Every 50 Years or So. April 12th 2024

   I am afraid my age is catching up with me.  I have a bad foot requiring surgery,  which has led to a swollen knee.  So just as the weather calls me to our yard,  to our garage, to warm and beautiful walks down to the lake,  I am seated in the basement with my MAC while an ice pack thaws against my knee.  And while there are more productive things I could be doing,  a little on line therapy seems to be in order,

    I am a sucker for nostalgia.  The things that bring it back.  The things that make me feel a certain warmth.  The smell of a horse barn.  Canvas ankle runners.  Two sticked popsicles.  Archie Comics.  Tinny tunes on an a.m. radio and thousands of songs from childhood, youth, and younger adult years.  News papers.  Old t.v. shows.  It makes me miss the sounds and smells and excitements like Santa at the Bay, or the toy department in any department store.  Local t.v. shows like the Noon Show that read the news, did a local interview,  and concluded with the Three Stooges, or The Flintstones.

     This past few days were so very nostalgic for me.  A trip to the town where we started our married life.  Our first house.  The highways I patrolled that offered trips to the City,  and MacDonalds, and record departments in Eatons and Sears.  Seeing old friends from Outlook and Kamsack.   I even felt nostalgia for things that never happened in my life time.  Our grand daughter who is a student in the University of Saskatchewan took us on a campus tour.  Those hallowed halls of learning in beautiful old stone buildings.  Young people moving here and there with back packs full of books and assignments.  I always wanted to go to University.  It just wasn't in me.  

      In a dozen days,  I will celebrate the 50th anniversary of my joining the R.C.M.P.  A half century ago I took the route that brought me to this point.   With a few battle scars,  some emotional difficulties, and some glaring insecurities,  I learned how to love, to serve, to accept what comes my way.  I learned that I have a much better life than so many.  People who had more and people who had glaringly less.  I had my eyes wide open  as to what others have gone through,  and I wasted many nights feeling sorry for my self for being a witness to the way others have been forced to live.  

     While you can't get to the other side of a cops career not seeing some of those things,  it would be hard for me to conceive a different life.  And while we are never really understood,  and will never not be judged, cops always have each other.  On April 24th 1974 I was in the back seat of a Volkwagon beetle that pulled into Depot Division  to begin what remains my life.   I was with two other new recruits who had been sworn in with me the morning prior in Edmonton.  Those two individuals didn't remain with the force.  One, a kid who had gone to school with me and grew up in my home town became a very successful realtor in the Okanagan valley of British Columbia.  He is also a published author.  The other moved on to Edmonton City Police where he became a homicide investigator of some renown.  

     In Depot we met the 29 other members that would form Troop Four '74.  We spend five months marching, running, studying, shooting, lifting, wrestling, flipping, swimming, and being insulted, yelled at, ordered and punished.   One members indiscretion or mistake could result in the unit being punished.  Initially, that would cause the others to turn on the offender.  By the end of training it would cause the unit to accept and band together.  I didn't leave Depot with a whole lot of self esteem.   But I did leave feeling I had accomplished something difficult and valuable.  And I did it not only with, but because of 29 other individuals who shared that experience with me.    

     We lost two members of our troop during training.  Both because of physical injuries or conditions that prevented them from continuing.  One of them remains my facebook friend to this day.  We lost another three members since then.  None of them as a result of injury sustained on the job.  All three to cancer or similar diseases.   Others found new careers, or took early retirements.   Three of them are published authors.  One is a city councilman.     They are spread across the country in all but two provinces.  And I haven't seen the bulk of them since October 15th 1974.  

     Ten or more of these few good men reside in British Columbia these days.  And since it is our 50th the B.C. boys decided to find a central location to meet for lunch.  That central location being Merit.  A beautiful little mountain town nine hours from my home.   A nine hour trip through the Rocky Mountains and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.  ( Baring in mind it is spring time in the Rockies and the chances of seeing nothing are completely possible.)  It is eighteen hours round trip with two hotel rooms just to have lunch.   Lunch with people whom I knew for five months.....Fifty years ago.  And it is an opportunity to say Hi!  And Thank you.  

      In every town I ever worked as the local cop,  I have always gotten to know an individual or group of same who have kept me busy.   Individuals I've chased, charged, arrested, lectured, and in some cases even wrestled or worse.  In my later years,  so many of these individuals have found me in a social setting, tapped me on the shoulder and said "Mr. McLean?  It's me, (Whoever)!  They want you to know they are working, contributing citizens.  Often parents and of how many children.  They want you to know they turned out alright and they want you to be impressed and proud of them.    I am about to see members of my old troop.  And as interested as I am in how their lives turned out,  I want them to know I had a great life.  I married well and have a great family.  I want them to know that to this day I appreciate being a part of that unit.  And I want to thank them for helping me get through those tough times.   Cause I may not get a chance to say it again if we only meet every 50 years.   I mean who knows what I'll be doing then?