A Brush With The Law in The Rockies

Months. I'd been working for months in the lead up to the Canadian Incentive Trip to get a real, live Mountie to come and meet my group but all my attempts had been in vain.

I lost count of the emails and phone calls and still no one would agree. So, in the true spirit of artistic license I stuck by the old classic, 'if you can't get the real thing, make it up'. Accordingly, I left the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel on the afternoon of the gala dinner to head to Lake Louise for rehearsals with my evening's actors and musicians, secure in the knowledge that the group's coach would be happily 'hijacked' by an authentic looking Mountie half way between Banff and Lake Louise - read the riot act about speeding etc etc and then allowed on their way having had a little thrill and with something to tell the folks back home while my 'actor' headed to the nearest bar for a well earned pint.

All had proceeded according to plan. My second in command had called to tell me that the fake Mountie had performed very well (and that half the ladies in the group were in love.....) and that they were now all cheerily having cocktails on the terrace in front of the lake, arguing over the true colour of the water - blue, green, blue, green and so it went on.

I returned to perfecting the art of a Gold Rush bar room brawl (which needed to spill out of our temporary saloon at the very moment that our guests were to arrive in their horse drawn carts) and instructing my saloon girls on the fine line between flirting with the punters and sexual harassment but it wasn't long before I was called out to the front of the venue by the manager. "Um, Lisa - there's someone to see you" he stuttered.

Tutt tutting to myself - it would be only a few minutes until the group arrived - I walked around the corner smack bang into a very young and very handsome guy (wearing what I had discovered during my months of begging the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was regular uniform ie Blue, not Red). I mistakenly assumed that this was my Mountie actor. About to launch into a tirade (about specifically requesting that he wear the Red 'dress' uniform and asking why he was here, his gig was over- was he expecting a tip) I looked over his shoulder and caught sight of the vehicle parked behind him. An honest to god police car! He was actually the real thing - my perseverance had paid off. His timing was off obviously but at least he'd made an effort. Mental high fives and Irish jigs galore - I'm sooooo good at my job!!

I'll never know what stopped me from launching myself at him in gratitude for turning up to see my group and abject apology as I'd sorted something else out and that he was too late, we'd already moved onto another 'theme'. I guess someone was watching over me that day as I restrained myself long enough to hear the first of his questions.

"Ma'am, are you aware that it is illegal to either impersonate or hire someone to impersonate an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?"

Needless to say, there was some seriously fancy footwork undertaken in the next 5 minutes (and let me tell you, it was a lot harder than talking your way out of a speeding ticket).

Looking back on it later I felt incredibly noble in that not only had I risked arrest, all in the name of my job, but that all I could think of as I was trying to talk my way out of legal proceedings was not that I would very shortly be locked up in a cell in the Canadian Rockies but that this guy was going to ruin the effect of the beautiful bar room brawl that we'd been working on all afternoon.......

Things to see/do in Banff: Maple Leaf Restaurant, Fairmont Banff Springs, White Water Rafting, Lake Louise (winter or summer!!)