The fact that we have recruited women in the RCMP without any outside pressure reflects an enlightened attitude within the force.
—Supt. William F. MacRae
The Vancouver Sun, 1975
*
No matter how the RCMP chose to portray its policy changes, the hiring of women and married men for the first time in the force’s history gave the appearance that the police force was intent on modernizing. On May 24, 1974, Commissioner Nadon announced to journalists that the RCMP would begin hiring women as regular members of the police force. Nadon was the RCMP’s sixteenth and first bilingual commissioner when he took the helm of the organization on January 1, 1974. He was known for his people skills and for repairing the reputation and image of the RCMP. One of Nadon’s senior officers commented decades later that Nadon was the first commissioner who chose not to ignore demands for women’s right to join the RCMP, speculating that Nadon’s wife probably influenced him regarding the hiring of women. He characterized the commissioner as very receptive to the idea of female Mounties, perhaps the reason why some officers may have felt that an “enlightened attitude” now existed within the police force.[196]
From Nadon’s perspective, the RCMP was entering a time of renewal. He remarked that the “force is now embarked on a program of change unprecedented in our history. It is a program that I endorse, support and will press.”[197] True to his word, in a media release a few months later, the RCMP informed Canadians that thirty-two women had been selected as the first female members of the police force. They represented every province in Canada except Prince Edward Island.[198] The new recruits were scheduled to be sworn in simultaneously across the country on September 16, 1974, before being posted to the RCMP’s training academy in Regina to begin twenty-two weeks of training.[199]
The simultaneous swearing-in ceremonies and the assignment of random regimental numbers to the first female recruits were designed to prevent any one woman from claiming that she was the first female Mountie to be hired by the RCMP. These actions did not, however, shield the first female Mounties from the pressure of being the first in the way the RCMP’s commanding officers had hoped. Instead, they drew attention to the women as different from male police officers and fed assumptions that they needed preferential, rather than equal, treatment to succeed.
The hiring of the first female Mounties was a public relations boon for the RCMP. So novel was the idea of female Mounties that the commissioner’s announcement made national headlines. News about the RCMP’s decision was communicated to Canadian women through the media.[200] One member of Troop 17 remembered that after hearing the announcement on the radio, she “went down to the RCMP, made some inquiries, came home, filled out the form, and threw it in the mail.”[201] Trish O’Brien read an article in the local newspaper that reported the RCMP was considering hiring women as regular members. When she heard the commissioner’s announcement on the radio, she “called down to the local detachment that night,” but they did not have any information and asked her to call back on Monday, which she did.[202] Beverley MacDonald heard the announcement on her car radio while on her way to work that morning. She immediately pulled into the nearest detachment, where the young constable at the desk had to ask his sergeant if it was true that the RCMP was hiring women. When the sergeant confirmed that he had just heard it on the radio too, the constable asked him, “What do I do?” The sergeant replied, “Give her an application.”[203]
What motivated these women to apply? Several women had brothers, uncles, and fathers in the RCMP or in other police forces, a factor that had a bearing on their decision. Bev Hoskar and her father and brother were the first “sister, brother and father team in the RCMP.” Indeed, five of the first female Mounties had fathers who were police officers.[204] Janet Porter had two older brothers who were in the RCMP. They were at odds over her decision to apply. One brother was very protective of her. He thought that the work was too dangerous and that she “wouldn’t fit in with the environment.” The other brother thought that she should “get in at the beginning” and give it a try.[205]
Apart from influential family members, many of the first female Mounties were looking for a challenge, job security, better pay, and a career. Tina Kivissoo, according to one media report, “exchanged the glamorous life of a model for handcuffs and a revolver.” Kivissoo was not interested in working at a “nine-to-five job.”[206] Others were discouraged by the lack of advancement opportunities and low wages in pink-collar occupations. Carol Franklin cited her job as a bank teller as a factor in her decision to apply to the RCMP. When the branch she worked at brought in men as management trainees, even though they had never worked in a bank before, her frustration reached the breaking point. The men were being promoted over the female employees with experience in the industry. Franklin decided, “I need to do something that is gonna get me out of here.”[207] She was not alone. Many of the letters received by the RCSW expressed anger at poor wages for women and employers’ insistence on promoting men over women for management positions.[208]
While the promise of a challenging career and job security appealed to some of the first female recruits, others were altruistically motivated. Several women stated that they wanted to make a difference in people’s lives. Allison Palmer, for example, wanted “to be doing something where I felt I could make a difference in the community.”[209] Some had more practical reasons. Marianne Robson, who had taken criminology and social work courses as part of her bachelor of arts degree, was already on a waiting list for a large urban police force at the time of the RCMP’s announcement. This particular police force, however, had established a quota of just eight women police officers at any one time. Since all of the female positions were filled, Robson grew tired of waiting for a woman to resign or get pregnant. She applied to the RCMP as soon as her father, who heard the news on the radio, told her they were accepting applications from women.
