Hudson Judd Milburn

Pillar Location: Pillar VI, Row 14, Column F

Story: 

Just as I began to write this tribute for my father, he sadly but blessedly, passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s and a myriad of physical ailments. This has made the contribution of his story all the more important as right to the end, Hudson’s pride in his involvement with the RCMP was one of his most fondly remembered accomplishments in his long and successful life.

Hudson Milburn (Judd to family and friends) was born in Easington, England in 1926 where his father was a coal miner while mum tended the family. Hoping to avoid the same life-sapping career for their sons, Hudson’s parents immigrated to Canada in 1929 under the Hudson’s Bay Company land settlement program, where they became one of many families to settle the west on a farm near Minburn Alberta. Ironically, the senior Mr. Milburn had to return to the coal mines here to subsidize a scanty farming income.

After what Hudson viewed as an idyllic childhood growing up on a hardscrabble farm during the depression, he joined the RCAF after completing grade 12 in 1946. Upon enlistment, Hudson successfully applied to become a Telephone Linesman under special Air Force Unit No. 1 Land Communications Signalling Unit, responsible for maintaining the telephone lines from Edmonton to the Alaska border. In what would become the start of an affection for the north, Hudson was assigned to the Yukon Territory, stationed at Destruction Bay, 260 km northwest of Whitehorse, and 9 months later, to Koidern River even further into no-man’s land. Many happy memories were formed in this glorious, pristine wilderness though dad had numerous stories of the difficulty in managing freezing temperatures on both body and equipment.

Following his honourable release from the Air Force in 1947, Hudson ventured to Kingsgate, B.C., where his brother, Donald, was stationed as an Immigration Officer. Hudson strongly suspected that his big brother played a roll in the telephone call he received in August 1948 from an RCMP Officer from the Creston detachment stating that he understood dad was interested in joining the RCMP. There is no other romantic story to it – this was how my father would become an RCMP Officer!

On November 19, 1948, after passing, in his words, “all of the exams and invasions of privacy”, Hudson was sworn in as a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by Assistant Commissioner Belcher at the “princely wage of $3.75 per diem”. He then proceeded to Depot Division in Regina where he would proudly become a member of “T” Squad. After completion of training in July, 1949, Hudson was assigned to the Swift Current Subdivision as 3rd Class Constable but 2 short months later, was transferred to Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan. It was in Wood Mountain that one of my very favourite photographs was taken of my father, in full dress regalia, posing with Chief Joe Ferguson who wore his full Indian Chief beaded buckskin and war bonnet. Chief Sitting Bull had taken the remnants of his Sioux tribespeople to Wood Mountain after the Custer Massacre at Little Big Horn, South Dakota. Upon the return of Sitting Bull to South Dakota, I believe Chief Joe Ferguson took over as leader of the remaining Wood Mountain tribe. For decades I had lain great significance to the story behind this “historic” picture until reading my father’s memoirs in 1998. The truth shattered my illusions in the telling of Chief Joe’s delight in getting dressed up in his finery for photo ops in exchange for loose change!

Hudson relates an interesting story from Wood Mountain in the winter of 1950/51 wherein a single woman had given birth to a baby which was found deceased by her mother. The mother wrapped the baby’s body in a blanket and placed it outside where the RCMP officers found it frozen after the death was reported. As low man on the totem pole, my father had the unsettling task of transporting the body to the Pathology Department of the Regina Hospital. After arriving by train in Regina late at night, Hudson had to stay overnight in a hotel before the Pathology Department opened. Having no other option of what to do with the poor baby, he set it outside on the window sill where it would remain in its frozen state until he was able to make delivery the following morning!

After applying for Northern Service, Hudson was transferred to Whitehorse in 1951. Here, because he already owned hobby-based photographic and darkroom equipment, he was called upon more and more often to photograph crime scenes. In 1953, Cst. Milburn attended Identification Class No. 6 at the Ottawa Headquarters and returned to Whitehorse to set up their first, I believe, Identification Section. Humourously, Hudson had $0 for a budget, used his personal photo equipment and constructed for himself a set-up in the basement of the Sub-Division using begged, borrowed and scrounged materials.

