Page 102 - Barrel Stallion Register 2024

LOOKING BACK
by David A. Poulsen Reprinted frome SPEEDHORSE Summer Barrel Stallion Edition, June 2012
Editor’s note:
Grant and Rayel Little’s MJ Segers Fast Lane (The Goodbye Lane-SKS Running Faucet, Diamond Faucet) made history when she broke the standard pattern record for the Pink Buckle. Ridden by Brandon Cullins, the 2017 mare ran the pattern in :16.521, winning both the second go-round and the 2023 Pink Buckle Derby Average Championship. (See News Briefs page 134)
There’s not much about Grant Little
that could be termed average. From his imposing stature—6’4”, a solid 230 pounds, to the steely, intensely focused way he looks at the world around him, to his range of successes in vastly unrelated endeavors. He is a man who, simply put, stands out.
Even as a boy growing up in rural Manitoba, Canada (Hartney, population 400, three
hours southwest of Winnipeg), he didn’t share the dreams of most western Canadian boys. While they dreamed of careers in the National Hockey League, Grant had his eyes fixed firmly on a career in law enforcement, specifically
the Mounties—the affectionate nickname Canadians have given their national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
By age 21, the dream was reality; Grant was RCMP Constable
Grant Little and spent the next ten years carrying out his policing duties at a number of Saskatchewan postings. But never one to settle for the ordinary—even when the ordinary is pretty good—Grant jumped at the chance
to become a member of the RCMP Special Operations Corps.
“From day one of my time in the RCMP, I knew I wanted to be a part of a select group of exceptionally trained personnel who could perform extremely demanding tasks,” Grant explains. “People need to know, for example, that when someone from their family is taken from them by bad people, there is a team of skilled professionals who will do all that is necessary to get that person back.”
While, for security reasons, Grant is not able to give details of specific missions, one quickly realizes that this is a man, who with his team members, has looked death in the face on a number of occasions...and never flinched.
He puts it another way. “We have breathed the devil’s air.”
And while he is clearly proud of the things he accomplished as an elite Special
Ops member—from guarding the likes of Margaret Thatcher and
Mikhail Gorbachev during state visits to Canada, to rooting out armed and barricaded
individuals—he is quick to deflect the credit. “I was
able to do the things I did because of the training I
received and the people I had around me”.
For much of his time in the Special Operations Unit, Grant was Team Leader. In hundreds of operations, many
of them hostage rescue incidents, he was first to step into the danger
zone—to enter the building occupied by the
armed and dangerous people, to lead his team members literally into the field of fire.
In all of those situations as he and his team put themselves in harm’s way for people they will never know and who will never know them, he relied on three words that stand as the Grant Little credo...Don’t stop believing.
“I never once thought that I or my teammates would be killed on any operation.”
Turns out he was right. Grant’s team
never lost a man while he was leader, an accomplishment he is justifiably proud of. And that might be a big part of why, when it was time for him to step away from his special ops work, Grant received an honor never before
or since bestowed on a team member. His call sign A1 (Alpha One) was retired, not by the government but by the people Grant worked alongside of for so many years.
It wasn’t the last time Grant Little would have his name associated with the words “first” and “only.” In 1999, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police celebrated the 125th anniversary of its famed “March West,” a significant moment in the opening of the Canadian West by
staging a historic re-enactment of the ride. The original trek traveled from Fort Dufferin, (now Emerson, Manitoba) to Fort Macleod and Fort Saskatchewan in the Northwest Territories (now Alberta).
Participants in the re-enactment were RCMP members and civilians, and they came from all over Canada, the USA, England and Europe. Constable Grant Little was the only person to ride the entire route, a three-month journey, dressed every day in the North West Mounted Police period uniform. He approached the ride with the same dedication and determination that were trademarks of his special ops work.
“The weather was definitely the biggest challenge,” Grant smiles. “We had rain for 29 of the first 35 days and temperatures in the thirties and forties. And the wind made that rain pretty much horizontal. It was tough.”
The hardships of the ride were more than offset by the crowds of cheering families in communities across the west who gathered
Alpha One, RCMP Corporal Grant Little’s Special Operations designation, is the only call sign ever to be retired from active police service in Canadian history.
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