Legacy: Stories to Tell my Daughters Before I Die: Stories to Tell my Daughters Before I die

By Bill Adams

A LIFE OF COURAGE, LOYALTY AND SERVICE. GO TO WORK HAPPY AND COME HOME TIRED:

This mantra was Bill Adams' sustaining principle through 32 years of service with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

From his start as a uniformed constable in small Manitoba communities and culminating as the Superintendent in charge of

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burnstown Publishing House
• Release date: Dec 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781772572582

Bill Adams

Bill Adams has enjoyed a 32-year career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, starting as a uniform investigator in small rural Manitoba towns and culminating as the Superintendent in charge of Serious and Organized Crime Intelligence Branch in HQ Ottawa. Bill continued post-retirement as a public security consultant and worked on contracts as a technical adviser to law enforcement agencies in Africa, Vietnam, Laos and Guatemala.

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Prologue

IN APRIL 2016, I am struck with a flu-like illness while on vacation in Florida and home remedy efforts do not alleviate the symptoms. I’m getting worse, not better, so my wife Terry and I head to the local hospital where I am admitted for an assessment. The doctors there can find no cause for my illness, and as my condition continues to deteriorate, I am fearful of getting stuck in a foreign hospital, away from the support of family and friends. Terry and I make the quick decision to fly back to Canada and barely receive travel authorization from our insurance company to do so. Scared and frustrated, I feel lucky when, the next morning, we walk into an appointment with our family doctor. I’m immediately hospitalized.

April 25th. My birthday. I open my eyes to my 65th year of living a wonderful life. Lying in bed, not yet stirring, I look out through my fifth storey window. The reward and magic of my life is apparent in the things I see. Below me, bordering the river, barren trees stand waiting for that first brush of warm weather, protecting their leafy buds until completely sure that winter’s frosty hand has been withdrawn. Above, a flock of gulls soar majestically, riding the thermal currents formed from newly heated patches of dark earth uncovered by the receding ice and snow. In between, dark and dusty buildings awake and stretch, unburdened by the many months of cold, and ice, and snow, elements that would kill any entity more human than them. And stretch they do, turning lifelike before my eyes. One resembles a dog, no, it is a dog, rising and stretching from his sleep on a soft white pillow.

I lift my head and shoulders to get a better view. The dog falls back to the ground, and disappears. I move to swing my legs over the side of the bed, try to get up to get a better view, to see where the dog has disappeared. I sense that something is holding me back as I watch the landscape move, swirling and undulating outside my double-paned window. Frozen in place, I pull back the sheets to see if my legs have left me in the night, for their feeling isn’t there. In that moment of time, in my hospital bed, I realize that I am paralyzed from the waist down and that these first morning visions are actually hallucinations, a complication of my bewildering illness.

I’m in a teaching hospital and the interns rabidly search for a cause to my malady. Personally, I think it is from a rotten hot dog, consumed with a bad tasting beer at a spring training baseball game earlier in the month. The doctors think a virus is to blame. Regardless, the bacteria or virus has invaded and inflamed my brain and spinal cord, cutting off messages to my lower extremities and sending false signals to my brain. Signals that see gulls that aren’t there, a dog that is just bricks and mortar and the impossible motion of inanimate things.

I feel like a character from an episode of House as interns prod and scan me and the best doctors using the most modern medical science in Ottawa test me for listeriosis, multiple sclerosis and other things I don’t have the time or energy to look up the spelling for. They even test me for rabies! The cause is never found. The best guess remains a virus. No medications are administered and although slow, my recovery progresses, day by day.

At my worst, I’m too sick to care what’s happening. This thing might be fatal, but if so, my death will be just as bizarre and unexplainable as the illness. But Terry and our two daughters, Allyson and Lindsey, are beside themselves with worry. After surviving a bout of cancer and now this, I am convinced that the caregivers suffer more than the patient. As I begin to heal and Terry and the girls breathe sighs of relief, I become introspective.

