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We’re tired of being nice about trying to get an official inquiry into women’s rights in Canada. If we don’t get a royal commission by the end of this month, we’ll use every tactic we can. And if we have to use violence, damn it, we will.
—Laura Sabia
President, Canadian Federation of University Women
January 1967
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The RCMP’s journey toward hiring female Mounties was long and complex. There was no one specific reason or event that convinced the force’s commanding officers to suddenly change their hiring policy. Instead, it was a series of social, political, and cultural shifts that were taking place in Canada between 1960 and 1974 that challenged the RCMP to seriously consider women as police officers. These events, along with a number of internal upheavals, converged to apply pressure on commanding officers to initiate reforms. In the end, the RCMP, under the leadership of a new commissioner, finally acted to admit women for the first time in its history.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, a new ideal male body type emerged as the socially desirable standard for men. Across the Empire, an emphasis on size, power, and aggression eventually replaced the nineteenth-century ideal that favoured a lean, smaller male body type. In his annual report to Parliament in 1919, the RCMP’s commissioner stated that only men with a “robust” physique were capable of policing the nation. He reiterated that the police force was “no place for weaklings.”[127] The physiques of NWMP applicants were carefully measured and a thirty-five-inch chest was considered the acceptable minimum requirement for engagement.[128] Recruitment officers were also instructed to consider whether an applicant’s physique complemented the Mounties’ famous red serge tunic, an assessment that was duly noted on the interview form.[129] A Mountie’s size, strength, and appearance were all thought to increase the public’s respect for his law-enforcement capabilities as well as his social standing within the community.[130]
As the twentieth century progressed, the commissioners of the RCMP remained actively engaged in managing the masculine identity and image of the police force. While some commissioners worked to maintain the force’s iconic image, others were more interested in promoting the force as progressive and modern. In 1963, Commr. George McClellan (1963–1967) claimed that he was not interested in projecting an image but the work of the RCMP.[131] By 1965, he had changed the uniform for general police duties to a more practical forage cap, blue trousers, ankle boots, and brown jacket.[132] But McClellan’s successor, Commr. W.L. Higgitt (1969–1973), later overturned these changes, arguing that it was “important to restore rather than further erode our image.”[133] Higgitt issued new standing orders that reinstated the Stetson hat, long-sleeved shirt, tie, riding breeches, Strathcona boots and riding spurs for operational duties. Higgitt insisted that the traditional uniform would enhance the appearance and prestige of the RCMP.[134] But wearing dark blue wool breeches and riding boots with spurs while driving a police cruiser or chasing suspects on foot or in the summer heat, became a contentious issue amongst the rank and file. Nevertheless, Higgitt clearly viewed the appearance of his police officers as a valuable tool in communicating ideals about masculinity and authority to Canadians, even if it was at the expense of his men.
The RCMP looked for other ways to promote its men as ideal representations of Canada. The force frequently posted its most physically imposing police officers to tourist destinations. Dave Moore recalled that in the 1950s, the RCMP only sent tall members to the tourist destinations of Banff and Jasper, Alberta, “because they were always getting their picture taken.” The RCMP’s red serge review order uniform was also an important part of the force’s representation. According to Moore, riding breeches and boots were a cavalry type of uniform that “only looked good on a tall person, not on a female that is only five foot one inch.”[135] For Moore and many in the RCMP, it was only the large, masculine body that could effectively represent the country and state authority to visitors. By the late 1960s, however, it appeared to be an increasingly outmoded idea. Calls for the reform of the RCMP grew despite the best efforts of the police force to perpetuate the image it was known for around the world.
Growing demands for an equal role for women in all sectors of Canadian society increased during the 1960s, as the women’s movement gained momentum across the country. The agitation for women’s rights, especially regarding employment equity, exerted pressure on the federal government to legislate reforms. On May 3, 1966, representatives from thirty-two women’s organizations from across Canada met in Toronto and formed the Committee for the Equality of Women in Canada (CEWC). The CEWC’s membership prepared a brief for Liberal Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson requesting the formation of a Royal Commission to investigate the state of women’s rights and to make recommendations for change. In the brief, they reminded the prime minister that the government was required to meet “the standards set by the [United Nation’s] Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” to which Canada was a signatory.[136] The eight-hundred-word document addressed seven areas of discrimination against women in Canada, including the discriminatory treatment of women employed by the federal government.[137] It was presented to the prime minister’s designate on November 19, 1966. To the CEWC, the establishment of a Royal Commission, as opposed to a Human Rights Commission, was necessary because the group thought that a Human Rights Commission examining the status of women would be headed by a man and that all the commissioners would be male. Their fears were well founded. When the Canadian government began planning a conference to mark the UN’s International Year of Human Rights in 1968, not one woman was appointed to the planning committee.
