Many stories about the Royal Canadian Mounted Police conjure up scenes of a Mountie on horseback tracking a desperado across hundreds of miles of snow-covered wilderness somewhere in the Northwest Territory.

These days it doesn’t usually happen that way. Like the time last month when an Irishman named Sullivan smashed his way into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Detachment Office in Grande Prairie near Edmonton in Alberta Province.

It’s nearly 1 a.m. and Sullivan is armed with two .22-caliber pistols when he bursts through the glass doors of the RCMP stationhouse with guns blazing. Walls and office equipment are peppered with bullets but no people are injured.

Mounties in the back of the station take cover while officers on the outside keep the gunman pinned down in the front lobby. Civilians in neighboring buildings are evacuated, including 70 senior citizens from a housing complex next door.

Mounties, local law enforcement and firefighters set up a command post in a firehall across the alley from the barricaded RCMP office. Constables have a tough time keeping the curious away. Some of the onlookers have just come from a fireworks display and assume that this is a continuation of the entertainment. It is not.

At first, nobody knows for sure what the gunman’s motivation is for breaking into the RCMP station.

One Mountie telephones the gunman in the lobby and has a brief conversation with him. Now there’s little doubt about the Irishman’s motivation. "He’s driven by alcohol," the Mountie says.

Moments after the telephone call the man lays down his guns and comes out with his hands on the back of his head and surrenders. It’s 5 a.m. Michael Rafferty Sullivan, 45, is locked up in one of the cells in the back of the RCMP station. He is charged with four counts of "endangering life by firing a revolver," and with eight other charges related to the trashing of the RCMP office.