Canadian mounty full#

His first day on the job, in Fort Qu’Appelle, Sask., he stopped a man who had taken police on a high-speed car chase, and placed him under arrest in the backseat of his cruiser. He emerged from training, an imposing six-foot-four presence in uniform, bursting with pride.

Canadian mounty full#

Klatt felt the full weight of the image when he joined the force in 1973, the centennial of its existence. By the 1950s, square-jawed Mounties in red serge and Stetsons were well established as symbols of Canada, an image fashioned by more than 250 English-language movies, and almost as many novels, largely portraying them as noble purveyors of law and order.

“When you needed help they were always there,” says Klatt, who is now 68. Murray Klatt grew up on a farm in the Manitoba hamlet of Westbourne, a speck of a place along the Yellowhead Highway, northwest of Winnipeg.įarm life was hard and, most years, “there was no extra money for anything other than surviving.” But there was comfort in dependable things, like a close-knit family, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Woman impressed by a Mountie in Harwood Steele’s 1923 novel, Spirit of Iron. “You’re the first real man I ever met… brave, strong, chivalrous, with great, yes, great ideals - a fairy Prince, A Knight of the Round Table.” The myth: Clad in red serge and Stetsons, the dependable Mountie is an icon of all things chivalrous and civilized - and of course law and order.