After several weeks of silence from the prime minister, the influential president of the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW), Laura Sabia, grew impatient. On January 5, 1967, Sabia impulsively told journalist Barry Craig of the Globe and Mail that the CEWC planned to march three million women to Ottawa in protest if the government refused to grant an investigation into women’s rights. Craig published Sabia’s threat the next day. Judy LaMarsh, the only female cabinet minister in the Liberal government at the time and a CEWC ally, later reported that Pearson was sufficiently “frightened” by the report and that he wanted to re-open talks regarding a Royal Commission on women’s status.[138]
Prior to this time, women’s issues were seldom addressed in the House of Commons and most Canadian politicians did not generally view women as a political constituency. That began to change following the publication of the Craig article, and male politicians began to press the government on the issue. On January 10, Member of Parliament T.C. Douglas (Burnaby-Coquitlam, British Columbia) rose in the House of Commons to question the prime minister as to whether or not it would be advisable for the government to appoint a Royal Commission so that Canada “might bring the status of women into line with that which is prevalent in some other western countries.”[139] Other politicians were openly hostile to the idea of an investigation into women’s rights. Conservative Member of Parliament Terry Nugent (Edmonton-Strathcona, Alberta) bluntly called the idea of an inquiry “utter balderdash,” remarking that the best approach to handling women was to simply agree with them when they were right and agree with them when they were wrong.[140]
On February 3, 1967, the prime minister announced in the House of Commons that the government had decided to establish a Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada (RCSW).[141] The RCSW held a series of public hearings between April and October of 1968 in numerous locations across the country. They received a total of 468 briefs and some 1,000 letters of opinion from individuals and organizations in addition to submissions from 890 witnesses.[142] In their final report released in December 1970, the commissioners made 167 recommendations that clearly documented women’s concerns over inequality between genders in Canadian society. The commissioners used the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) as a guideline to formulate their conclusions, adopting the general principle that everyone was entitled to the rights and freedoms that were outlined in that document.[143] It was the RCSW’s recommendations concerning the RCMP, however, that shook the masculine foundations of the police force. The RCSW’s commissioners noted that, although policewomen were common in municipal forces across Canada, the RCMP had “remained strictly a male preserve.” They recommended that “enlistment in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police be open to women.”[144]
The police force later insisted that it was not influenced by the findings of the RCSW and there is no direct evidence that it was.[145] Some of the senior RCMP officers who were involved in the decision to hire women do not recall the decision being made in reaction to outside political or social pressure—only that it was inevitable, a decision whose time had come.[146] Superintendent William MacRae, the training officer at the RCMP’s training academy, insisted during several interviews with journalists that “I am gratified no one pressured the RCMP into recruiting women. It was a timely thing and the RCMP simply realized there is a definite place for women within the force.”[147] One high-ranking commanding officer stationed in Ottawa at the time recalled that the RCSW “must have had some influence, but it had no direct influence. It wasn’t something that pushed us. But it certainly had some influence, just hearing them talk about it.” He also commented that the issue of women in the RCMP was discussed with Solicitor General Warren Allmand, who “didn’t have anything against it that I remembered, but he reserved judgment on the final decision, so I don’t recall him arguing against it.” In the opinion of this senior officer, Allmand appeared “ambivalent” about the issue and was leaving the decision up to the RCMP.[148]
Lower-ranking officers who were working for the RCMP at the time disagreed. Insp. J.J. Poirier of the RCMP’s Information Division commented to journalists that the change was in response to “a series of pressures, including the evolution of women’s roles” and the findings of the RCSW.[149] And Insp. G.R. Crosse commented to one journalist that increasing pressure from women’s groups was a factor.[150] One corporal, interviewed decades later, was convinced that the RCMP was told by the Solicitor General to make a decision regarding the hiring of women; they had waited long enough.[151] In his opinion, it was a very political decision that emanated from the Solicitor General’s office.
