British Columbia Provincial Police

The British Columbia Provincial Police was a force that provided policing services in BC from the founding of the colony until it was rolled into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division in 1950.  I was motivated to add some BCPP to my collection when I was preparing for my Battle of Ballantyne Pier labour battle games.  The BCPP sent a contingent of Special Constables to support the Vancouver Police for that event.

In their early days, BCPP constables did not have a particular uniform.  That changed in 1923 when they were issued what was called a "frontier style" uniform, similar in cut to that of the RCMP, but in khaki instead of the brown serge tunics and blue breeches of the Mounties.  The BCPP generally wore the same Stetson hats as the RCMP, but would also wear peaked caps depending on conditions.  The Special Constables called in to support the VPD at Ballantyne Pier appear to have been wearing peaked caps, but since the models I obtained from Great Escape Games are wearing Stetsons I decided it was far easier to leave them as is.

From Wikipedia, (Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1894020) , here is a photo of the Specials taken at the Vancouver Court House (now the Vancouver Art Gallery) just before the Battle of Ballantyne Pier.  You can see they are wearing peaked caps!

Researching the BCPP has been surprisingly challenging.  Information on line is scarce, and when I went to the Burnaby Public Library, I found that all the books on the BCPP are in the Special Collection and limited to use in-library only!  However I did find a few useful references and even some ideas that I might use for gaming inspiration.

As mentioned, the figures are from Great Escape Games.  GEG sells them as RCMP, clearly inspired by the wild west-style shootout scene from Brian de Palma's 1987 movie The Untouchables.  While the scene in the movie is completely fabricated, it was great fun and means that I am able to obtain police in frontier-style uniforms for BCPP, RCMP or other forces :)

I did a few hand swaps to replace revolvers with billy clubs.  Fortunately I keep all the sprues from plastic figures, so I was able to dive into my bits box to convert hands holding spears and axes into clubs.

So now I have a great selection of BCPP to supplement my growing selection of law enforcement figures!

Smoke, Stack and Preacherboy

Sinners is one of the best movies of recent years.  On its surface, it's a great, high-energy horror/thriller, but it has layers upon layers of material within it.  I have the idea of putting on a Halloween game this year based on the movie.  Warning - there are likely to be minor spoilers from the movie in this post, hopefully not too much for a movie that was released over a year ago!

The main characters of the movie are the protagonist Sammie Moore, aka Preacherboy, and his cousins Elijah and Elias, better known as Smoke and Stack.  Preacherboy is a blues guitarist.  I converted this figure from one of the Pulp Figures' Night Caravan set with a head swap and a little bit of putty to convert the trousers.  He's not an exact match but close enough for my purposes.  Smoke (blue flat cap) and Stack (red fedora) are from Great Escape Games Chicago Way bootleggers, with a headswap for Smoke.

I'm working on some more characters from the movie, including Annie, Mary and others, and trying to come up with a good scenario and rules for the Halloween game.