Being in the hospital for two and a half months, I have lots of time to reflect on my life. Reflecting on the memories of past deeds and the impact that those deeds have on me and others, of the people that have influenced me, and of the opportunities I was offered. Of those opportunities that I accepted, most became successes, in large part due to the mix of fate and circumstance that many times intervened. Nothing in my life has been predictable. Only the outcome is explainable in hindsight.

Billy Graham once said, The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith. While, Billy Graham was a religious man, I don’t purport to have any sustained adherence to religious faith. I’ll let others pray for me, and many do throughout my illness. Still, I’m confident that those prayers helped in my recovery.

But with regards to Dr. Graham’s statement, I look within to see if what he says is true. Where did my character and faith come from? Have I lived up to ancestral expectations? Did I pass on this legacy to my children? Expanding on these thoughts, I look back on my ancestry and find many gaps in my knowledge and understanding of where I came from or an explanation of why I am, who I am, and why I turned out as I did. Puzzles for us all to ponder, but where do the answers come from? I have memories galore. Some are parts of family genealogy, others a rich history in partnership with Terry, and anecdotes from my career with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Where do I start? What’s the first step? How do I navigate around the baggage that I carry to find a balanced truth? I find some encouragement in these words of Indian Philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

It’s Terry that leads me to the practical start of my goal, Just start writing and it will work itself out.

As a first step, I start writing anecdotes from my career, randomly selected from my memory as being representative of my time in the RCMP, the challenges that I faced and the accomplishments that I achieved. Later, as I better organize these stories, I find that the fragmented chronology is quite superficial in its context to my life with my wife and daughters. As I dig deeper into my memory of events, personal feelings emerge concerning the impact of the choices that I made. In these reflections, vulnerabilities are exposed. A secret is disclosed.

I expose these vulnerabilities with a caveat that not all of them need an active resolution. Nor should I feel guilty or judged by decisions made during a time when I was ignorant or vulnerable. As I write and edit my story through the course of many months, understanding what I am is elusive. No fireworks explode in the sky and as insidiously as my baggage is buried, its exhumation is likewise subtle. I wait patiently to be transformed.

CHAPTER 1

Genesis

Almonte, Ontario – 2018

IT’S A HOT summer day in July and I’m sitting in a red Muskoka chair by the side of my backyard outdoor pool, watching my adult daughters Allyson and Lindsey float around on styrofoam noodles in harmony and conversation with their mother, Terry. Heat from the blazing yellow sun is intermittently blocked by big cotton-like clouds as they pass lazily across the deep blue sky. Although I am dressed for a swim, I have no desire to plunge into the water. I am content to sit and watch the women in my life enjoy their time together. I am at peace with the day and thankful for my life.

Sinking deeper into my Muskoka chair my mind wanders as I reflect on the paths that Terry and I have trod to be where we are today. Flipping the calendar in my mind backward through the years, I leave the sustaining happiness of my family in the pool and travel back along the long hallway of my life. Looking left and right at the vignettes hanging on the walls, as in a Harry Potter movie, I recall the milestones of my journey. I could write a book!

Oakville, Ontario – 1971

IT’S A HOT summer day in July and I’m sitting in a plastic lifeguard chair by the side of a municipal outdoor pool watching children float around on styrofoam noodles in harmony and conversation with their friends. Heat from the blazing yellow sun is intermittently blocked by big cotton-like clouds as they pass lazily across the deep blue sky. Although I am dressed for a swim, I have no desire to plunge into the water. I am content to sit and guard the children under my care. I am at peace with the day but I struggle with decisions concerning my life.

I need a career. That is the goal of most 20-year-olds in 1971. To find a job that is enjoyable and will provide financial stability through to retirement. A heady concept in itself, but compounded in my case. My academic history is not strong. I am a kinesthetic learner and have doubts that I will enjoy or succeed in an academic environment. I am looking for a different path. For an option that meets my learning style.

Two years previous I was given a career aptitude test by my school guidance counsellor, and although the results reveal that I am best suited for employment in a social services profession, most social service options seem too academically dependent for me to assure success. But I take the results of the test seriously. I do want to help people in some way, but in a hands-on profession and where hard work will result in personal fulfillment and be rewarded with career advancement.

