professor and president of the Canadian Military Colleges Faculty Association. About 2,600 students are enrolled at the college.

“The number of students is pretty small, so we know pretty much all of them … “We’re in shock,” he said.