RICHARD ALLEN SCOTT - Through the Years

RICHARD ALLEN SCOTT
THROUGH THE YEARS
1985
In March of this year, and with 18 years of service, I was promoted to Sergeant, but not without
grievances filed by other members in the Directorate, as I had not been there long. More than a
few noses were out of joint.
In the same month, a civilian security guard
Guard shack
was shot and killed at the Turkish Embassy in
Ottawa. The storming of the embassy began
shortly before 7AM., when three militants in a
rented moving truck arrived at the embassy
gate. They scaled the security gate and
began shooting at the bulletproof security hut.
A 31-year-old student from the University of
Ottawa, was on duty. As soon as the attack
began, the guard called in the emergency
code and left the hut to confront the gunmen.
He fired four shots at the gunmen and took
Turkish Embassy and Residence - Ottawa
two shots in the chest, which killed him
instantly. Using a powerful homemade bomb, the gunmen blasted open the heavy front door of
the two-storey, Tudor-style home and embassy office. Once inside, they began rounding up
hostages, including the wife of the Turkish ambassador, his teen-age daughter and embassy
staff members – at least 12 people. The Ambassador escaped by leaping from the second-floor
window at the back of the embassy, breaking his right arm, right leg and pelvis. Within three
minutes, police were on the scene. Four hours later, the gunmen released all hostages and
surrendered. With the blood still wet on the driveway, I was quickly mobilized and sent to the
guard shack for midnight shifts. The only TV station with reception in the guard shack went off
the air shortly after midnight. You can only walk around the building so many times. Once the
RCMP had organized their logistics, I was returned, after about a month, to my assigned duties
in HQ. What a huge relief that was.
Later in 1985, Angus managed to convince the
executive of his requirement for a standalone
desktop computer, an IBM Personal Computer
AT, more commonly known as the IBM AT and
also sometimes called the PC AT or PC/AT. It
was IBM's second-generation PC, designed
around the 6MHz Intel 80286 microprocessor
and released in 1984. The name AT stood for
"Advanced Technology", and was chosen
because the AT offered various technologies
that were then new in personal computers. I
believe the cost was around a frightening $25,000. And I was the one who got to ‘play’ with it
pretty much all the time. We even convinced the mainframe techies that security was not an
issue and so were able to ‘plug it in’ to the network. Jealousies in the Directorate were extreme,
to say the least. This was the only desktop in the Force. Plus, I had a desktop colour plotter, to
make ‘pretty pictures’.
June 2017
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