Bill at University of Western Ontario, 1972

Within my hometown there are three viable law enforcement agencies, the Oakville Police Department (OPD), the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). Acceptance into any of these agencies becomes my career plan A and I complete the application process with each. As a backup plan, I apply for and am accepted into the Physical Education Faculty at the University of Western Ontario. At the completion of my first year, I receive and accept an offer of employment with the RCMP and enter the recruit training academy at Regina, Saskatchewan.

CHAPTER 2

Depot Training Division 1973

Indoctrination

AS I ENTER the training academy, the RCMP is structured as a male-dominated paramilitary police force whose regular members work as required in usually understaffed detachments, and are transferred with little notice at the discretion of the provincial Commanding Officer. No overtime is paid for extra work. Neither women nor married men are eligible to apply to the Force, and single regular members cannot marry for the first two years of their service.

Yet, while the visibility of women is shadowed during this time period, their contributions are significant. Civilian analysts, operational dispatchers, matrons, records management personnel and detachment clerks are invaluable to the operation of the Force. The wives of RCMP members are many times pressed into service to perform each of the above-mentioned functions where civilian support staff are lacking. But no women wear the red serge and the Stetson hat.

Training is structured on a military model. Recruits enter training as individuals, pass through training on a learning curve that is both steep and demanding, and graduate with a common discipline that will continue to support the RCMP organizational structure and provide predictable and consistent policing service to towns and cities from sea to sea to sea. Clients contracting policing services from the RCMP are buying an affordable brand of trained, equipped and operationally supported officers who have historically proven their competence.

Housed in a barracks during our six months of training, recruits sleep together, eat together and are each dependent on the success of the collective. And within the collective, failure has its consequences. We are punished as a troop for the weakness or mistakes of our troopmates. And while it is an organizational goal for all to succeed, it is a troop responsibility to identify those individuals that are unable or unwilling to contribute to the collective success of the troop, and encourage them to assimilate or leave.

While academic subjects are taught for the most part in a traditional classroom setting, physical skill instruction mirrors a military boot camp environment. Swimming lessons, drill class, driving class and physical education sessions are at times brutal, made more or less so by police instructors, some of whom are unnecessarily abusive. The goal of course is to expose potential law enforcement officers to the rigours required by service in sometimes hostile environments and the experience of maintaining composure in physically critical and emotionally challenging situations.

There are times, especially in these early weeks of training, where I feel disorientated and unbalanced. My mind is in transition between two worlds, the one as a lifeguard that I am leaving behind me and the other as a police officer that I soon hope to assume.

Reveille

I AM SEIZED BY the panic in her eyes. There she is, 20 feet in front of me, drowning in 3 feet of water. Seemingly impossible, it takes me a few extra seconds to react, to jump from my lifeguard chair five feet above the surface of our community swimming pool and leap toward her from the edge of the tiled deck.

It isn’t a critical situation. I have responded to similar events many times before, when small children lose their feet from under them and need a helping hand to right themselves. But this is puzzling. This victim is an adult, or as near to being an adult as my 19-year-old lifeguard mind can judge. And gorgeous too as my 19-year-old lifeguard eyes can see.

I have her in my arms now, scooped from the chlorinated brine that continues to flow from our bodies as I lift her tighter to my chest. Her head rests on my shoulder as I walk, slowly, to the pool’s edge. Arriving at the side of the pool, she lifts her head. Her eyes have regained a softness. There is an invitation in them now, and her lips are the offered reward for my heroism. I bend forward in acceptance, a trumpeting sound of anticipation resounding in my ears.

A trumpeting sound? A trumpeting sound! Followed by a shout, Shut that friggin’ thing off!!!