The first female Mounties held a variety of occupations prior to being hired as constables. Several had been employed as public servants for the federal government and others worked as secretaries for the RCMP. Three were employed as schoolteachers and some worked as nurses or bank tellers. Many of the women who were hired had post-secondary education. One held a master’s degree in archaeology. Robson recalled, “Everybody was single, but we had one girl … [who] had been married but divorced, and one single mom.”[210] The women were also older than most of the male recruits who were being hired at the time.
None of the women from Troop 17 saw themselves as feminists who were breaking down employment barriers for women in Canadian society. Given the RCMP’s surveillance of the women’s rights movement during this period, it is possible that an effort was made by RCMP recruiters to hire women who held more politically conservative views. Allison Palmer remembered that none of them felt they were there to make a point about women’s rights. Instead, they were there “because we wanted to be there.” They were interested in police work and enjoyed being surrounded by other like-minded women who were going through the same experiences. It was a positive atmosphere that resulted in the formation of lifelong friendships.[211]
The women were somewhat naive about what they were getting into, though. Robson recalled, “You know, you’re going to go into a men’s organization, and you’re going to be successful, and you’re gonna survive, and the world will be good, and treatment will be equal … I never even thought of those things. I mean, I was twenty-two years old.”[212] In hindsight for Robson, it was youthful naïveté rather than the movement for women’s rights that may have had the biggest impact on the decisions made by the first women to join the RCMP.
On September 16, 1974, all thirty-two women were sworn in.[213] A Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) communication from the commissioner transmitted to every division seventeen days earlier revealed that the RCMP planned to tightly control the ceremonies, which were going to receive live coverage from the media.[214] On the day of the ceremonies, the commanding officer of the RCMP’s training academy in Regina, also known as “Depot” to members of the RCMP, sensed the historical significance of the occasion. C/Supt. Henry P. Tadeson closely monitored the women’s engagement as he received CPIC messages from each division advising him of their dates of arrival at Depot. “D” Division (Winnipeg, Manitoba) was the first to report that they had engaged three women as constables at $10,794.00 per annum. The words “First One” were written on the hard copy of this message sent to Tadeson, who noted on the bottom, “Copy to museum for posterity purposes.”[215] Tadeson was correct in appreciating that history was being made. The simultaneous engagement of an entire troop across six time zones was a precedent that has never been duplicated by the RCMP.
The participation of the media was another indicator of the significance of the event. The CBC carried the swearing in of four women in Ontario live from the RCMP’s Toronto headquarters. The Canadian Press (CP) captured a photograph of them signing their oath of office as A/Commr. E.R. Lysyk looked on. Male recruits did not usually merit this type of attention from the media, let alone the presence of such a high-ranking officer during a swearing-in ceremony.[216]
The decision to conduct simultaneous ceremonies was meant to both control the media message and protect the women. Publicly, the RCMP emphasized that their intention was to transfer the pressure of being the “first” onto a group of women rather than an individual.[217] Linda Rutherford, a member of Troop 17, thought that it was a good idea: simultaneous engagements meant that no individual woman was more important than the other women in the troop, a factor that later contributed to troop unity when they were under pressure.[218] However, it was also a paternalistic approach that catered to male perceptions of female vulnerability. Commanding officers were not sure how the women would react to the intense media scrutiny, and they worked to ensure that the ceremonies went smoothly while under the watchful eye of journalists.
To further discourage anyone from claiming to be the first, all of the women were issued regimental numbers randomly within a limited sequence. Their random assignment was a significant departure from the RCMP practice of issuing the numbers sequentially.[219] As a paramilitary institution, hierarchy and rank contributed significantly to the culture of the RCMP, making regimental numbers extremely important. A lower regimental number signified longer service and greater seniority; police officers with seniority were generally considered for promotion before candidates with shorter service. Although it is true that one woman technically received the lowest regimental number of the thirty-two issued on September 16, no one woman was able to claim with certainty her seniority over the other recruits sworn in on that day.
