A passion for the RCMP and for collecting spurred Ladner's Al Lund to acquire the largest recorded collection of books and magazines on the iconic Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Now he's letting others enjoy the fruits of his 50-plus years of labour.
Lund is almost finished donating his 9,000-item collection to the University of Alberta, which will have the honour of housing the largest collection of RCMP literature in the world.
The collection is located in the university's Bruce Peel Special Collections Unit where it can be accessed for research purposes.
Lund knew at the age of six he wanted to be a RCMP officer one day and with two uncles in the force, he had strong family ties.
"It's in my blood," Lund recalls.
He joined the force at 18 with his first posting in Williams Lake in 1960.
"While I was there something like book collecting was never on my mind as there were no bookstores in town," he says. "I did purchase my first book on Mounties at the local drug store. It was called The Queen's Cowboy. I was just fascinated by the cover."
He was transferred to Burnaby in 1967, a much larger detachment and a larger community.
To get over the culture shock, he would venture around town on his days off and stumbled upon several second-hand book stores. That's where the real collecting began.
With a wife and raising two daughters, he says money was hard to come by, but he managed to pick up about 50 used books in six years.
"In 1973, the RCMP celebrated its 100-year anniversary and suddenly the market was flooded with books, magazines - you name it," he says. "I became obsessed with trying to get my hands on every item I could."
For the next 20 years Lund was able to accumulate more than 5,000 books, magazines, comics and other printed items.
He retired from the force in 1988, but continued to work at the Justice Institute of B.C. until 2012. His partial retirement gave him more time to research, seek out material and with the added income, a greater ability to acquire more.
Then in 1995, with the onset of the Internet and sites like eBay and AbeBooks.com, his collecting took on a life of its own.
"With the RCMP pension and my kids grown up, we had the additional salary so I was in a position to buy everything I could. I had more than 9,000 items," he says.
Years later he started thinking that he needed to preserve his collection for future reference.
"I didn't want to sell it, I wanted to keep the collection intact," Lund says. "I found out that the University of Alberta had just obtained the Sam Steele collection from England. That clinched it for me. With that collection and Alberta playing such a prominent role in the formation of the RCMP, I knew my collection had found its new home."
Over the past nine years he has been sending his collection, 50 or so boxes a year, to the university. Today, almost 99 per cent is in its hands.
To commemorate the collection, Lund wrote a book called Mounties on the Cover, which was released in April. The university also just held a month-long celebration of the collection. Lund was on hand to open it.
"I'm just thrilled that the university now has this. It is in the perfect hands. It was a great joy to acquire this collection. It is now an even greater joy to know that so many other people can enjoy this for years to come."
