When Chris Windover, née Mackie, started her police training at the RCMP Training Academy in Regina, Sask. in 1975, she wasn’t given a gun belt to holster her pistol, bullets and handcuffs – she was given a purse.
“It was a black purse,” she says with a laugh during a phone interview from Ontario. “It was a purse you carried over your shoulder, and we were issued a shorter gun.”
By the time she left Depot, among only the second female troop in RCMP history, the powers that be had changed their minds, and the police purse and lady gun were scrapped.
When Windover and troop mate Donna MacMillan arrived in Burnaby to become the detachment’s first female members in 1975, though, their working uniform still included a skirt, a pillbox hat, a triangular necktie that looked more like a bib, and black pumps with a one-and-a-half-inch heel.
“We called them wicked-witch-of-the-west shoes,” Windover says, “and we wore them while the men wore ankle boots.”
After about six months, Windover says she just went ahead and brought her own pair of flat, black oxfords.
“They didn’t know how to dress us. They didn’t know what do to with us,” she says.
Windover’s expectation that she’d be doing the same job as her male counterparts when she got to Burnaby wasn’t always shared by the men in charge or the men she worked with.
She remembers one dispatcher who sent her only to mundane calls and other colleagues telling her to “keep an eye on the women” when she was sent to more interesting incidents.
“It was very new,” Windover says of women in the force in the 1970s. “Some people were horribly against it. … There were a lot of people hoping that you won’t be able to do it, but I had some wonderful support too from others, so it was very individual. There was some wonderful guys there.”
One such guy was Bruce Hamilton, the trainer she worked with for six months after arriving in Burnaby.
“He was the greatest guy,” Windover says. “Not sure I would have made it without him and having my troopmate Donna. I was really blessed.”
Windover served at the Burnaby detachment for five years before going on to another RCMP first.
In 1981, she and Joan Merk became the first female Mounties to ride in the RCMP musical ride.
As such, Windover and Merk were also the first female Mounties to shed the pillbox hat, pumps and skirt of the women’s review order uniform and don the traditional Stetson, breeches and high boots of the red serge.
It would take another nine years before the rest of the women in the RCMP were allowed to wear them.
Most Mounties who join the musical ride have no previous riding experience, Windover says, but she had ridden all her life and applied because of her love of horses.
The glamour of the ride didn’t hurt either.
“You wear the red serge and ride nice big black horses and everybody likes you, as opposed to being on the road in a police cruiser where nobody likes you,” she says with a laugh.
Windover stayed with the ride for 12 years, first as a rider and then as a trainer, before retiring from the RCMP 17 years ago. Her fondest memories are of meeting people from all over Canada.
“I especially loved the smaller towns,” she said. “The whole community would be involved in setting everything up.”
For Windover, the musical ride transcends the RCMP.
“I think it represents Canada in many ways,” she says. “At least, I believe that, and I think many people that see that red coat on a black horse feel the same way.”
The RCMP musical ride comes to Swangard Stadium (Kingsway and Boundary Road) Aug. 18, starting at 5:30 p.m. General admission tickets are $10; tickets are free for children aged five and under. Buy online at burnaby.ca/musicalride or at the Shadbolt Centre box office. Proceeds will help support the Honour House Society and Burnaby Neighbourhood House.
Fast facts
*Thirty-six horses, 35 riders, a farrier, a sound technician, three non-commissioned officers and an officer in charge travel with the musical ride.
*Thirty-three horses perform during the tour and three are “swing horses,” trained in all the positions.
*Musical riders execute a variety of cavalry drills choreographed to music.
*The ride tours throughout Canada and internationally between May and October, performing at about 40 venues each year.
*The RCMP horses are 16 to 17 hands high; weigh between 1,150 and 1,400 pounds and, up until recently, were 3/4 to 7/8 thoroughbred – the stallions being registered thoroughbred while the broodmares were part thoroughbred.
*Black Hanoverian broodmares and stallions were purchased in March 1989 to improve the horses’ bloodlines.
*Young horses, called remounts, begin their training at three years old and start their musical ride training when they turn six.
