Policing the Fringe
Policing the Fringe
The Curious Life of a Small-Town Mountie
Charles Scheideman
HARBOUR PUBLISHING
Copyright © 2009 Charles Scheideman
2 3 4 5 — 13 12 11 10
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Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd.
P.O. Box 219, Madeira Park, BC, V0N 2H0
www.harbourpublishing.com
Front cover, main image: Charles Scheideman patrolling Chilcotin Highway 20, near Anahim Lake, early summer 1968 (photo courtesy the author). Front cover inserts: Left, grizzly bear, (sjulienphoto/iStockphoto). Centre, Scheideman at N Division Training School, winter 1961/62 (photo courtesy the author). Right, outhouse (mawear/iStockphoto). Back cover: A Freedomite attempts to save his greenhouse from fire while a plain-clothes officer looks on, Krestova, BC, circa 1965 (photo courtesy the author).
To protect the privacy of individuals, some names and details have been changed.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on 100% PCW recycled paper using soy-based ink.
Harbour Publishing acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Scheideman, Charles
Policing the fringe : the curious life of a small-town Mountie / Charles Scheideman.
ISBN 978-1-55017-482-3
1. Scheideman, Charles. 2. Royal Canadian Mounted Police—Biography. 3. Royal Canadian Mounted Police—Anecdotes. 4. British Columbia—Biography. I. Title.
HV7911.S34A3 2009 363.2092 C2009-900932-3
To
my wife, Patricia,
children, Howard, Sherry and Chris,
all those with whom I worked,
&
Reg. #18517 Staff Sergeant William Barry Beaulac
(retired),
my mentor and the finest police officer
I had the pleasure of working with.
Without Fear, Favour or Affection.
Preface
From 1961 to 1989 I was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrolling the small and sometimes isolated communities of the interior of British Columbia. For all but a few months I worked in uniform at the street and road level. These years of experience “where the rubber meets the road” generated this collection of stories. All are based on actual happenings, but I have taken some liberty in the telling. Most are from my experiences, but some are from the memories of friends and workmates.
Some are funny, some are very sad, and some are downright gruesome.
I have diligently searched for any contamination by political correctness and have found none.
These stories describe the way I saw things, and I would like to think that in most cases that was the way it actually was. In every case I tried to call a spade a spade, but I have, in some cases, called a spade a #!*!+ shovel.
Car Chase at Kicking Horse Pass
This story begins on a beautiful summer morning on the highway leading from Revelstoke toward Golden and the summit of Rogers Pass. A small two-seater sports car, a Fiat Spider, had caught the attention of everyone on the highway with extremely erratic driving. The little car was reported to be using the left side of the highway more than the right, cutting corners, passing in unsafe locations, and then slamming on the brakes very close in front of other traffic. The only person in the car, a young man, was constantly waving his arm out the driver’s window and flashing the peace sign. Several motorists stated that they thought he favoured large transport trucks for his “cut in and brake” stunts. They felt he was suicidal.
The summer traffic volume did not allow for continued high-speed driving, but it also appeared that this driver was not intent on high speed alone. He drove very fast at times, but he also frequently slowed to speeds that severely restricted the normal flow of traffic. This erratic behaviour created a blockage of eastbound vehicles more than a mile in length. The westbound traffic was only affected briefly when the offending vehicle was in their lane forcing them to take evasive action by braking or swerving to avoid head-on collision.
Reports of the erratic driver began to reach the RCMP in Revelstoke and the Park Warden Service at Glacier National Park headquarters at the summit of the pass. The primitive police radio system that served the Rogers Pass highway corridor at that time only allowed communication between the summit area and the police office in Revelstoke. Police and Parks radio signals went to a location at the summit where they were switched to a telephone link and carried to Revelstoke by wire. This non-system was unreliable in the summer and all but useless in the winter when heavy snow interfered on a constant basis. There was no permanent police presence on the ninety-two miles between Golden and Revelstoke. Requests for police services went to the park wardens, who relayed the information to Revelstoke whenever the radio-phone link was operable. When police attendance was required for incidents east of the summit in the Golden RCMP area, the requests were manually put into another radio and telephone link between the Revelstoke police office and the one in Golden.
The mobile offender in this case was eastbound and over the summit of the pass before we in Golden received information that he was headed in our direction. We later learned that the information had been delayed in the system by about twenty minutes; a delay that could have cost lives.
Our follow-up investigation revealed some strange happenings. During one of the frequent slow-driving parts, the small car was caught behind a transport truck and forced to stay there by another transport driver who moved alongside. This happened in one of the double-lane sections of the highway, but the truck drivers were fast running out of room. When they reached the single lane ahead, they would have no choice but to allow the offender out again. Another trucker saw what was developing and he immediately moved his smaller truck in behind the sports car and completed the box. The truckers were able to communicate with their citizen’s band radios and they used them to great advantage. The lead truck began to slow, as did the other two. This left the sports car and driver in a very restricted place. He swerved desperately, looking for an escape, but the truckers were in no mood to accommodate him. As the four vehicles came to a stop, the outside truck moved to his right, leaving the little car so tightly positioned between the transport truck and the guard rail that the driver was not able to open either of his doors.
At the moment the citizen’s arrest was being executed, one of the park wardens arrived on the scene in an International Travelall four-wheel drive. The event should have been over. However, the arrival of the warden seemed to take the initiative away from the three truckers. They were glad to have the “authority” there to take over. I believe that if it had been left to the drivers