New video live now on the KassDays YouTube channel:
Up Close at the Musical Ride & Behind the Scenes in the Stables! | Fort MacLeod
https://youtu.be/OQuN5CI5cwo <-- Video will go live October 7th, 2026. There was a change in schedule.
We were already at the Fort Museum for the compound walk-through — goats at the gate, wooden towers, chapel, blacksmith shop. That video went up earlier this month. This one is the part that was still sitting on the card: the Musical Ride itself, and then the horses once the show is over and they are back in the barn.
The first public Musical Ride happened in Fort Macleod in 1876. Off-duty North-West Mounted Police started putting their riding drills to music to break up the work. Turns, charges, precision on horseback. What began as something they did for each other became a tradition the rest of the country still recognizes.
What you see at the museum today is not the official RCMP Musical Ride. That troop tours with black Hanoverians and a full 32-rider drill. This is the Fort’s own Mounted Patrol. Replica 1870s red serge. White helmets. Lances. Working horses in a dirt arena inside the palisade. The museum has been running this re-enactment since 1973. It is the only daily on-site Musical Ride of its kind in Canada, and it happens in the same town where the idea started.
The new video is 9 minutes and 36 seconds.
You get the full live performance first. Riders coming through the arena with the watchtowers and log buildings behind them. Formations on packed dirt. Lances up. It is close enough that you can see the work — the timing, the horses listening, the small corrections that keep the line together.
Then the camera goes into the stables.
That is the part I wanted on the channel. After the ride, the horses are unsaddled and cooling out. No music. No drill. Just the barn, the animals, and the quiet that follows a show. If you like horses, that stretch is the reason to watch the whole clip. If you are planning a visit, it is also a good look at what the site feels like once the arena empties.
The earlier walk-through of the fort itself is here if you have not seen it yet:
https://youtu.be/hmdIEmojHj8
The two videos belong together. One is the buildings and the ground. One is the horses.
If you are heading down
Fort Macleod is about two hours south of Calgary on Highway 2. The Fort Museum of the North-West Mounted Police and First Nations Interpretive Centre sits at 219 Jerry Potts Blvd.
The Musical Ride runs through the summer season, weather permitting, usually more than once a day. Museum admission covers the ride. In season they also offer a Saddle Up / groom-a-horse program if you want to help prep a horse and watch inspection before the performance.
Hours and ride times change. Check nwmpmuseum.com before you leave.
While you are in town, walk the Provincial Historic Main Street.
Southern Alberta does this well. A wooden fort, a dirt arena, and a tradition that never really left the place it started.
Long videos go up on Wednesdays. Shorts on Sundays.
See you on the road.
Kass
KassDays
