Extreme Frontiers: Racing Across Canada from Newfoundland to the Rockies by Charley Boorman Page A
Authors: Charley Boorman
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lined up for me, I glimpsed the iconic red jackets hanging on a rack. Now if I could just get one of
those …
With the amount of stuff Sean was piling on to the counter, I really was beginning to feel nervous, and I asked him if that
was normal. Did all ‘newbies’, as he called them, feel this way?
‘All of them,’ he said. ‘They sit up front there at the counter and it’s like a bunch of rabbits caught in the headlights,
really. Relax, Charley. Trust me, buddy, you’re not alone.’
Soon we got on to the fun stuff: the gear belt where the holster would fit, the radio, the mace spray and whatever else they
carried. Then it was the cap, blue with a yellow band – similar to Dan’s. That was all very well, but what about the Stetson?
The iconic hat of the Mountie? Sean found one for me to try on and told me that the cadets get issued with them pretty much
as soon as they arrive, but they have to earn the right towear them and that takes six long months. As I tried it on over my RCMP regulation-length hair (as if), Dan told me to tilt
it slightly to the right, as that was my saluting hand. Jaunty, then. I could be jaunty for sure.
Opening another box, Sean brought out the riding boots – knee-length, lace-up and a sort of chocolate brown. This was the raw
state, before they were brushed and polished to the point where you could see your face in them. These days the boots were
worn mostly at functions and ceremonies, but Sean did say that the motorcycle units wore them every day, along with the big
jodhpur-type pants that look so cool. When he added that they rode bespoke Harley-Davidsons, I decided that when my turn came
to ‘graduate’, I would opt for the bike division right away.
Next he showed me the winter hat; a fur cap that people think is beaver but is actually made from muskrat. The body armour
was much lighter than the stuff I’d been issued when I flew into Afghanistan to meet the troops. That had ceramic plates in
it, and as we flew into Kandahar, we were told to sit on the armour because the Taliban liked to shoot at the belly of the
plane. No wonder this was lighter, though; the bulletproof panels weren’t in it yet. Sean issued those separately and showed
me how to put the whole thing together – this is the most important piece of kit each cadet is given. The armour is Kevlar
and you think it’s solid, but it’s not. Kevlar is cloth, and there are twenty-one layers in each panel. Sean showed me a suit
that had been marked in three places, the result of being hit by 9mm rounds fired from three metres away. Only the first layer
of Kevlar had been penetrated; the wearer might’ve been bruised but they didn’t die. So they were going to shoot at me, were
they? Jesus, Russ: what are you doing to me, buddy?
The crime rate in Canada is nothing compared to America; the only really bad places are a handful of small towns in northern
British Columbia. The average murder rate in the capital, Ottawa, for example, is three homicides a year. That’s not very
many, nowhere near London, where last year 125 people were murdered. Even so, Sean reiterated that the body armour is the
most important piece of kit the cadets are issued, and we packed it into the bag. He almost forgot the judogi – the white suit
martial arts experts wear; he told me I was definitely going to need that.
Kitted out in my summer shirt and cadet epaulettes, I really was beginning to feel like a new, very raw recruit. Next we went
to the tailor’s shop, where my trousers had already been sent to be altered. At the counter I bumped into another brand-new
cadet. He was about thirty feet tall and he wasn’t even wearing the boots. He told me he had had his first drill yesterday
and it was hardcore.
‘So how long have you got here?’ I asked him.
‘Only another five months, three weeks and two days, but hey, who’s counting?’
He was so tall – six feet ten, or 208
those …
With the amount of stuff Sean was piling on to the counter, I really was beginning to feel nervous, and I asked him if that
was normal. Did all ‘newbies’, as he called them, feel this way?
‘All of them,’ he said. ‘They sit up front there at the counter and it’s like a bunch of rabbits caught in the headlights,
really. Relax, Charley. Trust me, buddy, you’re not alone.’
Soon we got on to the fun stuff: the gear belt where the holster would fit, the radio, the mace spray and whatever else they
carried. Then it was the cap, blue with a yellow band – similar to Dan’s. That was all very well, but what about the Stetson?
The iconic hat of the Mountie? Sean found one for me to try on and told me that the cadets get issued with them pretty much
as soon as they arrive, but they have to earn the right towear them and that takes six long months. As I tried it on over my RCMP regulation-length hair (as if), Dan told me to tilt
it slightly to the right, as that was my saluting hand. Jaunty, then. I could be jaunty for sure.
Opening another box, Sean brought out the riding boots – knee-length, lace-up and a sort of chocolate brown. This was the raw
state, before they were brushed and polished to the point where you could see your face in them. These days the boots were
worn mostly at functions and ceremonies, but Sean did say that the motorcycle units wore them every day, along with the big
jodhpur-type pants that look so cool. When he added that they rode bespoke Harley-Davidsons, I decided that when my turn came
to ‘graduate’, I would opt for the bike division right away.
Next he showed me the winter hat; a fur cap that people think is beaver but is actually made from muskrat. The body armour
was much lighter than the stuff I’d been issued when I flew into Afghanistan to meet the troops. That had ceramic plates in
it, and as we flew into Kandahar, we were told to sit on the armour because the Taliban liked to shoot at the belly of the
plane. No wonder this was lighter, though; the bulletproof panels weren’t in it yet. Sean issued those separately and showed
me how to put the whole thing together – this is the most important piece of kit each cadet is given. The armour is Kevlar
and you think it’s solid, but it’s not. Kevlar is cloth, and there are twenty-one layers in each panel. Sean showed me a suit
that had been marked in three places, the result of being hit by 9mm rounds fired from three metres away. Only the first layer
of Kevlar had been penetrated; the wearer might’ve been bruised but they didn’t die. So they were going to shoot at me, were
they? Jesus, Russ: what are you doing to me, buddy?
The crime rate in Canada is nothing compared to America; the only really bad places are a handful of small towns in northern
British Columbia. The average murder rate in the capital, Ottawa, for example, is three homicides a year. That’s not very
many, nowhere near London, where last year 125 people were murdered. Even so, Sean reiterated that the body armour is the
most important piece of kit the cadets are issued, and we packed it into the bag. He almost forgot the judogi – the white suit
martial arts experts wear; he told me I was definitely going to need that.
Kitted out in my summer shirt and cadet epaulettes, I really was beginning to feel like a new, very raw recruit. Next we went
to the tailor’s shop, where my trousers had already been sent to be altered. At the counter I bumped into another brand-new
cadet. He was about thirty feet tall and he wasn’t even wearing the boots. He told me he had had his first drill yesterday
and it was hardcore.
‘So how long have you got here?’ I asked him.
‘Only another five months, three weeks and two days, but hey, who’s counting?’
He was so tall – six feet ten, or 208
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