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But for Granger, her journey to the upper ranks of the police force was nearly halted before it began.

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“I grew up in segregation with doors that were permanently closed to me,” said Granger, who first pursued her dream of policing in Zimbabwe — then called Rhodesia — when she applied to an all-white division of the British South Africa Police.

Being of mixed race, Granger suspected she passed through the initial recruitment due to her last name. She fully expected to be rejected once recruiters saw her skin tone. “But I went through the process saying, ‘You’ll have to eliminate me before I eliminate myself.’ Before I knew it I was hired (as) the first non-white to join white ranks.”

Photo by FRED CHARTRAND / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Granger had been bullied by a group of white women among her fellow recruits.

“They were telling me I shouldn’t even be training with them or living with them, let alone working with them.”

During one gruelling training session, in the midst of a 10-km run, Granger was at the head of the pack when she was suddenly placed with the group that had bullied her, lagging far behind.

At first she resented it.

“After a couple of kilometres it finally hit me that this is not about me, this is not about (her). This was about women in general. And so I started coaching (one of the women) and we completed the run, and when we returned, some of the girls wanted to go home. We started saying, ‘No, you can’t quit now or it will just set all women back.’

“I realized I have a role to play, and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since,” said Granger.

She emigrated to Canada in 1991 in search of a better life for her children, but “it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be,” she said, recounting examples of near-daily discrimination she would encounter.

“I’ve encountered more prejudice here in Canada than racism, because prejudice is born out of ignorance and fear — when you don’t know something you’re afraid of it.

“Once people are awakened and enlightened to something, they develop empathy,” she said.

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Granger applied to the Ottawa police in 1991, but withdrew her application when she realized the force, at that point, had never hired a black female officer.

She called the recruitment office three years later, and was hired in June of that year.

Another barrier broken.

But she still experienced hardship as she worked her way through the ranks.

“It’s taken me three times as long as anybody else to get where I am. The higher up you get the greater the challenges are. But I have no regrets because I’ve been able to be involved in some amazing things.”