Rather than shielding the women from attention, these special arrangements stimulated journalists’ interest in them. In fact, the presence of the media at the ceremonies was problematic for one of the women. Carol Franklin was shocked to learn she was enlisting for five years, a detail no one had bothered to mention to her until the ceremony, but by then it was too late to question the policy in front of the media.[220] Franklin was taken by surprise but felt she could not question the RCMP officer in charge about this requirement in front of the media. Rather than protecting Franklin, the presence of the media proved to be a hindrance to more fully understanding the extent of the commitment she was making.
The women of Troop 17 were re-enacting a ceremony that had been observed by their male predecessors for one hundred years. The repetitive act of the swearing in was a benchmark of RCMP culture that symbolized loyalty and deference to the Queen, the Canadian state, and commanding officers. The women were not merely reproducing or mimicking a swearing-in ritual, however, but were modifying its function as a singularly male rite. It was a precedent that journalists were intent on capturing for Canadians.
The women were scheduled to begin their basic training one week later at Depot, where another precedent awaited their arrival. The RCMP had seconded a female officer from the Canadian military to assist the women as they transitioned from civilian life to members of the RCMP. While every male troop had a troop counsellor, none had an additional advisor from an outside institution.[221] Maj. Doris Toole was an armed forces personnel officer with sixteen years of service, including work as the officer in charge of female recruit training at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Cornwallis.[222] She had also served as the training officer and regimental commander during an exchange program with the United States navy, overseeing six hundred women who were undergoing recruit training.
In July 1974, Toole accompanied her director of women personnel to a luncheon at the RCMP’s officers’ mess in Ottawa, where they met with an assistant commissioner and two officers from the RCMP’s personnel branch. According to Toole, “I must have passed muster because the next thing I knew I was told I was being seconded to the RCMP for approximately ten months.”[223] Under the terms of her secondment, the RCMP reimbursed the Department of National Defence (DND) for Toole’s salary and the police force was responsible for her travel costs and payment for any “temporary duty” she performed. The RCMP also provided accommodation for her in the officer’s mess at the training academy.
Toole spent the month of August 1974 at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa reviewing their regulations to determine what changes needed to be made to accommodate women. For example, she discussed health issues with senior staff, particularly the need for a maternity leave policy that stipulated when a female officer should leave operational duties for reassignment during pregnancy.[224] Although she was not involved in the selection of the first thirty-two women and did not see their personnel files, she did discuss the RCMP’s choices with senior staff and was given an overview of the backgrounds of the new recruits.
In September, Toole moved to Regina to begin her work as advisor to Troop 17. Her primary task was to act as liaison between the women and the police force and to monitor training classes, provide advice to the recruits regarding the upkeep of their uniform and kit, and advise the troop counsellor, Cpl. Ken Wilkens, of any problems that arose. Toole referred any queries from the media to RCMP staff. In preparation for the women’s eventual posting to the field, Toole made three visits to RCMP detachments in Saskatchewan, where she participated in regular patrols as well as one drug raid. She also talked to male members about female Mounties and tried to address their concerns “as well as those of some of their spouses.” She later debriefed Troop 17 about these visits.[225]
The recruits responded to the presence of Maj. Toole in a variety of ways. One remembered that some of the women resented the fact that Toole was from the armed forces and was not a member of the RCMP. They assumed that she “didn’t know what was expected” because she was a military officer.[226] It was one more way female Mounties were seen by the men at the academy as needing special treatment. Louise Ferguson recalled that Toole did not want the women to take physical education or self-defence classes with male recruits, a decision that Ferguson thought was “a little different than the objective we were trying to achieve” while training to be police officers. Ferguson also recalled that Toole’s military rank was a source of tension for some men at the academy, who would “walk around the block not to have to salute her” due to her higher rank.[227] Others such as Linda Rutherford had great respect for Toole and put the major “on a pedestal.” Rutherford confessed that she was “in awe” of Toole’s military rank and she felt more secure knowing that Toole was advocating for the troop.[228]
There were also generational differences. Three of the women interviewed for this study recognized, in hindsight, that the younger recruits had more difficulty coming to terms with the presence of Maj. Toole than the older women in the troop. They considered Toole “old” even though she was just thirty-eight years of age at the time. As one woman explained, “We were young!” and some of the women failed to appreciate Toole’s “sacrifice.”[229] Trish O’Brien remembered that some of the younger women thought Toole was always checking up on them, behaving more like a drill sergeant than an advisor. “We really didn’t understand her role totally,” commented O’Brien.[230]
From an overall perspective, however, the secondment of Maj. Toole remains an important part of RCMP history. Toole represented the first and only time the RCMP seconded an advisor from outside the police force to assist in the training of one of its troops. Her presence was an indication of the unease with which the force approached the training of the first female Mounties. As one officer at the academy at the time later explained, the force was unsure of how women would respond to the tough physical training and regimented lifestyle. For the most part, commanding officers were relieved that Toole was there.[231]
