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The Mounties Got Their Man
 Herman
Bittner's shed is locked in time. It's a decade and a half out of
date. Inside the storage barn, behind his place south of Calgary
(Alberta, Canada), he stockpiles left-over novelty calendars from
the early '90s. The calendars made Bittner money and nationally
infamous. And he takes pride of his footnote in history to this day.
His calendars ridiculed the notion that Sikh Mounties (Royal
Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP) should be able to wear turbans
instead of the traditional Stetson hat.
"That was the attitude - out here in the west, we're a little more
vocal," the 59-year-old businessman tells me.
Damned by human rights groups, including the Ontario Human Rights
Commission, the $6 calendars lampooned the uniform change. During
the crescendo of the national debate, despite the uproar, he sold
more than 13,000. His was just one of the angry - although his was
extreme - voices raised over the changes to a uniform which had
previously gone through several less raucous reincarnations.
Other Alberta vendors sold anti-turban pins. Several MPs opposed
inclusion of religious elements into the uniform. An unsuccessful
lawsuit was filed on behalf of retired Mounties.
Baltej Singh Dhillon heard the voices. And many more. But they
didn't stop him then. And he doesn't resent them now.
2006 marked the fifteenth anniversary since the devout young man
from B.C. graduated from the RCMP training academy in Regina
(Saskatchewan, Canada), as the first officer allowed to wear a
turban and unshorn beard. Today, he's a seasoned sergeant on the
force.
"I have to thank them for using the words they used," he says of the
critics. "I'm tougher for having come through it."
While May was the anniversary of the changing face of the RCMP,
Dhillon actually counts his years from August 30, 1990 -- the day he
signed up and took his oath.
The Malaysian born officer came to Canada when he was 16 years old.
He didn't intend to redefine 118 years of history - or even become a
police officer. He wanted to be a lawyer. To help with a volunteer
component of that study, he began giving his time to the Surrey,
B.C., RCMP detachment.
That community was seeing an unprecedented influx of immigrants from
Asia. Often, Dhillon would be used as a translator. Those new
Canadians assumed he was an officer. And soon, he began to feel like
one. Or, at least, what it would mean to hold that title.
He turned his back on his dream to become a lawyer, and set his
sights on wearing the Red Serge uniform of the RCMP. His family was
supportive, though his brother did try to convince him to follow him
into chemical engineering.
"Today, he has a nicer car," Dhillon says of his brother, but adds:
"However, mine has a siren and flashing lights."
During the early months and even years, he never saw himself as a
symbol or a role-model - though others did. Instead, he was content
to focus on becoming a good police officer, without having to
sacrifice his religious ideals.
Some fellow officers - including a crusty sergeant who came to see
him as a son - told him they were against the changes. Dhillon
simply thanked them for their honesty.
But there were times when he wasn't so forgiving. "I would read the
newspaper and feel very disabled," he recalls. "That I couldn't
stand in front of those people, walk into their living rooms, and
say: 'This is what I stand for.'"
And there were also moments of face-to-face inspiration. When he
graduated, Dhillon's posting was to a detachment in Quesnel, B.C.,
which had a population of just 65,000.
On his first night in town, while his wife Lisa was elsewhere, he
sat drinking coffee in a local Tim Hortons. His mother and younger
sister sat with him.
QUICK JUDGMENTS
 They
heard the sound of motorcycles pull up. A rough looking crew entered
the coffee shop, and began to, off and on, stare over at the new
officer. The bikers moved toward Dhillon's table. He recalls
whispering directions to his family -- 'leave quickly', 'call the
police' - while counting down his own list of training tactics.
Then, in a flash, the first biker to stand in front of him extended
his open hand, to ask if he was the new Sikh officer in town. They
simply wanted to welcome him.
"I learned I was doing what others had done to me - I made quick
judgments on looks," he now recalls, from his office.
He works in a Surrey RCMP branch which specializes in interviewing,
including giving polygraphs. He has a gift for reaching people -
tearing back curtains with just his voice. People seem to respond to
his natural empathy, says RCMP Insp. Don Adams, who has worked with
Dhillon for years.
"He's very good at understanding people," reasons Adams, who never
opposed the inclusion of turbans and beards. "What I've always cared
about (in 32 years on the force) in the quality of the members."
Dhillon worked on the lengthy investigation of the 1985 Air India
terrorist-caused crash which killed 329 passengers. But it's lesser
known cases which he judges himself by. They include counselling a
teenage boy who started a fire in his home -- accidentally killing
family members -- because he longed for attention. Then there was
facing the killer of a 20-year-old suspected drug dealer.
FELT LIKE A PREACHER
And helping to solve a crime and save a marriage after a man had
burned down his own home. When Dhillon interviewed the man, he was
told the arsonist didn't fear justice for what he had done -- he
worried his wife would leave him.
"I told him I'd be willing to sit down and talk to her with him --
he couldn't believe a police officer would do that," Dhillon says.
"I felt like a preacher." He did talk to the man's spouse, even as
his own wife, Lisa, waited outside in their vehicle. The woman
promised to stand by the man, as he faced justice.
"Those are the moments I think about," adds Dhillon, a father to
8-year-old daughter Rasna and 14-year-old daughter, Onkar. He would
have no problem with either of his children following his bootprints.
When he began, people would check and recheck his badge. They would
make him wait, until another RCMP officer arrived. Today, that
seldom happens. The image he walked through fire to earn and
maintain - a proud RCMP officer and baptized Sikh - is now no longer
so risky or controversial in Canada. While the service doesn't keep
statistics on how many members now wear turbans, the loud voices of
opposition have been dulled by time.
Outside of Calgary, Herman Bittner still has some left over
calendars -- reminders of a different year in Canada's history. They
sit, largely collecting dust, in a shed. He still believes as he did
-- religion is private and not to be worn by the Queen's cavalry.
But there's no longer any great, national demand for the coarse and
tactless way he tried to express that.
LIFE-SIZE DOLL
A province over, in Dhillon's living room, there's a giant,
life-size doll, made by an Alberta family. It sports the uniform and
turban, and the strangers sent it to the officer, out of admiration,
on his graduation day, more than fifteen years ago.
The RCMP sergeant keeps it out of storage and moth-balls. He's sure
whatever message you take from that, it speaks louder than the
voices which used to say the kind of justice Dhillon wanted should
be impossible to find in Canada.
[Courtesy: The Toronto Sun]
16 May, 2007
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