In the summer of 1954, Hudson most fortuitously met a beautiful young girl from Ontario who was then working in Whitehorse. Not believing his luck and neither wanting to push it, he won the fair maiden’s hand and they were married 6 short months later in a romantic setting at the log constructed Christ Church Cathedral in Whitehorse. Hudson’s wife, Lorna and I travelled to Whitehorse in 2017 and were delighted to find the old log church still standing as a museum.

Lorna’s most outstanding memory of life with the RCMP occurred in Whitehorse one morning when she and dad woke to a loud banging from outside. Upon investigation, Hudson found a neighbour woman, well in her cups, beating the side of their home with a clothes line pole. Shortly after being relieved of the pole and sent home, she returned to start banging their new car with same pole. As Hudson directed the woman’s husband to get her under control, Lorna yelled at him to watch out, having him narrowly escape the pole crashing down on his head. Enough was enough and dad disarmed the woman again and escorted her to lock up to “sober up”. All in a day’s work but the outcome was that Lorna ended up caring for the couple’s 3 very dirty, noisy and hungry children while their mother went to jail and their father went to work.

During their much enjoyed time in Whitehorse, Hudson and Lorna welcomed the births of their 2 oldest sons, Alan and Richard, but in 1959 the powers that be decided it was time for them to move on. Their next brief stop was in Winnipeg where they continued to proliferate the provinces with offspring in the birth of their daughter, Catherine. In 1961, Hudson was once again transferred, this time to North Battleford, Saskatchewan, where the family stayed long enough to build a home and put down roots.

It was time to pull up stakes again in 1965 with Cpl. Milburn’s brief reassignment to Red Deer, Alberta. Still, they managed to find time to register an Alberta birth with the arrival of their third son, Kent, before transferring to the Regina Subdivision Identification Section in June 1966.

After arriving in Regina, Hudson was quickly promoted to Sergeant and a year later to Staff Sergeant, Identification Supervisor, “F” Division. The Milburn family enjoyed a long stay in Regina which included the Saskatchewan baby, Bradley, born in 1969. The memory of note and great distress during this placement was the October 9, 1970, cold blooded murder of two fellow officers, Sgt. Bob Shraeder and Cst. Doug Anson, during a “routine” domestic dispute investigation south of Prince Albert. The husband, after shooting both officers, hid under the boughs of a distant evergreen where his body was discovered by hunters the next spring. It is believed he shot himself with his own rifle shortly after murdering the officers.

In 1973, with 25 year’s service, S/Sgt Milburn retired from his beloved RCMP and moved the family to Benmiller Ontario where Lorna had grown up. Here, Hudson held positions with the Canadian Order of Foresters as well as with Colborne Township as Municipal Clerk. He also, with questionable financial success though high entertainment value, tried his hand at both rabbit and chinchilla raising. Dad was also a very proud and active member of the Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 109 and in 2017, was able to be actively involved in the receipt of his 70-year membership pin. One of the highlights of my father’s later life was his attendance at the 1998 RCMP Veteran’s Association meeting in Winnipeg where 11 of the original 32 “T” Squad members shared a reunion and many fond memories of their induction into and life with, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Hudson’s family will be forever thankful that he wrote his autobiography in 1998 which has allowed me to share so many of his stories. The pride he took in his membership with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is obvious in his memoirs as well as his every day life. Unfortunately, my father’s last few years were spent in a nursing home where his family visited regularly and spent many hours reading his biography with him and looking at pictures from his earlier life. A straightening of his shoulders and special light in his eyes always accompanied the reminiscing of his RCMP life.

Hudson Milburn passed away in Goderich, Ontario, on January 31, 2020. He was 93.