The lance in his hand stopped being a weapon a very long time ago, and that is the point of it. The Musical Ride is cavalry drill that outlived cavalry: the movements are the riding exercises a mounted police force needed anyway, kept on and formalised after the need for them went away. The first official ride was held in 1887 at Regina, in what was then the District of Assiniboia, under Inspector William George Matthews — not, as the story usually goes, a decade earlier at Fort Macleod. It is still ridden by thirty-two serving members of the force rather than by performers; every rider is a police officer who volunteered for it and learned to ride afterwards. They tour from May to October, visiting forty to fifty places a season, and turn out for state occasions with as many as forty-four horses and a guidon party, or eight for lesser ones. If you want a measure of how completely the drill has become a national emblem, one of its formations — the Dome — is printed on the Canadian fifty-dollar note. A cavalry manoeuvre, performed by police, on money.

The figure is one of those riders turned out for it: scarlet serge, Stetson, breeches with the yellow stripe, brown boots and gauntlets, dark horse, and the lance with its red-and-white pennon carried upright. The force behind him was raised in 1873 as the North-West Mounted Police and has worn the same colour ever since — it was a British scarlet from the beginning, in a reign that ended just as the ride was becoming a fixture, and Queen Victoria is in this collection a few shelves over. The two figures that complete the set are the dismounted RCMP trooper and the female trooper, and the three of them stand together as well as any group W. Britain make.

Model: 10174 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 mounted figure