Cheam Peak

Author: Sgt. P. Evans (rtd)
Regimental Number 31301

It was a warm Spring Day in March 1977. I was a junior constable posted to Chilliwack City Detachment, at the office, when the Sub-Division Section NCO approached me. He asked, “Why are you wearing that Sam Browne?” My NCO I/C had recently appointed me to lead a new crime prevention initiative. The Section NCO didn’t believe in prevention and disputed the need for a sidearm. He was a gruff fellow from the old school. Previously, he’d investigated a complaint against me during my short tenure at Mission Detachment. I had gotten up into a dust-up with the town’s chief dope dealer. The doper filed a complaint, and I got a transfer to Chilliwack.

The Sub-Division Police Dog Section Corporal Terry Barter and I and our wives had become friends. PSD Major and I had become neighbourly too when the Barter family moved in across the street from my house, arriving on transfer from Nova Scotia. That proximity got me frequent opportunities to accompany Terry and Major on his callouts. Major tacitly permitted me to ride shotgun in the dog wagon so long as I didn’t touch anything. Strict rules govern police service dogs fraternizing with anyone but their handler, yet Major’s eyes always held a hint of acceptance when I showed up. That Spring morning, Terry and “Major” had been called to track an Agassiz Mountain Prison inmate who had disappeared from a work gang nearby.

Retired Corporal Terry (Terrence) Barter is a legendary figure in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Police Dog Service, having served 37 years as a dog handler and 41 years on the force before retiring. He became one of the longest-serving and most widely recognized K-9 handlers in Canadian policing history, famously working with dogs like his renowned German Shepherd partner, Major. In the years of his retirement, the RCMP named a police dog ‘Barter’ in Terry’s honor.

The track crossed a few miles of flat pastureland then across Trans-Canada Highway to the base of Mount Cheam. Known locally as Cheam Peak, the mountain rises like a pyramid to almost 7,000 feet. The track led up the western face, a forty-degree slope of rock and gravel. Another Member, Joe Zatylny, had been tracking with Terry and Major but was not equipped to climb a mountain. I had been following developments by radio and decided to relieve Joe. I took an old, worn-out prisoner van and drove to Joe, who had stationed himself where the track joined the base of the mountain.

Meanwhile, Terry and Major had launched up the hillside in hot pursuit. When I arrived, Joe told me it had been tough keeping up with Terry, whose forward momentum was aided by the pull of a highly incentivized, seventy-five-pound canine. Surveying the slope’s incline, I knew any attempt to catch up to them was futile. However, Highland Helicopters had their hangar nearby, so I drove there, commandeered a Bell 206, and got airborne.

Just as we lifted off, Terry announced over the radio, “Shot fired. Prisoner in custody. Major has a stab wound to the neck. He needs medical attention pronto.” As the helicopter entered a hover opposite their hillside location, I told the pilot over the intercom that I would get out so Terry and Major could board the aircraft and fly to Chilliwack. I would stay on the mountain with the bad guy until the helicopter returned to pick us up. The problem was there was nowhere to land, so we hovered close to the slope, and I jumped out, after all, rookies are invincible. I face-planted like a sack of potatoes, then crawled over to Terry and told him the plan. Terry stuffed Major into the helicopter, climbed in, and off they went. Once it got quiet, I asked the prisoner where he was headed. “The border,” he answered. The US border was many miles and several peaks and valleys away in another direction. When he complained of the bullet in his leg he only heard, “You need not say anything . . . . .”

Major’s wound nearly ended his life. He wasn’t expected to live, let alone return to duty, but he did, passing away from natural causes four years and many, many calls later. Corporal Terrance Barter, Reg.# 25443, was awarded the Governor General’s Order of Merit of the Police Forces and retired after 41 years and 3 months of service. Whenever I drive Highway #1 past Cheam Peak, I look up in vivid memory of Terry and Major, and that warm Spring Day in 1977.