Yes.
Maybe I'll just give you a little bit of background on how that all came about.
There were no women in the musical ride, or even thoughts of having women in the musical ride, until 1980. In 1980 somebody higher up decided that we have women in the force and we'd better show their faces in other aspects of the force as well. Certainly, as you say, the musical ride is iconic for the RCMP and also for Canada.
What happened early in 1980 was that somebody in the RCMP phoned every single female member across Canada and asked us if we were interested in trying out for the musical ride. Being a horse-crazy kid from way back, I jumped at the chance for that.
How it works is that there are two sessions of an equitation course, and in those days—I'm not sure how it works now—there were two months and two months. The first two months there were 16 members in that group, and two were women and 14 were men. In the second two-month group, which I was in, there were four women and 12 men. Generally what happens is that the musical ride is formed of a troop of 32 riders. Half were replaced every year, so it would be a two-year posting.
I went off to Ottawa in April 1980 to Rockcliffe to the stables, and it was quite the experience. We were there for two months, and as I say, there were four women and 12 men. This was, I think, probably the first experience I had in my time in the force—and at that point I was almost three years in—when I felt what I suppose would be an inkling of what we now call a “toxic work environment”.
There were hazing rituals, misogynistic jokes, the kinds of things that I think most of us probably ran into at the time and didn't think much of. For me, aside from the hazing ritual, which did not affect me personally as I was not the subject of it, the misogynistic jokes indicated what life would be like as a musical ride member out on tour, and that was not appealing to me. Also, one of the instructors we had who would also be accompanying us out on tour was someone who gave me a very uncomfortable and very creepy feeling.
In those days—it was in 1980, so we're looking at almost 44 years ago—there was nothing said about any of the inappropriateness of the conduct, but I am sure that if I felt it, my three female colleagues also felt it.
That kind of behaviour on the course was one thing, but it felt to me like it would be worse once we were out on tour and there would be just us and the people we were working with out there. At the end of the course, they went through the 16 trainees and asked us, if we had actually passed, if we were interested in joining the ride. I said no and I went back to Nova Scotia.