Female police officers agreed that the pressure exerted by the RCSW’s findings was instrumental. Joyce Bennett maintained that “left on its own, I don’t believe the RCMP would have acted” to hire women, and that the RCSW was the impetus.[152] Carolyn Harper thought that the fact that other police departments were opening up to women influenced the decision, as did the UN’s declaration proclaiming 1975 as International Women’s Year. Harper speculated, “It had to have been a political decision somewhere in Ottawa.”[153] Marianne Robson agreed, stating that the RCMP was under pressure as International Women’s Year approached: “The [RCMP] were mandated by the government that they were going to take women because of pressure from the United Nations.”[154] While there are conflicting interpretations of the level of influence the findings of the RCSW had on the RCMP, it is clear that by the time the RCSW’s findings were released, the RCMP recognized that it would have to reconsider its hiring policies.
In September 1970, three months prior to the release of the RCSW’s final report, the RCMP had distributed questionnaires to police agencies across North America and Europe to determine where women could best be utilized. Further, Commr. W.L. Higgitt had established a committee to examine the possibility of hiring women, suggesting that the RCMP had advance notice of the commission’s final recommendations. The committee consisted of four senior officers who studied the issue “for a couple of weeks” before reporting back to the commissioner’s planning board on their findings. In their report, they recommended that women be hired as police officers. They found that other police forces had successfully utilized women as detectives investigating major crimes, cases of rape, and crimes involving juvenile girls. They also included a few recommendations for developing a uniform and kit for women.[155]
It would take the police force another four years to arrive at a decision, however. The commissioner informed the Solicitor General that “while we have recognized the principle that there is room for female police officers, we have yet to define the specific role to be played.”[156] In 1973, John Munro, the minister responsible for the Status of Women, commented in his annual report to Parliament that “a study is being conducted into Force requirements to determine where females, if engaged as regular police officers, could be used to best advantage.”[157] Where to utilize women and in what capacity was still an issue, and the commissioner remained undecided.
Canadian politicians were cognizant that women were being hired as police officers in other jurisdictions and questioned the RCMP’s hesitancy.[158] New York City had assigned women to patrol work for the first time in 1972.[159] Washington, DC, became the first American city to hire women to work in patrol in 1971, and by 1972 the department had hired a total of 125 women specifically for patrol duties.[160] In Wales, the South Wales Constabulary had employed policewomen in uniformed work, as well as in its criminal investigation, traffic, and drug sections, since 1969.[161] In March 1973, the Attorney General of British Columbia, Alex Macdonald, suggested that the RCMP hire women for traffic patrol, freeing male officers to deal with more “serious crime such as the illicit drug trade.” The RCMP responded that, although the police force utilized women in laboratory and research work, the “idea of expanding women’s roles” was not under consideration, contradicting earlier assertions that they were already looking into the possibility.[162] Despite the gains being made by women in policing in several western societies, the RCMP appeared to be conflicted over the issue.
