ESTEVAN - Seven years ago, Kolton Tweed submitted an entry through the RCMP’s Name the Foal contest, which encourages kids to come up with potential names for the horses that will become part of the RCMP Musical Ride.
His suggestion to name a horse Noble was picked, and he received a variety of prizes from the RCMP.
Now Noble is back in the news, and Kolton is getting lots of attention.
It was announced earlier this month that Noble, a seven-year-old mare who performed through the Musical Ride, would be gifted to King Charles III later this year at Charles’ coronation.
Kolton’s mother Jodi said they were shocked to find out.
“I received an email on Monday afternoon [March 13] … and I read it, and it was about the RCMP horse Noble, and I thought this was interesting,” said Tweed.
The email was from RCMP Sgt.-Major Scott Williamson, a Rocanville native who is the riding master for the Musical Ride. He asked Tweed to contact him about the horse.
Jodi placed Williamson on speaker phone so that her husband Rob and Kolton could listen to Williamson’s explanation for the phone call.
“When he called to tell us that Noble was no longer with the Musical Ride, I thought ‘That’s a cool gesture that they call the kids and tell them when the horse is retired.’ I was not at all expecting him to then go on to say ‘Well, he’s been gifted to the King.’ That was jaw-dropping, actually,” said Jodi.
While it was cool to pick a name for a Musical Ride horse, they hadn’t thought about it much since then. They never met her during a Musical Ride performance, but they did find out the mare had 90 shows in 50 different cities.
Williamson told them Noble was selected as the King’s riding horse because she has a calm demeanour and an athletic build. As for the name, Williamson described it as “serendipitous”, Jodi said.
Kolton said he came up with the name Noble after seeing it in a book. But the character wasn’t a horse.
Jodi said they read a lot in their family, and suspects the character might have been a prince or a princess in a story.
“We started brainstorming ideas and we thought Noble sounded pretty cool,” said Jodi.
Kolton told the Mercury he was also in shock when he found out about his newfound connection to royalty, but he is really happy and recognizes it’s a really big honour.
“Noble has moved on to bigger and better things,” said Kolton.
Sgt-Major Williamson took Noble over a few weeks ago and will be returning for the coronation ceremony later this year. Noble will be participating in the coronation and is to become the King’s charge horse once the King’s current horse George retires.
“There’s a whole history on the RCMP website of the RCMP gifting horses to the Royal Family, when George was gifted to the Queen, and that the statue of the Queen in front of the legislative building in Regina is actually her on Burmese, which is a black mare that was gifted to her by the RCMP in 1969,” said Jodi.
The RCMP already has photos of the King with Noble and issued a news release about the gift.
While they haven’t been invited to the coronation, the Tweeds have been asked to attend the Musical Ride when it comes to Saskatchewan, so they can be recognized at that time.
“They’d like our family to be their guests, and they will have a gift from them,” said Jodi.
Kolton said he has received a lot of attention. People have been talking with him. He likes horses, and he has friends who are big horse people, so he has been able to ride a horse a couple of times.
It’s been a very surreal time, Jodi said. Winning the contest several years ago was cool and a neat experience, but nobody could have ever imagined that this would have been an outcome, she said.
