Want to be a Mountie? Even if you’re one of the successful 600 chosen annually out of some 10,000 applicants, you won’t get far in basic training unless you can type over 19 words a minute – and iron your bed. In this comprehensive, well-written book, Hamilton-Barry explains, along with a myriad of other Mountie minutiae, why keyboarding skills and disciplined attention to tedious details are rquirements for Canada’s Finest.

Boldly Canadian’s magazine-style format, enhanced with Frances Clancy’s lively illustrations, covers everything from early Mountie heroes to 21st-century law enforcement. It traces this thread of our social history back to 1873 when Prime Minister John A. Macdonald created the North-West Mounted Police to keep western Canada safe and free from encroaching American settlement. The book will be a boon for school projects, with a first-rate index that makes tracking down references a cinch. It also includes the address of the RCMP web site, useful for solving crimes as well as for completing social studies assignments. The book is rigorously gender-inclusive: while some 13% of Mounties are women, the proportion is at least that high in the text and illustrations; visible minorities are also well represented.

Hamilton-Barry points out that the book almost didn’t make it to publication because of a five-year deal between the Mounties and the Disney corporation. Luckily Disney conceded that the facts of the RCMP’s history are not under their exclusive control, as they are also part of our national history.