Women were making employment gains in other sectors that had previously been closed to them. In their final report, the RCSW’s commissioners also recommended that the Canadian armed forces enlist married women and admit women to the military college.[163] By 1971, women were working “on the same basis as men in all classifications and trades except combat arms, sea-going duties and isolated positions” in the military.[164] The decision to open up trades to women was the direct result of the RCSW’s recommendation that Canadian women should have the same opportunity to benefit from the scientific and technological education that the military provided to men. The commissioners stopped short, however, of recommending women’s full participation in combat duty. The military’s decision to exclude women from combat duties was based on the belief that a lack of physical strength posed a threat to the cohesion and safety of combat units on the battlefield, a highly gendered space considered the heart of masculine identity and military service.[165]
Despite the advances being made by women in other jurisdictions, the RCMP continued to struggle with the types of duties women should perform. Given that the RCMP had not employed policewomen in the preceding decades, commanding officers lacked a frame of reference to help them make their decision. In 1969, the police force employed hundreds of women in a variety of positions as public servants who chiefly performed administrative work. The police force had also employed one hundred women as civilian members by that time. Some female civilian members worked as food services supervisors or as translators, but the majority worked as scientists or fingerprint technicians in crime detection laboratories. The issue over what duties women would perform was further complicated by the responses the RCMP was receiving to its questionnaire. Responses were inconclusive, according to the police force, for two reasons. The first was that other police agencies had only recently integrated women into the rank and file. Secondly, the RCMP maintained that the diverse and extreme working conditions their members experienced had “few if any parallels” within the police community, making it difficult to make comparisons.[166]
The RCMP’s concern about extreme working conditions stemmed from an overemphasis on the importance of physical strength and size as necessary prerequisites for policing remote areas. Dave Moore remembered that before 1974, the RCMP made a practice of sending their largest and strongest male officers to the north or to mining or logging communities to control drunk and brawling men. Moore characterized these areas as places where you could get into a fight “every night if you wanted to” and where “you could get into a fight every Saturday night whether you wanted to or not.”[167] An imposing stature and physical strength were viewed as assets at these postings. But the commissioners of the RCSW saw it another way. They were “convinced that enlisted women could make a special contribution, particularly in the North, in other aspects of police work.”[168] “Other aspects” may have been a reference to the RCMP’s dealings with female prisoners. The RCSW’s commissioners received several briefs during their hearings objecting to the fact that “women who have been apprehended are sometimes searched by male police officers” at isolated detachments.[169] Many reported abusive treatment by members of the RCMP during their arrest and incarceration.
Women were already proving to be effective in other areas of police work. In the 1960s, several police departments in North America were experimenting with using women in plainclothes capacities. In 1967, Theresa Melchionne, a deputy commissioner in the New York City police department, wrote about the effectiveness of women working undercover. She argued that the “public at large does not perceive women as police officers. Nor does the criminal,” giving female officers a distinct advantage over their male counterparts. Melchionne advocated using women “as decoys” during undercover operations, including gambling, criminal surveillance, drug enforcement, and robberies.[170] In general, suspects looked for men who were physically imposing, as all police officers were at the time. They also assumed that police forces did not hire women. It was an assumption that made women especially effective at performing undercover or surveillance work.
Interestingly, the RCMP began to hire women as civilian members to work in a specialized plainclothes surveillance section in 1966. Jean Adams was the second woman hired to work in the Security Service (SS) section’s new surveillance unit that had been established one year earlier in Ottawa. SS surveillants were responsible for gathering intelligence on foreign diplomats and spies operating in Canada, as well as Canadian citizens suspected of subversive political activity at home. Adams recalled tracking Russian spies as well as conducting surveillance on Canadians whom the RCMP suspected of being involved in the murder of Québec’s Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte and the kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross during the October Crisis of 1970.[171] Women proved to be especially effective at this type of work because they escaped detection. Uniformed duties were another thing, however, and whether women could perform them was still an unknown to the men in charge of the RCMP.
While the commanding officers of the RCMP grappled with the question of women working in uniform, the pressure to reform appeared from an unexpected source. The romantic image of the police force as an honest, incorruptible, and efficient law enforcement service was called into question by authors Lorne Brown and Caroline Brown, who published an unauthorized history of the police force in 1973. The Browns discussed the origins and early history of the NWMP, the relationship between the RCMP and the labour unrest of the interwar years, and the force’s relationship with minority groups and youth involved in the protest movements of the 1960s.
The Browns positioned the 1960s as a time when the image of the RCMP experienced “a marked decline, as did that of other police forces” as young people critically questioned and protested many aspects of society, including the activities of the police—and with good reason, according to the Browns. They highlighted the case of Robert Eadie, who, in 1971, revealed in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that he had been coerced by the RCMP into providing them with information on the illicit drug trade in Cornwall, Ontario. Eadie, who was just eighteen years old at the time, claimed that the RCMP had threatened him with a return to prison if he did not inform on drug dealers. Eadie complied and became a paid informant for the RCMP until he was beaten up by six men after the RCMP refused to provide him with protection.[172] Eadie’s claims did little to reinforce the romanticized image of the men of the RCMP.
