Adventure Has

Of B.C. Mountie Chief's

Rolls-Royce glided to a halt at
the dockside, and a tall, heavi-
ly-built young man stepped out.
“First class, sir?” asked the porters,
rushing to snatch his suitcase.

Te CHAUFFEUR-DRIVEN

vNosa< he ‘saide = ‘Steerace, “thank
you.”
That was how Charles Edward

Rivett-Carnac at the age of 23 began
the most important voyage in his
life. Now, at 49, he is the boss of Royal
Canadian Mounted Police in British
Columbia.

Assistant Commissioner  Rivett-
Carnac may be dismayed to learn how
this anecdote of his passage to Canada
has been marked and repeated. He is
not given to boasting. And yet the
happening is a compact symbol of his
life and character.

He did not travel steerage as a
pose, but because he was broke. On
the other hand, he had no obvious
need to travel at all. He wanted to
join the “Mounties,” since it was the
toughest job he could think of at the
time. And the assistant commissioner
will admit, if you question his mo-
tives, that he has always chosen the
rough way over the smooth.

The Challenge That Calls

“Adventure” is the way he and
others of his stamp will sum up the
challenge that calls them to the far
and difficult places. The word seems
in one sense hackneyed and not en-
tirely adequate; but if you grasp the
feeling with which it is charged, it
tells you all you need to know.

Here is an Englishman of obvious
birth and breeding, and a man
among men. The image of the Rolls-
Royce will do to describe him. The
smooth, comfortable manner is a
complement to, not a contradiction of,
the concealed power which can be
drawn upon when it is needed.

Page Four

in tts most rugged forms. In his global travels he has
known the battlefields of France and the jungles of
India. He has been chased by wild elephants and has

administered the law and tended the sick in Canada’s

bleak Arctic regions. He has played a leading role

1 scores of Canada’s biggest criminal investigations

and now as B.C.’s Mountie boss he commands the
R.C.M.P.’s largest division.

When he boarded the ship for
Canada he had already passed
through enough danger to last many
men a lifetime. He knew the battle-
fields of France and the jungles of
India. Soon he was to find himself
sleeping under the stars in 60-below
weather, stumbling along icy river
banks and trudging hundreds of
miles through the snow as one of the
scattered band of men upholding the
honor of the law in the lonely North.

Charles Edward Rivett-Carnac was
born in Eastbourne, Sussex, the son
of a deputy inspector-general of
police in India. All his family for gen-
erations had been in the services or
the church. And for generations, too,
the Rivett-Carnacs had been associ-
ated with India. One of them had
been a governor of Bombay in the
time of the East India Company.

The young Rivett-Carnac was sep-
arated early from his parents. They
remained in India for long periods
while he was left in England in the
care of his uncle, a retired Indian
army colonel, and sent to St. Cyprian’s
Preparatory School and Eastbourne
College. 5

Joined French Ambulance Unit

When he was just over 16 he went
away on his own hook and joined an
ambulance unit attached to the
French army in the 1914-18 war. For
about a year and one-half he helped
carry wounded soldiers from the front
line to the post de secours, or ad-
vanced field dressing stations.

Then he went to India for three
and one-half years. At first he ran
elephant camps on the Borelli River
in, the foothills of the Himalayas
gathering cottonwood timber which
was rafted downriver to sawmills on
the Brahmaputra to be made into tea
boxes.

Been Keynote

Life

*

By
G. E. MORTIMORE

*

It was a chancy life. He slept in a
hut with a .45 automatic stuck
through the wall. One never knew
what would be coming in—a leopar¢
bent on making a meal of the dog, o1
a disgruntled worker out to get the
boss. He still bears the scars of 4
battle with savage men from acros:
the border who accepted advance pay
ments of food, refused to work, ther
set upon him when he insisted they
keep their bargain.

Chased by Wild Elephants

Once he and others were chased out
of the camp by wild elephants whe
were attracted by the working ele
phants tied in the lines. Everyone took
to boats on the river and fired guns ir
an attempt. to drive the intruder:
away.

At the age of 21 he was transferred
to Bisra in Central India, where he
became the manager of a lime factory
Later he was transferred again, tc
Calcutta. In that city was the head
quarters of the firm for which he hac
been working all alone—Bird &
Company, one of those industrial
giants of India which command all
kinds of enterprise from jute to
timber.

They made him private and social
secretary to one of the partners. It
was a solid job with a future. Ask him
why he left, and he says this:—

“I was never happy in the job. I
saw myself sitting back for years,
getting stereotyped, marrying and
sending the children home to England
to be educated. . . . I was one of those
peculiar’ individuals who wanted to
see how things ticked in other parts
of the world... .

“If you could prosper under diffi-
cult conditions, you could say, ‘Now I
amount to something.’ I don’t know

THE SHOULDER STRAP