In the 1970s, recruit training at Depot was strenuous and discipline was strict, much as it had been for one hundred years. It served a dual purpose: to prepare a new police officer for work in the RCMP and to afford the RCMP the opportunity to assess the new recruit.[232] Journalist Tony Leighton, in a feature article on the academy for Equinox magazine, summarized training at Depot as “one of the most demanding police-training programmes in the world, a grueling hybrid of military boot camp and modern police college.”[233] The idea for a training academy for the RCMP dates back to 1869 and Prime Minister John A. Macdonald’s vision of a mounted constabulary. In 1880, Macdonald dispatched Commr. A.G. Irvine (1880–1886) to Dublin to study the RIC’s “Depot of Instruction.”[234] Irvine was impressed with the idea of a permanent training facility where all recruits would be posted for a six-month period for training in courses taught by officers from the British military.[235]
Despite Irvine’s enthusiasm, the Canadian government did not immediately act on his recommendations. It was not until the Riel Resistance of 1885 that the federal government was convinced that it was time to expand its policing operations on the prairies. A formal training academy was established in Regina later that year. It featured a riding facility, stables, and forty prefabricated buildings organized around a parade square that is still in use today. Sixty horses and one hundred men could be quartered on the site, where foot drill, mounted infantry drill, veterinary science, revolver training, shoeing and saddling horses, musketry, police regulations, and the country’s laws were taught.[236] Full-time staff members were appointed from the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ontario, or were non-commissioned officers who had served with the British military in colonial postings such as India.[237]
Little had changed in the RCMP’s training program by the 1970s, and instructors engaged in a rigid program that instilled discipline and loyalty. Individual identities were subsumed during the training period as a new police identity emerged. For example, on first arrival at the academy, all recruits were supplied with fatigues and told that they had to run double-time together between all classes with their heads bowed “because they lacked the knowledge to pay proper ‘compliments’ to their superiors.”[238] Esprit de corps and troop unity were important components of the training. The welfare and survival of a troop during the training period were dependent on notions of group conformity. Those who refused or failed to pull their weight were held to account by their troopmates. Bill Jones, who went through recruit training in the 1960s, was the recipient of a hazing on one occasion when he arrived late to help his troop clean their dormitory. Jones recalled his troopmates dumping him in a tub of cold water and holding him under for thirty seconds to teach him a lesson. He also heard stories about recruits being “horse troughed,” a punishment that required a trough full of horse manure and urine in which to throw a recruit who was not pulling his weight.[239] Hazing rituals in homosocial institutions such as the RCMP were often fuelled by aggression and competition, seen at the time as important elements for male bonding and male friendships.[240]
Training staff were known to lean on new arrivals, overdosing them with discipline and attention to detail, particularly in the drill hall.[241] Marching has historically played an important role in the maintenance of the image of the RCMP. Mounties have marched during royal visits, state funerals, rodeos, coronations, and police funerals for more than a century. Foot drill at Depot was a conditioning process meant to transform a troop of thirty-two civilians into a cohesive paramilitary unit that could “change direction without losing a beat” the instant a command was given.[242] Drill also served as a form of mental training designed to reprogram civilians into police officers. New recruits were taught how to manage their feelings and emotions during drill exercises, one of the purposes of the yelling that drill instructors regularly engaged in. Yelling was a tool used to instill aggression and mental toughness in a recruit, qualities seen as vital to the performance of police duties in the field.[243] By the end of their training, a troop could perform a twenty-minute drill routine that included all of the basic marching movements that had been part of European military training for some two centuries.[244]
In addition to drill, running, self-defence tactics, and swimming were part of the RCMP’s physical training curriculum in the 1970s.[245] As a benchmark of physical fitness, recruits were required to run the Cooper test, which measured cardiovascular fitness based on running a mile and a half in twelve minutes.[246] Recruits were also required to complete the Physical Abilities Requirement Evaluation (PARE), which simulated common physical demands of police work such as chasing a suspect up a staircase. Participants had four minutes to complete two obstacle courses.[247]
The pressure to meet these standards was intense at Depot in the 1970s and not all recruits responded positively to the rigorous training. Instructors used a strategy known as “making the troop pay” with extra physical activities when a weaker member lagged behind. Instructors believed that the weakest link would “shape up, so that the rest of the troop wouldn’t have to keep ‘paying’ for his or her inadequacies.”[248] If a recruit was continually dragging the entire troop down, troopmates would sometimes “pack a recruit’s bags and set them out in the middle of the parade square” as an indication that they had decided it was time for him or her to leave the academy.[249] Most troops, whether male or female, had one or two members who resigned during training at Depot.
