Life has been anything but dull in the past 10 days.
Without visiting a community of more than 1,200, and without going more than 60 miles from home, I have attended a top notch play and the opening of an art gallery, photographed the installation of a new, modern playground, taken in two garage sales and a flea market, enjoyed a strawberry tea, conversed with a fellow Newfoundland afficionado and sent my youngest daughter off to the Middle East for a month.
I’d have taken in a sports day too, but it rained and the organizers, with mixed feelings of joy over the rain and sorrow over the state of the grounds, had to cancel. I’m looking forward to this coming weekend when I will attend the opening tea for the local RCMP’s exhibit marking the 125th anniversary of the founding of the national police force, the North West Mounted Police, in May 1873.
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I’ve been able to lend some pictures and other items and I’m anxious to see all that has been collected.
I’m especially interested as I had the privilege of working for the RCMP in 1973, the force’s centennial year.
Before taking the position as speechwriter to the commissioner, I was warned by some that I might find the job somewhat restrictive after what I was used to as head of the English press unit at the agriculture department. Indeed I did.
This was in the days before women could become members, and the RCMP was very much a man’s world. Most of the women employed at headquarters at that time were clerks or stenos; I didn’t fit either category and they really didn’t know what to do with me. They’d never had anyone in my position before, let alone a woman.
I stayed long enough to develop some rapport with the Mounties I worked with and to have a small part in the publicity surrounding the 1973 centennial pageant and the presentation of the horse Centennial to Queen Elizabeth.
A few years ago, on a visit to the RCMP museum at Depot Division in Regina, I came upon a display of 1973 memorabilia including the speech the Queen gave when presenting new colors to the force at Depot Division.
The speech brought back memories.
It was written in Ottawa, approved by the Commissioner and passed on to Buckingham Palace. It passed muster and was delivered by the Queen pretty much as first written. I know. I wrote it.
