810-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, November 22,1986
Canadian Mounties' Role Different Than legend Suggests
TREPASSEY, Newfoundland -
Striding purposefully up the stairs,
Cpl. Roger L. Taylor of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police enters
the large room, spots his
man...and sells him a $lO
provincial firearms permit.
If that little transaction in a fish
processing plant doesn’t sound like
the stuff of the legends associated
with the Mounties, the red coats
and the black horses, Sgt. Preston
and Nelson Eddy, so be it.
The truth about what a “member
of the force” does is more prosaic
than the legend made famous in
song, story, television serial, and
TURKEY
TALK
A real turkey's tail.
At least in the male,
Has many a color so bright;
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Plus browns in all hues,
And even some green and some
He struts for his hen.
Who looks now and then
At her clucking and swaggering
But if he’s not wise
He becomes quite a prize,
And is served up with dressing a
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film, but no less demanding.
Serves Vast
Area
Taylor is commander of the
three-man RCMP detachment at
Trepassey, on the windblown,
often fogbound, barren but
beautiful southern shore of
Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula.
His detachment serves 5,300
residents spread over 60 miles of
coast road and an enormous area
inland where only hunters,
caribou, moose, and Mounties dare
to tread.
Unlike U.S. police forces, the
RCMP in Newfoundland and most
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of Canada is responsible for en
forcing every level of law: federal,
provincial, and municipal.
So when 135 Tamil refugees
showed up in lifeboats off the
Newfoundland coast in August and
were picked up by local fishing
boats, the Canadian Coast Guard
notified Taylor. He sped to St.
Shotts to make sure the refugees
didn’t try to go ashore before a
Coast Guard vessel arrived to
collect them. “It was no big deal,”
he says.
When a restaurant is broken into
in Trepassey, or a fishing boat goes
out without proper safety gear, or
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//- Z 7- 36
to
a woman’s body washes up on
shore, or a pack of dogs roams
through a community in violation
of the provincial Dog Act, or a car
strikes a caribou or a moose,
Taylor or one of his two constables
is pressed into service.
The North West Mounted Police,
the RCMP’s earliest incarnation,
was formed after Canada acquired
what had been Hudson’s Bay Co.
territory in 1870 and found itself
with the dual task of calming
potentially antagonistic Indians
and suppressing illegal whisky
traders from south of the U.S.
border.
Organized in 1873 as a
paramilitary unit its recruits
still undergo a six-month boot
camp style of basic training the
NWMP’s original 18 officers and
257 enlisted men rode from Duf
ferin, Manitoba, to Fort Macleod
and Fort Edmonton, Alberta.
Their red coats impressed the
Indians, who had had good
dealings with similarly clad
British troops, and the whisky
traders were dispatched with little
trouble. The NWMP established its
presence on the frontier with
minimal bloodshed and gained its
greatest fame in maintaining
order in the Yukon during the
Klondike gold rush of the 1890 s. In
honor of its work, it was awarded
the prefix “Royal” by King Ed
ward VII in 1904.
Gradually the RNWMP took
over most policing duties in
Canada’s provinces until a
reorganization in 1920, when it was
given its present name and made
responsible for federal law en
forcement and national security.
But not long afterward, one
province after another signed up
the Mounties on a contract basis,
until now only Ontario and Quebec
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retain sole jurisdiction for
provincial law enforcement. The
RCMP moved into Newfoundland
when the island joined Canada in
1950.
Mounties no longer ride horses;
equitation training was suspended
in 1966. They aren’t responsible for
national security any more; a
separate Canadian Security In
telligence Service was created in
1984.
Nor do Mounties including
women, recruited since 1974
wear red tunics, except on formal
occasions. The everyday uniform
is a khaki shirt, navy-blue tie,
navy-blue trousers with a yellow
stripe, and black ankle boots
polished to a mirror-like sheen.
Cpl. Taylor is the embodiment of
today’s Mountie. He is a 36-year
old native of Nova Scotia with 17
years of experience on the force
who chafes, like police
everywhere, at paperwork and the
limits imposed on him as he goes
after suspects he is sure are guilty.
“There’s one of our leading
drug traffickers,” he says as a car
approaches, “but knowing it and
proving it in court are two different
things.”
Yet he will say with little
prompting and considerable pride;
“I’m a member of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police. I
couldn’t see being on any other
force.”
Taylor knows that to be a
member of the force, he must
adhere to all of its standards all of
the time. He is so clean-cut,
dedicated, and reserved that it
seems incongruous that when he
and his family visited California
last year, he appeared on the
television program “The Price is
Right.” He won a sofa and a
sailboat.
(Turn to Page B 12)
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