The new RCMP member, Adam, arrived last night and came over for a visit. We of course spent time looking for connections, members that we would both know. It was a bit of a struggle, after all I've been retired longer than he's been a member, but we managed to find a couple of tenuous links.
Kip leaves for Pond Inlet today on a charter and I'm sorry to see him go, after all he was my last partner in the RCMP (albeit for one day). But as I told him, the good thing about moving all the time is that you end up with friends everywhere. Good luck in Pond Kip.
I've long been fascinated by the twists and turns that life takes, and how everything follows decisions that we made along the way. Some people call it the Butterfly Effect, but I've never really enjoyed that analogy. But what causes, say in an accident, two vehicles to occupy the same space at the same time. If one driver lingered over his last coffee say, the two vehicles wouldn't have ended up at the same place at the exact same time.
So how did I end up here? The easy answer is I asked, but the long answer would be RCMP members used to stop by our house for coffee. Like all young kids I wanted to be a policeman, I just never grew up. Hanging around members in my home town, listening to their stories with starry eyed wonderment cemented that desire in my head, until I was unable to free myself from it. All the forks in the road I took from then on led me to here. And these forks I'm taking now will lead me somewhere else.
When I moved to Arctic Bay the promotion process was that after seven years service (as a regular member, ten years of my service was as a civilian member in a comcentre) you wrote an exam. The exam results combined with the rating on a self assessment to rank you on a list. Basically, when a promotional opportunity arose Staffing would call the number one person on the list and ask them if they wanted it, if they didn't they called number two on the list, and so on. Once I was here, I stayed because I fell in love with Leah, and love is as good of a reason to stay somewhere as any.
I was happy at Fort Providence, and so was quite picky about the spot I wanted. As I was alone, I thought it was a good opportunity to get to the High Arctic. Several members I knew throughout my service had been in the High Arctic (one of them, an NCO I had when I was in Winnipeg Comcentre, had made the last dog sled patrol in the Eastern Arctic) and I wanted to experience what they had. So I turned down fifteen or so opportunities in the NWT and Nunavut and then I heard that Nanisivik was going to open up, so I put all my transfer eggs in that basket. At the time I was number two on the list and when the person ahead of me turned it down I was promoted and transferred here.
Getting to Fort Providence followed other choices and circumstances including Janice's death. To go into all of the details that took me here from growing up in Roblin would be of course impossible. Suffice it to say I am where I am because of where I've been. Because my parents raised me as they did. Because of everything that has gone before. Because of all the forks and the roads less travelled (and some that were fairly well trodden). I guess it's my sister's fault.
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