The .455 Colt New Service and the RCMP

By Garry James

When I was a kid back in the 1940s and ’50s, there was a great program — first on radio and then on television — called “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.” Each week, the show’s eponymous Mountie and his trusty Alaskan malamute sidekick, Yukon King — a canine prodigy that made Lassie and Rin-Tin-Tin look like obedience school dropouts — brought us thrilling tales of derring-do set in the days of the Great Klondike Gold Rush.

Even now I can’t listen to the drama’s theme song, von Reznicek’s “Donna Diana Overture,” without visions of the intrepid lawman mushing across the frozen wasteland in pursuit of some evil-doer, urging his sled team with the immortal words, “On, King! On, you huskies…”

It turned me into a lifelong North West Mounted Police junkie and led to my acquisition of any number of bits and pieces of NWMP, RNWMP and RCMP memorabilia for my collection, not the least of which is the force’s ultra-romantic Colt New Service revolver.

In the middle of the 19th century, Canada’s Northwest Territory, and its more …Read the Rest

Source:: Guns and Ammo