No Easy Ride: Reflections on My Life in the RCMP Read Free

and sped off. Novakowski got into his police car and took off in pursuit of the fleeing vehicle. They sped along for miles, through the little town of Theodore and beyond. At one point the fleeing vehicle’s door opened and Novakowski thought he heard a bullet whistle past his car window. After chasing the car unsuccessfully for 20 miles, Novakowski abandoned the chase at Sheho and phoned ahead to Foam Lake, the next police detachment.
    Constable Novakowski spoke with Corporal Leonard Victor Ralls and explained that the suspect car was heading his way. Ralls assured Novakowski that he would attempt to intercept it. A short time later, west of Foam Lake, a series of explosions near the farm home of Mr. and Mrs. Alex Baird awakened the couple. Alex looked out and saw a car driving away to the east and heard two more explosions. He also heard a weak call for help and hurried outside to find Corporal Ralls mortally wounded. Ralls died en route to the doctor. The Yorkton RCMP detachment was told of the murder, and an all-points bulletin went out across the province. In less than an hour 40, RCMP members rallied to block all highways in the district. A private aircraft was also launched for the search.
    At the murder scene, Corporal Ralls’s police car was found in the ditch with the ignition wires severed. There were tire tracks from another vehicle that appeared to be equipped with Goodyear tires. Not far from the police car, Ralls’s .45 calibre police revolver was found with two live and two discharged shells. The offending vehicle had turned off the highway east of Foam Lake and seemed to be heading north through very rough country. Members gave chase, but it had rained steadily for three days and their cars became mired up to the fender wells with mud. Nevertheless, they moved steadily northward through the thick bush country as dawn broke.
    At about noon, near the village of Lintlaw and 90 miles north of Foam Lake, police found a blue Plymouth abandoned and covered with mud. The windshield and rear windows were missing, and four bullets had struck the car in the hood area. The vehicle had been stolen from a garage in Zealandia on the night of June 12. Mounted policemen travelling by horse, railway jiggers and car continued the hunt through the next night. Early Wednesday morning, they received word that three men, one carrying a rifle, had visited a local farm the previous evening. They had demanded a meal and left in a westerly direction through the bush. Later that day, some school children saw them running across a road. More tips came in, but it seemed the RCMP were always minutes behind the trio.
    The next morning, the three men stopped at a farm and again demanded a meal. They then fled with four horses, apparently heading for the Greenwater Lake timber reserve, where it would become extremely difficult to track and capture them. A command centre was established at Kelvington, a small farming community with a two-man detachment. The junior man was my father, Constable Joe Parsons, who had barely two years’ service. Up to this point, his law-enforcement experience consisted of investigating minor thefts, the odd family squabble and the occasional disturbance initiated by too much liquor. Now conscripted into the manhunt for the killers of a police officer, his level of anxiety was palpable. More than 30 police officers and over 200 armed civilians were now focused on capturing the fugitives and were traversing muskeg and bog, felling trees and moving through mud holes. Many cars became damaged beyond repair. As night fell again, paranoia ruled and isolated residents took refuge with neighbours.
    About noon on Thursday, while a blazing sun shone overhead, my father and town constable Wilson Hayes of Wadena walked into a clearing in the bush and discovered three horses tethered to a tree. A short distance away was a farmhouse. It immediately occurred to my father that the killers had stopped once again for a meal. The