Homeless in Vancouver: Found a pair of RCMBs

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      Seen in the back alley, not one block west of the bottle depot at Ontario Street and 7th Avenue: a new pair of size 11, standard issue, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) mukluks—just sitting on top of a dumpster—just sitting there!

      They might still be there, though I doubt it.

      While I was amazed to see them like that, I didn’t take them. They’re mukluk’s for heaven’s sake—Arctic wear that I believe is rated for minus 40 temperatures.

      Not only am I many hundreds of kilometres on the wrong side of the tree line, my shoe size is generously described as a nine; more accurately a very wide eight-and-a-half.

      Mukluk” is a style of boot originating among Arctic aboriginal peoples. The word is specifically from the language of the Yupik people, though the Inuit kamic boot is more-or-less the same, particularly to the Europeans who took a sensible “adopt-or-die” approach when it came to the aboriginal technologies they encountered in the northern New World.

      Growing up in 1970s Saskatchewan, I owned several successive pairs of sealskin mukluks. So did many of my peers.

      Their popularity was probably due to some federal government promotion of the Newfoundland seal hunt. For all I know, the boots were lined with asbestos from Quebec.

      Being near to military equipment, these RCMP-issue mukluks came with rules or instructions printed on the lining.

      Federally, Canada is bilingual, so in one boot it can to be assumed these instructions were in English.

      Below is a photo of the other boot that has the instructions in Canadian, which I cannot read with any fluency. 

      “5. Do not remove ze laces.”
      Stanley Q. Woodvine

      Stanley Q. Woodvine is a homeless resident of Vancouver who has worked in the past as an illustrator, graphic designer, and writer.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      cathy

      Jan 5, 2014 at 12:16pm

      maybe there is a reward for the boots?
      any article with an identifying RCMP patch/logo on them is never to be thrown out. it could be used for impersonation.
      can't have that.

      Mario

      Jan 7, 2014 at 6:16am

      Huh?

      Stanley Q Woodvine

      Jan 8, 2014 at 8:48pm

      @ Cathy

      A concern if the outsides were emblazoned with "RCMP" or their crest, but the only reference is on the label inside the boot.

      BC Hydro is likewise sensitive about their branded wear straying. Several years ago I was stopped twice in half an hour in a lane in Kitsilano, once by VPD and once by Hydro.

      Both wanted to know if I'd seen another guy in the lanes reportedly wearing a Hydro jacket but otherwise clearly not a Hydro employee. It was winter and they told me they didn't want the jacket, they just wanted the guy to tear the patches off. Odd that, given most Hydro jackets have "Hydro" across the back in big letters.

      I actually think I know what agency or individual put out the mukluks, based on the location of the dumpster and all.