The RCMP also received unfavourable press for its response to a growing number of movements across Canada demanding social change. Organized labour, women’s rights groups, gay and lesbian groups, and student movements in Canadian universities were all the subjects of RCMP surveillance. The women’s movement was also the focus of the RCMP’s SS, which compiled biographical sketches of leaders, read the movement’s literature, cultivated informants, and monitored marches and rallies.[173] For example, members of the RCMP attended the meetings of the Vancouver Women’s Caucus, fearing that the movement had been infiltrated by communists. They also followed the caucus’s Abortion Caravan as it travelled across the country in May 1970 to protest Canada’s abortion law.[174]
The media’s coverage of police abuses of power during the 1960s was clearly problematic for commanding officers who were concerned with the eroding image of the police force. In 1961, RCMP Commissioner C.W. Harvison (1960–1963), in an address to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, lobbied for the formation of a committee to study the reasons for the “unwarranted” criticism of police officers and to study the “fairly widespread idea that policemen are less interested in human rights, fairness, and justice than other groups.”[175] And in 1968, RCMP Superintendent E.A.F. Holm urged the development of a campaign to inform the public about what the police stand for and the importance of the image of the police in maintaining public cooperation and ensuring citizen responsibility. Holm acknowledged that without the respect and assistance of the general public, the police would become ineffective in enforcing the law.[176]
The media continued to inform Canadians about illicit RCMP activities. In particular, there was a great deal of criticism of the RCMP’s misuse of power after the federal government invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis in Québec in 1970.[177] The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a group of Québec nationalists, kidnapped British diplomat James Cross on October 5. Five days later, they kidnapped the provincial minister of labour, Pierre LaPorte, after the provincial government refused to meet their demands. In response, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s federal Cabinet passed emergency legislation on October 16, invoking the War Measures Act. The act granted the police and the military special powers of arrest across Canada, including the suspension of habeas corpus for detainees suspected of political insurrection.[178]
But it was the RCMP’s illegal activities following the end of the October Crisis in December 1970 that had the most serious ramifications for the police force. Over the next ten years, also known as the RCMP’s “dirty tricks” era, the SS conducted a series of unlawful activities against the independence movement in Québec, including illegal wiretaps, opening mail, stealing documents, conducting break-ins, bombings, and acting without search warrants.[179] On December 7, 1976, investigative journalist John Sawatsky wrote an article for the Vancouver Sun detailing a series of more than four hundred illegal break-ins in Québec by the RCMP.[180] Sawatsky alleged that a cover-up of these activities extended to the upper echelons of the police force. The revelations resulted in the formation of both a federal and a provincial commission to investigate; both reported their findings in 1981. Québec’s provincial commission, known as the Keable Commission, found that the RCMP had conducted an unjustified attack on the civil liberties of Québec citizens. The federal commission, known as the McDonald Commission, recommended that the RCMP’s SS be replaced with a civilian agency, leading to the formation of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 1984.
It was against this backdrop that the RCMP faced its most serious public relations challenge to date: the criticism of the RCMP by a former Mountie. In July 1972, Jack Ramsay broke ranks and publicly criticized RCMP policies and operational procedures in a damning article he wrote for Maclean’s magazine.[181] Titled “My Case Against the RCMP,” the article was an unprecedented public airing of a number of grievances by an insider that further tarnished the image of the police force. Ramsay described what he perceived to be abusive training methods at the RCMP’s academy, racism amongst RCMP officers, and the police force’s antiquated marriage policies, low pay, militaristic rank structure, and poor morale amongst the rank and file.[182]
Ramsay’s own illegal activities, however, would not be exposed until 1999. That year he was charged and later convicted of the attempted rape of a fourteen-year-old Cree girl he had incarcerated at the RCMP barracks in Pelican Narrows, Saskatchewan, in 1969. At the time of the attempted rape, Ramsay was a corporal at the detachment.[183] As the commissioners of the RCSW discovered, Ramsay was not alone in his abuse of female prisoners. In January 1973, Cst. Allan Howard was charged with indecent sexual assault against a Métis woman in Saskatchewan, whom he forced to commit a sexual act with him while she was incarcerated. Howard pleaded guilty to the charge; he was dismissed from the RCMP and fined one thousand dollars.That same year, the president of the Saskatchewan Indian and Métis Society complained to the federal government that incarcerated Aboriginal women were being sexually harassed by members of the RCMP.[184] The abuse of power that some Mounties adopted was made possible by the powerful image of the RCMP as well as geographical isolation, which allowed abuse to occur without fear of discovery.
