When the Victoria Police Department announced the appointment of Michael Brown ’91 as its new Deputy Chief in July 2025, the moment represented more than a milestone in an accomplished policing career. It also highlighted a powerful thread running through VicPD’s leadership: three senior officers—Michael Brown, his brother Inspector Colin Brown ’90, and fellow Deputy Chief Jamie McRae ’91—all graduated from St. Michaels University School.
Their paths into policing were different, but together they formed a leadership team grounded in shared formative experiences, deep roots in Greater Victoria, and a sense of community shaped decades earlier on the SMUS campus. As they tell it, none of this was planned. If anything, it was the opposite.
A Leadership Team Years in the Making
Michael’s new role places him in charge of VicPD’s Administration Division, a responsibility he steps into after nearly 30 years with the department. His service began in Patrol in 1995 and has spanned Investigative Services and multiple leadership assignments, including his recent tenure leading the Esquimalt Division. Working alongside him is Deputy Chief Jamie McRae, appointed in 2023, who leads Operations.
The two first met as new Grade 8 students in English class with Mr. Skinner and quickly became close through squash, academics and the camaraderie of arriving at a new school together. Their friendship carried through university and into their early policing years. When McRae joined VicPD two years after Michael, they ended up on the same shift by coincidence and later became partners on the street.
“I’ve known Mike since I was 13,” McRae says. “That kind of history matters, especially in a job built on trust.”
If Michael’s path into policing was clear early on, his older brother Colin’s was not. Colin went to law school, was called to the bar and began practicing in a major firm before realizing it wasn’t the right fit. A friend’s offhand question—“Why don’t you become a police officer?”—shifted everything. With their family history, the move made sense: their paternal grandfather had been a police officer in London, England after the war, their father served with the Esquimalt Police and became Chief, and now that legacy continues into a fourth generation with Michael’s eldest daughter recently joining VicPD.
“It’s a demanding and sometimes dangerous job,” Michael says. “My dad challenged me early on, and I did the same with my daughter. But once someone knows it’s their calling, you support them fully.”
A Foundation Built at SMUS
All three credit SMUS with giving them confidence, discipline and academic readiness. For Michael, the school’s rigour made university seamless, and his history degree at UVic later proved invaluable when writing detailed reports and high-level documents. McRae found that SMUS had taught him how to study, write and identify key information—skills that shaped his career from its earliest days. Colin points to the lasting network of relationships formed at a school deeply connected to Victoria’s civic life. Those ties, he says, endure in their work today.
The trio also shares a set of stories still told with the humour of old friends. There was the Grade 12 car scavenger hunt that ended with multiple students in trouble after attempting to take a street sign directly outside the Esquimalt police station. There was the rugby game where Michael, returning to the sport after focusing on squash, broke his arm in the first match and calmly walked to his father, then a deputy chief, for a ride to the hospital. And after that injury, Michael became Jamie’s caddy during high school golf tournaments, confusing opponents who had never seen a teenager with a personal caddy.
Today, the three hold significant responsibility within VicPD. Their work is complex and often demanding, but the history they share, from classrooms to chapel, team practices to teenage missteps, still matters.
“The job can be stressful, and you need people you can trust and confide in,” Michael says. “Having long-standing relationships makes that easier.” McRae adds, “It’s not something we planned, but every day, I’m glad it turned out this way.”
With Michael Brown’s appointment, VicPD now has an unexpected SMUS trio at its helm, three friends whose journeys diverged and reconnected, grounded in shared history and guided by a commitment to public service.
“I loved my time at SMUS,” Michael says. “It set me up for life in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until much later. And now, seeing how our lives intersect again, it feels like things have come full circle.”
This article is posted as published in the Winter 2026 edition of School Ties magazine
