These men and women
are some of the newest members
of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
also known as the Mounties.
The RCMP is Canada's federal police force,
known worldwide for their iconic scarlet tunics,
referred to as the Red Serge.
Each cadet gets fitted for their tunic
about halfway through their
26-week training program.
Cadet: It's a really exciting moment.
It makes you very proud to be here.
Cadet: When you put it on, you feel pride.
Cadet: I cannot believe it when I saw myself in the mirror.
Narrator: While this is what you're likely
to see Mounties wearing in the field,
the Red Serge is worn at ceremonial events.
It's part of what's known as the kit
that's issued to the 1,000 cadets
that graduate from the RCMP training academy each year.
Along with the tunic, the uniform includes
trousers known as breeches,
a Stetson hat,
a Sam Browne belt,
and a pair of high leather Strathcona boots.
The tunics are made by a company in Quebec
before being shipped here,
to the RCMP Academy in Regina, Saskatchewan.
They're made of wool and include a satin lining.
Sean Lussier: Right now they're not
as comfortable as you would think,
but they are custom-made primarily for the look,
so they're not gonna be as functional
to do your everyday kind of job in them.
Narrator: Here at the academy,
a team of 20 tailors perform
all the alterations for each cadet.
Nila Filoteo: About eight of them are custom tailors,
and the rest are general tailors,
and general tailors usually
do the pants and the breeches,
and the custom tailors
are the one that does the red tunic.
We take them apart, we put them together,
and do the alterations.
Narrator: Alterations for each tunic
can take up to two days.
Tailor: Now you try on the overalls.
Narrator: If an officer outgrows his or her uniform,
they simply request a new one
at no additional charge to them.
According to the RCMP, the total cost
of each cadet's uniform, including the Red Serge
and their normal duty clothing,
comes out to about 4,500 Canadian dollars.
And about $500 of that cost is for the boots.
Each pair is handcrafted
by the Alberta Boot Company...
before being sent to the leather shop
at the RCMP Academy,
where each pair is custom fit to each cadet.
Rod Johnson: So, we look after all of the
brown ceremonial leather.
Each pair of boots
is fit to each individual cadet,
whether that means stretching them
or making them smaller.
To stretch them,
they are soaked in a tub
and then we open them up with a series of blocks.
A block that mimics the calf,
a block that mimics the shin,
and then, depending on the amount we need to stretch them,
we open them up to the appropriate size
that we need for each individual.
Once we reach that size by blocking them like that,
then we put them in our drying booth,
and they dry for about a week so that
they will take that shape permanently.
We do up to 32 pairs of boots in a week,
and then they're issued to the cadet,
and they begin to do the arduous task
of putting 20 to 40 different coats of polish on them
so that they no longer look one-dimensional.
After the cadets are done polishing them,
they look more three-dimensional.
Narrator: They might look shiny,
but these pictures don't quite do them justice.
When you see them in person,
these boots boast an almost otherworldly sheen.
To get there, it takes a lot of polish.
Chris Darcy: We used to make them pay for it, but now
Her Majesty decides she's gonna buy us polish.
This is one of the techniques.
The idea here is to build up the color.
You see, the difference in color is pretty drastic
for polished boot and unpolished boot.
We get it, it's superhot water,
and put a coat of polish on here.
All we're doing is take the hot sponge,
and we simply are rubbing the polish in.
And it looks like it's doing nothing,
and all that's happening is we're filling in the pores.
So we would do about 20 coats of these.
One of the tricks we do, though, is we take pantyhose.
You put an old pair of socks in there,
and it's kind of like when you sand your car,
you start with coarse grit and go to a finer grit,
and these pantyhose are actually a little bit finer grit,
and we'd actually just brush it off.
The longer you go, you start getting character in it,
and it has a bit of a marbling effect
as it takes the grain of the leather.
All those memories you make
shining boots with your troop mates.
Each pair of boots kind of tells its own story.
Lussier: The Red Serge is just one of those things
that just kinda stands out as being
as Canadian as it can be.
Johnson: That, you know, signifies to them
that they're becoming a Mountie
'cause that is, you know, one of the iconic symbols
that separate the Mounties
from other police forces in the world.