My dream shatters as I wake and look around the large open dormitory that has been my home for the past two weeks. And as my head clears I remember that I have abandoned my lifeguard whistle in search of a badge. Above me is a speaker blaring a military reveille, a 7 a.m. wake-up bugle call that drags me from my dream and robs me of my sensuous reward. Because the speaker is over my bed, I am responsible for dampening the sound with a pillow. While the wires can be pulled with better effect, the consequences of the destruction of government property are just too catastrophic to risk. The room is actually a barracks, a military version of a college dorm, home to a troop of 32 recruits of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Now, as I sit up on my bunk and watch my colleagues rise for the start of a new day, the reality of my decision to join the RCMP starts to jell. Although the recruitment process was rigorous and unsuitable candidates were weeded out through a measurement of work ethic, education, criminal background and character investigation, we have already lost two of our group. While deemed suitable, both have quickly decided that the pain is not worth the gain. And pain in many forms there is.

Procrastinating my morning routine, I mentally review my first two weeks of training, wondering if the next five and a half months will be as chaotic or affect me as deeply. Military haircuts remove our external individuality and military fatigues reduce us all to a vanilla version of humanity. As individuals we lose all status and consideration. As a troop we earn it back. Initially we run everywhere. When we learn the skills of regimented marching we will be granted that concession, which later will become a full reward as we also earn the right to wear our uniform. Or in gang jargon, our colours.

Sitting on the side of my bunk, I think back to my physical training class from the day before. It was a challenge circuit. Forty minutes of lifting heavy weights through repetitive cycles designed to test progress that will never meet the instructor’s expectations, except for those with exceptional abilities. Yesterday, I didn’t possess those abilities; my forte is swimming. My nemesis is PT instructor Corporal Coulter.

Adams, are you taking a break?

Wondering what I did to attract his attention I reply, No Corporal, I think I’m gonna be sick.

You puke on your own time Adams; you still owe me reps.

Yes Corporal.

If you wanna quit Adams, I’ll help you with your discharge papers.

No Corporal.

You might as well quit Adams, you’re probably not going to make it anyway. Save yourself some effort.

I’ll make it Corporal.

And while I do give him the reps that he demands, I am sick in the washroom after it all and pass out from fatigue on my bunk in my fatigues until summoned for supper by my troopmates. Considerate you might think, but we are duty bound to eat as a troop. They can’t go to supper without me! And as exhausted as I am, I can’t refuse.

Through the next few months we all get stronger, shedding fat for muscle and gaining strategies to work together as a team toward the common goal, graduation and a badge.

We do get time off for recreation and fun. The weekends are usually unencumbered unless special duties are required or punishments are to be served. We have our Mountie bars with music and live bands. There, we are boisterous and attract numerous women our age who know that we have discretionary funds and who enjoy the mix of adrenaline and testosterone that we leak, curbed by the fact that we have curfew before bar closing time. It is a 70s version of speed dating, but where most of the women know our routine and training schedule better than we do.

Bar evenings end on the dance floor, sometimes in the middle of a dance when the arrival of an unspoken deadline has us rushing for local taxis who race us back to Depot to beat curfew. Pushing the envelope many times, the taxi services often levy a surcharge to mitigate the risk of being stopped for speeding back to Depot.

As training progresses we, as a troop, become more accustomed to the physical and emotional abuse as it becomes routine and we are able to rationalize negative instructor behavior against the progress we are making. By the halfway point of training we figure out that the majority of instructors who are abrasive to us in our learning process apply their sometimes unrealistic demands with an undercurrent of humour. Encouraged by this, the emotional and physical strengths of troopmates emerge, and those individuals with stronger skills spend time helping their weaker troopmates meet performance goals.

Handcuffed

DISCIPLINE IS THE anchor used to instil rule and order in every recruit’s day and overall development. Any time away from Depot has to be approved; curfews are strictly enforced. Personal and barracks’ inspections are frequent and personal evaluations of physical and academic performance are constant. Individual shortfalls are disclosed publicly, and more often than not, punishment for these shortfalls is meted out to the entire troop. Depot removes all semblance of a comfort zone. Discomfort is shared. Each member of the troop is living and learning to depend on each other, with the end goal to deliver service, focused on common law enforcement principles, performed individually in support of the collective. Within a short period of time, individual discomforts are normalized when shared by all members of our troop.