It is not surprising, then, that the academy’s commanders were uncertain how female recruits would respond to the demands about to be placed on them. How to house and train the first female Mounties featured prominently in discussions being held. With just four months to prepare for their arrival, and given the media coverage, there was a concerted effort to ensure that all thirty-two women graduated.[250] Conventional understandings about gender and women’s role in society framed their discussions. As one commanding officer admitted years later, the men who were present had an image of women that started “with their mothers” and transferred onto women in general.[251] Consequently, they viewed the female recruits in paternalistic terms, as being in need of protection from the healthy young men at the academy. Initially, there was a suggestion that a fence be erected around “C” Block, the barracks where the women would be housed, to protect them from male recruits. Although it was never under serious consideration, the idea of a fence reveals the RCMP’s unease over the potential for sexual activity between male and female recruits.[252]
It was not the healthy young male recruits that women recruits needed protection from, however. Several people recalled concerns about extramarital affairs taking place between female recruits and the married instructional staff. “We had raging paranoia that a male instructor was going to get involved in an inappropriate relationship with a female recruit, which to my knowledge happened on numerous occasions,” according to Bill Jones, an instructor at the academy in the 1970s. Jones recalled the lengths to which some of the instructional staff went to be sexually appealing to female recruits:
We had a drill instructor who … used to wear a girdle when he taught the women’s troops. We used to see him. He’d lace this thing up so his waist would look all [slim], because he had a bit of a paunch. Only wore it when he taught the women. One of the guys I worked with in self-defence, before he taught a women’s class, would spend a half an hour in the weight room pumping weights so that his arms would look bigger … Men behave stupidly around women and that was a new thing for the Mounted Police. They’d never had to deal with it.[253]
These instructors’ concern about the physical shape and condition of their bodies when in front of female Mounties represented a reversal of the more conventionally held assumption that women were the only sex preoccupied with their appearance.
Accounts about the reactions of staff members to the presence of women at Depot depart significantly from images of heroic Mounties from previous decades. They typically portrayed Mounties as sexually “safe” men who were more often than not depicted in the company of their horses or dogs rather than women. Portrayals of white, unmarried men bonded together through tough military discipline and male camaraderie dominated Mountie literature and movies for decades. However, the men at Depot who viewed female Mounties as objects of male sexual desire rather than police colleagues called into question the veracity of the traditional depictions that had shaped the RCMP’s popular image.
Commanders also failed to consider that other staff members might attempt to take advantage of the presence of women at Depot. Not long after Troop 17’s arrival, Bill Jones inadvertently discovered that someone had created a peephole into the women’s change rooms:
[S]omebody had gone into the swimming instructors’ office, locked the doors, and then dug a hole in the wall or in the actual doorway so they could peek through at the women changing. It was just my good luck that I went to go into the swimming office to get something from one of the staff and found the doors locked and thought, “Boy, that’s really odd,” because the doors were never locked during the daytime. So I reported that to my staff sergeant … [and] we went back afterwards and found this hole in the wall. So that prompted a big investigation.[254]
The investigation concluded that a male member of Depot’s support staff had created the hole in the wall.
Commanding officers and instructors at Depot were not the only ones who were unsure of what to expect. The newly sworn-in female Mounties were also unsure of what lay ahead. One woman brought her sewing machine with her to the academy. It was an extra piece of luggage that she probably did not have time to use since every waking moment of a recruit’s life was scheduled. The sight of the sewing machine likely caused some apprehension for instructors already anxious about training female Mounties.[255] One female recruit, struggling up the steps of “C” Block, the women’s barracks, with two large suitcases, asked her future drill sergeant, who happened to be passing by, to help her with her luggage. An instructor who was present recalled the sergeant replying, “You’re in a man’s outfit now, lady, carry your own bag!”[256] The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Gazette recounted the same incident in the following way: “She was quickly and quietly advised that recruits were not given such luxuries, after all, was she not earning the same wages as male recruits and thus subject to equal privilege?”[257] It was a quick and early lesson for the female recruit who continued to respond in a gendered way to the men around her.
*
The suitcase incident reflected the general unease on the part of both men and women over the blurring of gender roles that was taking place at Depot. More importantly, the assumption that this female recruit was expected to act like a man and carry her own bags if she wanted to receive equal treatment conveyed the message that masculinity was the normative standard that the women would have to measure up to. It was a portent of things to come for the women of the RCMP.