A few years ago when I was working in rural Saskatchewan, and a lot younger, I remember getting a call about a whole herd of buffalo that were loose from a ranch and all over a local road. I knew the rancher, who was out of town, and two of us went into action with a police snowmobile and a police four-by-four. We rounded up those buffalo over the course of an afternoon, managing to get them secure at a neighbouring farm. What an afternoon it was – I had a smile on my face the whole time.
I still tell the story sometimes and recently told it to someone I met who was interested in becoming a Mountie. It sure shows the diverse nature of our duties as national police officers.
Whenever someone wants to know what my favourite part of being a Mountie is, I usually say without thinking about it, that it is the stories I get to tell and the different things I have been able to do.
What other jobs have you herding buffalo on a snowmobile, patrolling a trap line by snowmobile and visiting log cabins along the way for soup, trying “delicacies” such as caribou nose? Or how about having your small police boat bounced like a toy by an overly friendly orca, or float planes dropping you off in a remote village and the pilot saying, “We’ll be back for you in a few days”? I’ve done all these things and my career isn’t over yet. Many retired Mounties have published books on their exploits and they are all different.
Our career has competitive pay and benefits and is pretty secure, and can be very satisfying. But I still think it is the diverse nature of the work and the opportunities for experience that come out on top. There aren’t many other careers with this many internal paths, such as pilots, boat captains, dog handlers, bomb disposal, forensics, anti terrorism, intelligence, border security, emergency response and riot teams, and major crime investigations just to name a few.
For 130 years, we Mounties have been policing across the country and are currently over 19,000 strong. The RCMP are actively recruiting new officers, so if you are interested in the RCMP as a career, you can visit the careers section of www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca to get more information. A career nowhere near ordinary is waiting for you to discover.
Cpl. Chris Swain is a supervisor and the media liaison officer for Sidney North Saanich RCMP.