As my colleagues and I gain experience and knowledge, we are assigned certain tasks to perform within the physical environment of Depot. Nightly foot patrol officers check the physical security of campus buildings while vehicle patrols range further afield to deter or detect any nefarious force trying to breach the training site perimeter. But all we ever encounter is thriving colonies of rabbits who live within the protected grounds.

On my first night of duty, I and three of my troop-mates are assigned to foot patrol duties and meet with our supervisor, Corporal Hansard, at the security office at 11 p.m. for our uniform inspection and shift assignments. Shirts ironed, boots and duty belts polished and hat brims gleaming we stand at attention while Corporal Hansard assesses whether we are spit and polished enough to take to the streets and back woods of Depot. While our duty belt is designed with specialized pockets to hold various tools for effective law enforcement—revolver, handcuffs, six bullets and a flashlight holder, all are empty as we arrive for our shift. At this juncture in our training we are neither qualified nor trusted to either detain or shoot any transgressor we happen across while on patrol.

Content that we look good and can do no harm, Corporal Hansard hands out our first patrol assignments. Gauthier and Woods, I want you to walk around the parade square, check the forensics lab, the drill hall and the parking lots. Take a radio to keep in touch and don’t come back until 12:30 a.m. Do you understand?

Yes Corporal, they reply in unison, then out the door they fly!

Scraba, I want you to stay at the front desk here and sign in anyone coming back from off base. If anyone is late, I want their names and their excuse for being late so that I can report that to the Sergeant Major in the morning. Do you understand?

Yes Corporal.

While the front desk is within sight of Corporal Hansard, his plan is to spend his shift at a back desk unless and until he is required to interact with anyone. In that the security office area is restricted to any public visitors after 11 p.m., his goal is actually not to be bothered at all. It is up to the front desk recruit to ensure that Corporal Hansard has a worry-free night without interruption while he prepares lesson plans for the next day and/or reads the daily city newspaper.

Adams, you can help Scraba but around midnight, I want you to go to the cafeteria. Go into the kitchen, to the walk-in fridge. Go inside and there will be a basket with our lunch in it. Bring it back here for 12:30 and we’ll have lunch when Gauthier and Woods get back. Do you understand?

Yes Corporal is what I say but I am thinking, You want me to go for take-out?

So starts my working career in the RCMP.

At midnight I head to the cafeteria, collect the lunch and bring it back to the security office. After our meal, Scraba and I switch duty assignments with Gauthier and Woods. We leave the security office for our first official patrol shift. It is good to get out of the building, and as we patrol the parade square, check the forensics lab, the drill hall and the parking lots, we are hoping for some action to occur. But all we see are rabbits. Lots of rabbits. Rabbits are very safe at Depot. Recruits are the only small animals threatened by our instructor predators within the perimeter fences.

Back in the security office at 2:30 a.m., Scraba and I sit down to a hot coffee and some leftover lunch. Our first duty shift has been pretty boring, and the rest of the night doesn’t promise any respite. After our snack, Scraba sits back to read a discarded newspaper. I go snooping around the security office, to possibly learn something, but mostly just to snoop.

The front counter is about six feet wide and has three narrow drawers across its width and three deep drawers down its right-hand side. The centre part of the counter is closed off but below is a storage area, which is filled with numerous odds and ends that haven’t been used in quite some time but are seemingly too valuable to be discarded. Rummaging through the drawers I find old forms and sign-in sheets that are used to track the departure and return of recruits. Assorted door keys and flashlight parts, tools and stationery supplies, and a boot polishing kit are scattered through the rest. It is obvious that with the transient nature of the security room inhabitants, no one had taken any responsibility to organize or declutter the drawers. My treasure find comes when I open the centre drawer on the right-hand side of the counter. There is a wooden box, scarred and worn from use and misuse, with a flip top lid and a brass clasp. I open the box. Inside are two pairs of stainless-steel handcuffs.