There were a number of internal pressures facing the commanding officers of the RCMP in the 1970s that had a direct bearing on the decision to hire women. In the spring of 1974, thousands of RCMP officers met in major centres across the country to discuss the possibility of forming a union, even though they were governed by order-in-council PC 2213 (October 7, 1918) prohibiting them from forming one.[185] Mounties aired a number of grievances against the RCMP including unreasonable transfer policies, low wages, and a “military system of operation.”[186] Overtime pay was also an issue. Mounties were expected to provide free labour after regular working hours, an indication of the strength of military codes of conduct still in operation in the police force at the time. The airing of grievances and talk of unionization were unprecedented and came as a shock to an older generation of commanding officers who still believed in the unquestioned obedience of the lower ranks.
The labour unrest erupted in British Columbia on May 1, 1974, when 250 RCMP officers met in Burnaby to vent their frustrations.[187] The next day, more than “600 Toronto-area Mounties—nearly two-thirds the division” gathered to hear the president of the Metro Toronto Police Association urge them to form a union. When a vote was taken, 605 out of the 620 votes cast were in favour of pursuing the prospect of organizing.[188] Eight days later, an estimated 2,500 Mounties from Ottawa and Toronto met at the Ottawa Civic Centre to agitate for change.[189] In response, newly appointed Commr. Maurice Jean Nadon (1974–1977) and D/Commr. Peter Bazowski met with representatives (some elected by rank-and-file police officers and others appointed by commanding officers) from every division across the country. They developed a fourteen-point plan for a formal employee-relations system of representation, which they called Division Staff Relations Representatives (DSRR). The proposed system stipulated that an elected representative from each division across Canada would meet with the commissioner and his deputies once a year to address grievances and discuss personnel issues. On May 30, 1974, a referendum was held across Canada asking Mounties to accept the DSRR model as an alternative to seeking unionization.[190] Mounties voted in favour of the proposal and the RCMP immediately gave its men a general pay increase and instituted a policy for overtime pay.
Surprisingly, it was during discussions about the formation of the DSRR system that the decision to hire women as members of the RCMP was made. As Henri LeBlanc remembered it, the “subject of women in the RCMP was one of many items on the agenda” at the early DSRR meetings. The topic was discussed informally and arguments for and against the hiring of women were made. LeBlanc recalled that “we had all kinds of soothsayers who said it will never work, we’ll have to babysit them, all this kind of talk, you know. Mostly from senior non-commissioned officers.”[191] During the final meeting prior to the Canada-wide vote, the commissioner urged the men in attendance, “Either we do it, or we don’t do it.” Nadon argued that there was pressure from the media and he also noted that other police forces had hired women and they were doing well. He assured those present that “if it doesn’t work, we’ll just fold it up,”[192] a comment that suggests that the engagement of women was initially viewed as experimental. In fact, the day the commissioner announced that the RCMP would be accepting applications from women, he told a journalist that “married men will be eligible for regular duty and women for most regular duty.”[193] His use of the word “most” may have been a slip of the tongue, but it reveals that the tenuous nature of the decision still resonated in the commissioner’s mind.
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Ultimately, the commissioner, his deputies, and the division representatives made the decision to employ women in the RCMP. According to LeBlanc, it “wasn’t a one-man decision” but one that occurred within broader discussions taking place during the labour unrest of the spring of 1974.[194] Publicly, the RCMP continued to insist to the media that “the initiation of women into the force is no bow to the age we live in and no fulfillment of any stereotype … It is simply an evolutionary process, one that was to be expected and one that will in all likelihood be carried off without a hitch.”[195] Despite the force’s stance, there is little doubt that the RCMP felt the pressure to reform from a number of constituents and institutions. Whether their plans to initiate women into the RCMP could be achieved “without a hitch,” however, remained to be seen.