Two years three months. That is how long it took for me to decide to become a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and actually become one. I am done and home. The last week went slowly. We did end up losing Greg to firearms. He will be back to Depot, but with another troop. Good luck Greg.
This last week involved a lot of drill and lectures. We had a trip to the court house and we attended a mock court. That was about it. Lots of time to get ready for families to come. We had our regimental dinner on Wednesday and our Passout on Thursday. The Regimental dinner was a great experience. We were served buffalo in the officer's mess. Then the passout came. We went to the drill hall at 7pm to put on our final drill performance for the other cadets at depot. That went off without a hitch. There were a few small glitches but nothing major. That done we all looked forward to meeting our relatives at the airport in our serge. I could not wait for Saturday to come. I got dressed up and waited for my wife, kids and the rest of my family to come off the airplane. I was almost looking more forward to that moment than I was looking forward to Monday and grad.
Finally Monday came and went very quickly. We started off with the swearing in ceremony. We read the three oaths of office, then one at a time we walked up to a table with the acting CO and signed our way into the RCMP. When that was over we had the ceremonial removal of our cadet epaulettes. We were done. Officially Constables and on the payroll. The only thing left was a drill demonstration and badge presentation. First we had lunch. Families were sent downstairs to have lunch and the troop went to the mess hall to have one last meal together. After lunch we were on parade in full serge. Our last parade we gave our families a show. As we marched off the parade square we were led to the drill hall. A few minutes to collect ourselves as our families filed into the drill hall. We took a deep breath and reassured each other that we were going to nail this last drill performance. Then Sgt. Stuart came out for a final pep talk and some words of advice. Then off we went. "by the right QUICK MARCH!!" and there was no stopping us. We had pretty much a flawless performance. All the hours and hours of drill came down to these 18 min. Finally Sgt. Stuart gave the final command "Stand Easy adjust your kit" and we were done. The sweat ran from our Stetsons down our face but there was a sense of satisfaction of a job well done. We knew we had done well. Finally the moment we had been waiting for. From left front rank to right we were called out by name. We had to break ranks and march up to the acting CO and salute. He then handed us our badge and with a hand shake and one more quick salute we were officially done. It was an unforgettable emotional day. We were heading to our new postings and our new lives, leaving behind good friends that we had spent the last 22 weeks with 24/7.
I am home now and glad to be with my family. I will admit I am a bit nervous about my first day at "work" but that is a whole new story.
This has been a great way to record my experience in my long journey to become a mountie. Now that I am there the story is over. I will not continue this website as a weekly event. I may post more pictures as I get them and I may post a few more things on my FAQ section but there has to be a beginning and an end to a story and you have now come to the end. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to send words of encouragement and support while I was in this process. I found it a great inspiration to receive e-mails from people that I have never met.
To those people thinking of joining the RCMP I will say that yes, it is hard. It is hard to be away from family, it is hard work, it is hard getting up at 5:30 every morning and working straight through. The course is long and full of stress but if you have a goal in mind and keep that as your main focus it will all be worth it in the end. |
