Harold Searle is the oldest living RCMP veteran in Nova Soctia, and likely the Maritimes.
The 96-year-old began wearing the red serge 73 years ago this month, at a time when the life of a Mountie was very different.
Searle was a Prairie boy, growing up in the small town of Mortlach, Saskatchewan.
When the Second World War started he wanted to become a pilot, but was rejected because he didn't have his grade 12.
So, in 1941, he donned a different uniform.
Searle joined the RCMP and was assigned to Windsor, N.S., less than ten years after the Mounties began policing Nova Scotia.
In 1941 there was no real RCMP detachment in Windsor. Searle and the two Mounties in town lived and worked out of a home on King Street.
Within a few months, that number dropped from three, to just two constables.
“With only two of us there was no such thing as shifts. If there was all kinds of crime, or lots happening, you just worked,” says Searle.
His wife Dean, the love of his life and mother of his three kids, helped out with duties. Women like her became known as the second man.
“Of course the phone would be ringing or people would be coming to the door and some of the wives became very adept at dealing with them,” says Searle.
The Mounties' pay was low and the budget even lower, which forced them to improvise for basics like lights and sirens for their cars.
“Maybe added some little thing to your car and then chalked it up as a repair, flat tire or something like that, because we were just issued bare cars.”
Searle seldom dealt with violent crime, but New Year's Eve 1943 was an exception.
The county constable asked him to come along to arrest a local man.
“On the way out Charlie said, ‘Oh, I know John really well, he'll come with us.’”
They were in for a surprise.
The suspect was 6’2” and enraged. He knocked-out the county constable with a metal snow shovel, then turned his rage on Searle.
“His father was standing further over, yelling at me to shoot him.”
Searle never drew his gun, even when the man attacked.
“He drove my tooth through my lip and I was wanging him and this was going on and it was about a tie, when all of a sudden there was this clang,” says Searle. “The old county constable had recovered and got the snow shovel and down over his head. It knocked him down and he got it up again and he was going to give him another one, so I grabbed the shovel. I think he'd have killed him.”
Instead, Searle took the man in for medical treatment.
“The doctor lit into me for being so rough with him. So I said to the doctor, ‘If you had him chasing you with a snow shovel you wouldn't say that.’”
Searle was also stationed in Halifax, Chester, and Antigonish, before retiring in Windsor in 1966.
He started a second career as a senior parole officer and began volunteering with the Air Force Reserves.
“He's a remarkable man. I'm very proud to be his daughter,” says Searle’s daughter Helen Searle.
Helen fondly remembers her dad in uniform.
“There's nothing like a man in a red serge, you know, still to this day,” says Helen.
Nearing his 97th birthday, Searle still goes to RCMP veterans conventions across the country and stays in touch with friends by email.
“Him being on the computer, it's kept him in touch with a lot of people across the country and the States, so I'm so glad he has that,” says Helen.
Helen will join her father at the next RCMP convention, lined-up for Quebec City. She says, at this point, he is always one of the oldest vets.
“Last year in Ottawa, he had the honour for about 24 hours, then somebody showed who was a few months older, but he had the glory for 24 hours.”
“Apparently there's a veteran in B.C. who's 103, so I have quite a ways to go to catch him,” says Searle.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Jayson Baxter
