Discussions

The year of 1919 marked calls for a purge of Brandon’s local police force, but citizens representatives were also mired in a venture that they had started a few weeks earlier.  
 
They had acted on little more than determination to acquire the services of a locally established ‘Scarlet Riders’ detachment to be quartered at the Exhibition Grounds, and had even voted monies to improve the facilities to be used.  
 
The day arrived when eleven ‘Mounties’ in full uniform, carrying rifles, and marched with a Military appearance from the C.P.R. Depot to the Beaubier Hotel.  
 
Then came a Royal North West Mounted Police (R.N.W.M.P.) Commissioner advice that Tenders for the proposed Barracks had exceeded the government estimates of its cost, and had therefore been turned down.  
 
The city in the mean time had undertaken, at Ratepayer’s expense laying water, and sewer lines along Eighteenth Street towards the proposed Barracks, and so this project was abruptly halted.  
 
Irked resident’s learned that the original eleven Mounted Police had now been increased to a one hundred, and fifty man contingent, and that they were to be housed at the Armoury on Eleventh Street and Victoria Avenue.  
 
Ottawa authorities were informed that Brandon had incurred expenses, and that the city was against the Militia quarters plan. The city fathers felt that the spending of money on alterations there were unwarranted.  
 
Ottawa ignored Brandon’s concerns, and Armoury remodelling went ahead anyway.  
 
Source: Brandon a City, by G. F. Barker.