We have been in training for over a month, and although our duty belt has a place for handcuffs, none have yet been issued, and I have never seen a real pair this close before. I take a pair out of the box. Turning them in my hands I can now see the ingenuity of their design. Two metal bracelets (cuffs) joined by a swivel chain, that when locked around a person’s wrists, will keep the arms secured and yet still allow some flexibility so as to avoid harm to the person. Each cuff has several working parts. I can see that one half of the cuff is divided into two strands containing a ratchet and the other cuff is one strand notched with teeth. Joined by a movable joint, the single strand swivels into the double strand and, as it progresses, the teeth catch into the mechanism and tighten the cuffs to the circumference of the prisoner’s wrists. Loose, the single strand can actually swivel all the way through the double strand and come back to the front again. Unrestricted motion barring any obstruction. Amazing!

And that’s what I repeat several times. I push the single strand in a circle through the double strand. Of course, it makes a cool sound as the teeth ratchet through the double strand locking mechanism. This also causes me to understand the idiom, slapping the cuffs on that I have seen in various movies. By slapping the single strand against the wrist, it swivels through the double strand, coming back around the wrist to engage and lock with the double strand. Ingenious!

Now, having figured out the mechanics, I proceed to tentatively test the theoretical process and find that indeed the theory is sound. Encouraged, I slap the single strand against my wrist, the strand releases, turns its circle and enters into the double strand. Locking.

In setting up this experiment, I was confident that I will be able to slip out of the cuff. Now however, the pressure that I exerted on that first slap engaged the cuff more than I estimated. My wrist is locked into the handcuff.

Looking behind me to the rear of the office, Corporal Hansard is sitting back in his chair with his feet up on the desk, reading some dated issue of some trashy magazine. My colleague Scraba is not to be seen. I am safe from detection. I slide over to the wooden box looking for a key. There is no key!

For the next five minutes I search every drawer and all the cabinet clutter looking for a key. While I have never seen a handcuff key before, by the keyhole size I know that it is small. Dejected, I realize that there is no key to find.

Trying to make my hand as small as possible, and determined to slip it from the closed cuff, I try several more times to gain my freedom. Discouraged and resigned to my fate, I look to the back of the office.

Ah, Corporal, I have a problem.

Without dropping his magazine, Corporal Hansard responds, What’s the matter?

I’m locked up.

Adjusting the magazine to look over its top, our eyes meet. There must be something readable in my face, for a trace of concern is quickly evident in Corporal Hansard’s eyes. Reacting, he drops his magazine more, leans forward and removes his feet from the desk. In that movement, he observes the stainless-steel handcuffs dangling from my rubbed red and raw wrist.

Adams, you’re an idiot.

Yes Corporal.

During the next few moments I attempt to describe the reasoning and rationale for my predicament, but the more I talk, the lamer my attempt to explain becomes. Corporal Hansard meanwhile, is looking bewildered and likely lamenting the future of the RCMP with me as a working employee in it.

Where did you find those, Adams?

They were in a box in the drawer Corporal.

So where’s the key?

Sheepishly I whisper, I’ve looked, there’s nothing there.

Corporal Hansard stands, and passing me with a scornful look, walks to the counter. Over the next five minutes, he searches for the illusive key without success.

Passing me again, Corporal Hansard takes one final opportunity to ensure that I understand the real reason for my dilemma, Adams, you’re an idiot. You understand that, right?

Yes Corporal.

Sit down over there and don’t touch anything.

Yes Corporal.

I can see the wheels turning. Corporal Hansard has now inherited my problem and needs to solve it, quietly, as knowledge of the incident will reflect badly on him unless he can get me uncuffed without calling in a locksmith. The only person he can think to call is his wife, so he calls her to locate his handcuff key and bring it to the security office. She arrives at the office about a half hour later, with his handcuff key and a smile on her face. She unlocks my handcuff personally and hands the cuffs to her husband. I’m mortified!

Holding the handcuffs in his hand, Corporal Hansard seems to be trying to weigh the merit of some added consequence to my behaviour, but as he moves the handcuffs up and down in his hand I can sense that he feels that I have suffered enough. He just looks at me with a measure of disbelief and states, You’d better find yourself a sympathetic wife Adams, ‘cause I think you’re going to need someone in this world who will love you unconditionally.

Yes Corporal.

Bill’s