U of A mounts historic RCMP literature exhibit
Few police forces have a brand as iconic as that of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
The image of the stoic man keeping the peace in his distinctive red coat became a national symbol and an international commodity. The Mounties inspired — and continue to inspire — fictional tales by artists around the world.
Retired RCMP staff sergeant Al Lund has spent more than 50 years collecting Mountie books, magazines and comics.
His collection was so important to him that in 1990, when he was building his dream retirement home, he had an entire wall made for the books, complete with its own ladder, so he could reach the highest shelves. Boxes of his comics and magazines filled another room in the house.
Lund, 75, started donating parts of his collection to the University of Alberta in 2008.
The university, which by 2015 owned approximately 95 per cent of the collection, has put about 100 of Lund’s favourite items on display in a new exhibit at the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library.
“Mounties on the Cover,” which runs until July 21, presents Lund’s colourful Canadiana in a series of glass displays and blown-up prints. The Mounties in this intimate exhibit grace the covers of historical love stories, Harlequin romance novels, pulp magazines and more. Many of the publications were products of Britain or the United States and some are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Mounties appear as strong and solitary in the wilderness on some covers. On others, women look longingly into their eyes. Three ladies on the July 1934 cover of Canadian Home Journal blush and swoon as an uniformed officer strides past them.
“There’s something about the red uniform that always captured the imagination of people,” said Peter German, who retired as the RCMP’s deputy commissioner for western and northern Canada in 2012.
German, a collector himself, wrote in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue that a number of factors combined to create the Mounties’ mythology. Action and romance novels were incredibly popular from the 1920s onward, but people were also attracted to stories about adventure in Canada’s “wild west.” As a kid, German devoured Joe Holliday’s Dale of the Mounted series during the 1960s.
Lund purchased his first Mountie book in 1963 after finding The Queen’s Cowboy by Kerry Wood in a drug store. The book featured the North-West Mounted Police’s Col. James Macleod, whom Lund studied during his history course in RCMP training.
In March 1967, after being transferred from Williams Lake, B.C., to Burnaby, B.C., Lund started browsing used bookstores during his days off. Over the next two decades he would acquire about 3,000 Mountie-related items.
The Internet’s arrival in the late ‘90s allowed him to greatly expand his search. After he retired from the RCMP and finished raising his daughters, he had more time to devote to his hunt.
Lund said he donated his collection to the U of A because he wanted it to be preserved for scholars and RCMP enthusiasts forever. He didn’t want to sell the collection.
“I wanted to find a home for it,” he said.
“Mounties on the Cover” is open to the public until July 21 on weekdays from noon to 4:30 p.m., excluding holidays. The catalogue is available for purchase at Indigo, in the Bruce Peel library and through University of Alberta Press for $25.