Sometime back in the 80s, (for reasons that now escape me) I first drew up this Mountie pix, with Kelly an Vicky dressed up as those stalwart defenders of the peace, apparently for the sole purpose of delivering their lines... Later on it was inked by both Paul Young and Dean Norton - then more recently, by Myself... Click on the thumbnails to see larger versions of their inks... It’s one of those pix that, for some years now, I’ve been meaning to make a Calendar out of - but it always seemed to get bumped for some other theme. Also being a Winter theme, there’s only a few snowy months that it can be used in, an’ most of those, already have Holiday themes associated with them... But anyway, here it is - Kelly & Vicky playing at being Mounties...

There's probably lots of cool things to say about the Mounties - However, pretty much all that I know about them, I learned from Nelson Eddy, Sergeant Preston an' Dudley Doright... But the one thing that always struck me as neat-- or unique, anyhow-- is that li'l cord that goes around their collar an' attaches to their pistol - (like the cords we used to wear on our mittens when we were really, really little)... I mean, it's so inherently Canadian, the Common-Sense, anti-macho aspect of it. You'd never see an American cowboy or cop-- I mean, can you imagine Clint Eastwood or Hopalong Cassidy with a string tied to their pistol?? Naw, we'd never do that, no matter what the common-sense aspect of the thing-- that if you ever did drop your pistol, it might be handy to have a string tied to it... An' way up there in the north woods and the deep deep snow, If you did drop your pistol, there's probably no one around to help you look for it...

Now, think about all those old Cowboy flicks we've seen... Guys are all the time gettin' guns shot out of their hands or droppin' ‘em in a fight an’ like that -- an' sittin' way up there on a horse, it’s a long way down to the ground to pick it up... Now if they had a string tied to their pistol, that'd simplify things-- Ya drop the thing, just give a tug an you've got it back again... Yeah, those Mounties have good practical sense, they don’t mind if people see that they’ve got their pistol tied on a string- (an’ probably their mittens too)... But we 'Mericans wouldn't ever do that-- someone might talk... JQ