“The Jamaican place, the Greek place, they’d all tell me, 'I hope he’s a good husband because he’s such a great guy… I would tell them he was… He’s the best,” she said.

York police Supt. Mark Brown echoed Kellie’s statements.

“He had a way of dealing with people to make them feel at ease, even hardened criminals… He was just a very kind soul,” he said.

Pete didn’t just treat humans this way.

“He adored his dogs,” Kellie said, remarking how often he would end up bundling up stray or lost canines while on duty, once even letting a dog the couple found on the side of Hwy. 48 sleep in their bed.

Kellie recounted the time she randomly decided to rescue one particularly helpless pup from her veterinarian.

“I eventually grew tired of pacing back and forth, worrying what he was going to say and went in and woke him up,” she said. “When I told him that’s our new dog, he just picked him up and, ‘Yeah!’ He would have had 100 dogs if he could have.”

This adoration of dogs might have been partially associated with the couple’s repeated unsuccessful attempts to have children of their own, after which, Kellie said with a chuckle, they decided to “be happy, travel and treat our dogs like kids”.

Kellie came up with the nickname “team couch” for Pete and their two dogs – Tyson and Levi – as the animals could often be found packed tightly around Pete while they watched movies together on the sofa.

It was Pete’s therapy in life to help others, Kellie said, noting he always thought of himself last.

He was not only a Big Brother, but also volunteered at Dog Tales Rescue and Sanctuary, in King.

“He was an absolutely amazing man,” said Tracey Marrelli of Dog Tales. “He had the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. If the dogs were too fearful to go outside, Pete would spend hours inside their rooms with them.”

Sadly, Pete’s story would come to an abrupt end.

Returning from one of the couple’s many trips to foreign locales – including Thailand, Bali, New Zealand and Australia – he suffered through a sickly Christmas with flu-like symptoms lasting weeks.

He finally went to his doctor after noticing a hard mass near his rib cage.

The news the couple got back was dire: his liver was covered in tumours. The cancer had spread from his colon.

Although extremely rare for a male so young, doctors told him the cancer was terminal.

In the ensuing months, Pete and Kellie were surrounded by the loving arms of many friends, who not only raised $20,000 so the couple could travel anytime they wished, but raised a further $20,000 as part of ‘Team Pete’ for Southlake during a fundraising event.

After the diagnosis, Kellie tried desperately to feed Pete – a lover of Newmarket’s Big Bone BBQ's ribs – a healthy meal plan, including a completely alkaline diet.

Eventually, though, the couple decided to “just enjoy” what would end up being his final few months.

Recently, Pete and Kellie drove sixteen-hours to the east coast, during which Pete ate lobster for both lunch and dinner.

Despite the obvious pain he was suffering through, Pete never once complained, Kellie said.

“Even sitting in the chemo chair he had everyone in stitches, always making people laugh," she added. "He just never thought about himself.”

Brown said Pete’s death came as a great shock to everyone for precisely this reason, because the officer stayed so positive right up until the day he succumbed.

What resonated so much for Kellie in the days following her husband’s death was the couple’s final trip, during which they were sitting beside a number of snowbirds discussing how great retirement was in Florida.

“I burst into tears at the table,” she said. “We left afterwards and walked the boardwalk in Halifax and Pete took my hand and looked at me in the eyes and said with a smile, ‘We have this moment Kel. We have each other. In this moment we are happy and love each other. Focus on that.’ That was Pete.”