Canada Guide
Manitoba and Saskatchewan
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Centennial Museum
Address: Dewdney Avenue West
Opening time: Daily mid-June to Aug 8am–6.45pm; rest of year 10am–4.45pm; free tours Mon– Fri 9am (summer only), 10am, 11am, 1.30pm, 2.30pm & 3.30pm
Website: www.rcmpmuseum.com
Price: Free
All Mounties do their basic training at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Training Academy, 4km west of the city, accessible by bus #8 from 11th Avenue at Cornwall Street. Beside the main parade ground of Sleigh Square – site of the closely choreographed Sergeant Major's parade (late May to Aug Mon– Fri 12.50pm) and Sunset Retreat Ceremony (July to mid-Aug Tues 6.45pm) – is the RCMP Centennial Museum. This traces the history of the force, from early contacts with the Plains Indians and Métis through to its present role as an intelligence-gathering organization.
Inside the museum, a series of contemporary quotations illustrates the Long March that first brought the Mounties to the west from Ontario in 1874. Their destination was Fort Whoop-up, near present-day Lethbridge, AB where they intended to expel the American whiskey traders. However, by the time they arrived they were in a state of complete exhaustion, and it was fortunate that the Americans had already decamped. Another small section deals with Sitting Bull, who crossed into Canada after his victory at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. Fearing reprisals from the furious American army, Sitting Bull spent four years in and around the Cypress Hills, where he developed a friendship with Police Inspector James Walsh. A picture of the chief and his braves, taken at Fort Walsh in 1877, shows an audience of curious Mounties in their pith helmets. To reinforce the romantic Hollywood image of the Mounties, an onsite cinema has continuous free runnings of such glorified interpretations as Rose Marie (1936), starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
On the tour of the grounds you're shown the various buildings, including mock-ups of houses where recruits practise family arrests, search warrants and surveillance techniques; the drill hall where new recruits are put through their paces; and the 1883 chapel – Regina's oldest building – a splendid structure furnished in dark, polished oak where you can escape the intense training activity outside.