A historic wood carving of an Indigenous figurehead has been gifted to the Medicine Hat Police Service Museum by the granddaughter of one-time police Chief James Bruce.
Bruce held the chief’s post from 1912 to 1916 and returned for a second term from 1918 to 1919.
An inscription on the reverse identifies the piece as “A Rough Ride,” carved by D.G. Hodgson on April 27, 1929, from hardwood sourced in the Red Deer Valley badlands near Dorothy, Alberta.
According to the Medicine Hat Police Service, Hodgson gave the carving to Bruce that same year; it stayed with the Bruce family for almost 100 years before being presented to the museum on September 22.
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