Eighty years. Tens of thousands of crimes. One police force.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Flin Flon RCMP detachment – a milestone as significant for the community as it is for the Mounties.
It was in Flin Flon, after all, that the national force signed its first municipal policing contract back in 1935.
“We have a long-standing, very good relationship with the RCMP,” said Mayor Cal Huntley. “They’ve been part of making this community exactly what it is today and maintaining it as we go forward. We look forward to another long period of time with them. They should really be congratulated for 80 years, and we feel pretty special to be the first municipality that had RCMP policing.”
Though Flin Flon and the RCMP formalized their affiliation in 1935, their relationship actually dates back to the 1920s.
In the years leading up to 1930, the Mounties ventured into Flin Flon on an as-needed basis. A two-officer detachment on the Saskatchewan side of the border assisted the Manitoba Provincial Police working on the Manitoba side.
According to the book Flin Flon, the Community Development Company, the authority initially responsible for the Flin Flon town site, hired its own police officer, watchman and fire chief in the person of Otto O. Klutz.
The unfortunately named Klutz occasionally sought assistance from the RCMP, but when the Municipal District of Flin Flon was formed in 1933, it tried to look after law enforcement on its own.
As Flin Flon notes, “the arrangement was not entirely satisfactory” as the men who had been deputized were unable to contain violent outbreaks during the infamous mine strike of 1934.
The young municipality in turn sought help from the RCMP. The two sides signed a contract on Dec. 27, 1935 even though the deal cites “from the first day of April, 1935” as the date for which “the Royal Canadian Mounted Police shall undertake the policing of the Municipal District of Flin Flon,” according to Flin Flon.
The crimes and alleged crimes of those early days have been well documented in the annals of Flin Flon history. Offences such as prostitution and gambling certainly befell the young town, though just how prevalent they were is a matter of contention.
The crime scene had begun to change by 1950, the year a young constable named Jock Forbes was transferred from Churchill to Flin Flon. His destination was unlike any community he had ever experienced.
“It was different,” Forbes, then 80 and living in Winnipeg, recalled in a 2010 Reminder interview. “The mine was very active. At four in the morning, when they set the depth charges off – that’s when the shift changes – things at four in the morning on Main Street were like noon at times. People were going curling in the winter. It was fully active. There was a lot of people here all the time.”
Despite the hubbub, Forbes found that the town played against its rough-and-tumble stereotype. When there was trouble, it was often drunken rowdiness at Main Street’s
Northern Cafe or Golden Gate Cafe.
“There were only the two restaurants, really, of any significance,” said Forbes, who was stationed in Flin Flon for just over a year. “And it got a little bit rough, but not really that bad.”
Another one-time Flin Flon Mountie, Ben St-Onge, recalled his share of discord at Northern Cafe.
But for St-Onge, who was stationed in the community from 1962 to 1966, some of the strongest memories stem from Mile 86.
A long-gone settlement north of the Hudbay metallurgical plant, Mile 86 proved demanding for an arresting officer.
“You had to leave the police car on one side of the marsh,” St-Onge, then retired in New Brunswick, said in 2010. “They had a crosswalk on the marsh. It was about three or four feet wide, and you had to go to the house and settle the problem. And whoever you had to arrest, you had to bring him to the crosswalk. You put him in front of you and he kept on walking because he was scared to fall off.”
The Flin Flon that St-Onge policed in the 1960s seemed far different than the serene community of today.
“It was rough,” he said. “When you arrested somebody, you had to fight ’em, pretty well.”
Flin Flon’s connection to the RCMP goes beyond the 200-plus Mounties who have served in the community. It also includes the countless Flin Flonners who have gone on to join police forces across Canada.
Ed Rodonets believes his Flin Flon upbringing served him well during a 25-year RCMP career spent in Saskatchewan.
“I worked mainly in small-town detachments,” Rodonets, then retired in Regina, said in 2010. “Being from Flin Flon originally, it was a small town, and I just found that it was easy to mix in
with small towns in Saskatchewan and to blend in with the people and make friends. I still go back to each one of those towns every year or couple of years just to touch base with friends that I met.”
They say a cop’s job is never done, but the truth is that the Mounties stationed in Flin Flon over the decades have been more than law-enforcers. They have raised families, joined service
clubs and launched small businesses.
“They’re a good piece of the foundation of our communities,” said Huntley.
Not surprisingly given such roots, several Flin Flon Mounties have chosen to retire in the community. Others have privately expressed deep disappointment over being transferred to other communities.
“I really wish I could stay,” said one departing officer several years back.
Alas, that is not always how the RCMP works. But while they are here, Flin Flon’s Mounties serve bravely and proudly.
That’s the way it has been for 80 years. It is the way it will always be.
