The Mounties and Me.

The Mounties and Me. Part 1.

It’s a long time since I used to look after the up and coming Officers of the Royal Canadian mounted police.  I can’t remember how a tenderfoot like me got a job in the first place.  A couple of mornings each week, bright and early, I headed out along Dewdney Avenue, past the old Regina Grey Nuns Hospital, to the outskirts of Regina.  That was where the RCMP training depot was located.  Dr. Albert Pelletier, a French-Canadian physician and veteran of World War II, and I used to take sick parade at the Post Hospital on alternating days.  Dr. Pelletier was a slim mustached middle-aged man, whose taste was for expensive and flamboyant clothing, as evidenced by his yellow, maroon, orange, green or other colorful jackets, in an era when most of his colleagues wore blue blazers or dark gray suits, resulting in his reputation as being something of a popinjay.  Despite his dandified appearance, anyone who thought that Dr. Pelletier had any flies on him was likely to receive a rude awakening. He was as tough as nails and not a man who was easily fooled.  In fact, he was so tough that the RCMP recruits soon caught onto the fact that if they held onto their illness for an extra day or so that it was a likely that they would get the new young doctor.  All the recruits knew it was a lot easier to pull the wool over his eyes.  Sometimes, it was just that they wanted a little more sympathy than they had been getting. After all, most of them were very young too and had just recently been separated from the loving care of their mothers and from family life. In those days it was usual to send  Recruits from the Eastern Provinces to Regina, where one of the two RCMP training Depot was located and recruits from the prairies to Ottawa, the other training depot, to make them into real men.. 

            Fortunately, there was a medical orderly, who had served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War II looking after the Clinic and the twelve bed Post Hospital where it was housed. Just as the knowledgeable Sergeant or Sergeant Major in wartime often told the eager but inexperienced young commissioned officers just what to do to win the battle, so Mike Connors took me in hand and tactfully suggested to me just how to manage the varied situations that recruits might find themselves in..  He was quite a sympathetic person, but he knew as he put it, “the ones who just needed a good kick in the arse”.

             The Post hospital was a small 12 bed unit and was run by Mike.  It was Mike who decided who to admit, at two o’clock in the morning if he didn’t think it was necessary to disturb the doctor. Mike was most considerate of the post-medical officers need for sleep, and the middle of the night conversations often went something like this:

             “Hello doctor, sorry to wake you up.  I’ve got a young lad here with a high temperature and a really sore throat”

            I would try to sound as though I was fully awake and alert at all times and would never waste time sleeping in case some poor unfortunate sick person needed to phone me.

            “Are you worried about him at all, Mike?”

            “Ahh no doctor, I’ve just admitted him to the post hospital and given him a couple of penicillin pills and a couple of aspirin and he’ll settle down for the night now and be all right if you see him in the morning.”

            I was so appreciative of Mike’s intervention, because in those days doctors didn’t send patients to emergency unless they were going down there to see them, or if they felt it was necessary they got up and made a house call in the middle of the night, or lay in bed worrying about why they hadn’t.  There was just no one else upon whom to slough the poor patient.  So I never actually got around to telling Mike that he shouldn’t be admitting people to the Post hospital and giving them antibiotics before they were seen by the doctor.  Because Mike had a lot of common sense and had picked up a fair amount of medicine in the Army and subsequently as a medical orderly on the force, we never got into any trouble.  Fortunately he had a good nose for trouble and knew where to draw the line, so when he said “I think you need to see this fellow, Doc.”  I would go out to the Post or having him sent to meet me in emergency.

            When I arrived at the Post hospital that first morning at 8 a.m., Mike had already got things under way.

            “We’re going to be a bit busy today, Doc,” he informed me.

            “Oh, how is that?”  I asked

            “Well, we have about 30 young fellows who need their flu shots this morning,” he answered.  “And then we have a young fellow I admitted during the night, with, I think, tonsillitis and there are about another eight wanting to be seen, and of course then there are others who come in during the clinic I’ll let them in until nine o’clock and then unless they look sick they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

            “That’s going to take quite a while Mike.  Thirty immunizations even before we start seeing the sick ones.”

            “I have all thirty of the men requiring the immunizations lined up with their sleeves rolled up and waiting for their shots,” Mike said proudly, “I filled up thirty syringes with the required amount of the vaccine and I’ll wipe off their arms with the alcohol swab, while you inject the vaccine.  If we allow about a minute for each one we should be done in a half hour or so.”

            “Sounds good to me, Mike and if we keep up the momentum, I might just have time to make my rounds at the Grey Nun’s hospital and grab a bite of lunch before my afternoon office.”

            Mike smiled, “don’t worry Doc; I’ll make sure you have time.”

            As I followed Mike into the clinic, I found thirty young RCMP recruits standing to attention with their sleeves rolled up their shoulder.  On a mobile trolley nearby there were thirty alcohol swabs and thirty loaded syringes.  Without further ado Mike wheeled the trolley to the first candidate, wiped down the appropriate area of the left shoulder and waited for me to pick up a loaded syringe.  I gave the injection.  We were about halfway along the lines when we heard a crash as the recruit third in the line slid to the floor and not too silently.  I started to run towards him. 

            Mike said, “You just carry on Doc, you’ll have to wipe off the arms yourself with the alcohol swab, while I look after the poor lad.  It always amazes me that the biggest, strongest looking lads are the ones who faint at the sight of a needle, let alone a prick from one.”

            Precisely as he said there always were a couple of fainters.  Mike never seemed to worry about somebody getting hurt if they toppled over and so neither did I.  ‘They’re big strong lads, don’t worry about them’, was Mike’s retort when I expressed some concern.  Our failure to worry was well rewarded as nobody ever did get hurt and in those days, there were not so many unemployed lawyers around that all of our activities were determined by fear of legal suit.