The Warden of the Plains and Other Stories of Life in the Canadian North-west

Once news of this circulated the following year, around , people rushed to the Klondike in search of wealth, most with no experience in the mining industry. The borders in the region had been disputed since the American purchase of Alaska from Russia in , and most of the influx of prospectors were American.

The mounted police established their headquarters in the boomtown of Dawson City and patrolled out across the Yukon Territory, creating a network of thirty-three posts. When the Second Boer War broke out in , many members of the mounted police wanted to volunteer to serve in South Africa, motivated by sympathy for the British imperial cause and the strong military tradition within the force. Herchmer recruited and commanded a group of mounted police volunteers, who made up almost half of the new 2nd Battalion of the Canadian Mounted Rifles ; many of the other volunteers in the battalion were also ex-policemen.

The mounted police influenced the creation of other imperial units during the conflict. Lord Strathcona , the Canadian High Commissioner in London, raised a unit of mounted infantry modelled on the force, believing this would be particularly suitable for taking on Boer scouting parties. The mounted police continued to face criticism after , through a sequence of allegations in the popular press known as the "Herchmer scandals".

Nonetheless, the force's reputation suffered from the controversy and complaints persisted that the force was oversized, excessively funded and staffed by political appointees. The events of the Klondike Gold Rush challenged this policy, as the force soon became essential to controlling the borders in the far north. After the elections, the new provincial governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan announced their desire to take on similar responsibilities to those in the eastern provinces, but showed no sign of actually establishing provincial police forces of their own.

After the Klondike Gold Rush, the mounted police continued to spread their network of posts across the far north. Extending the police's presence across the region was logistically challenging, requiring the creation of a network of new posts and the use of steamers to move supplies around the coast. The First Nations in the north typically had some prior experience of Europeans, for example through contact with the Hudson's Bay Company, and there was little conflict between the police and these native communities, and few crimes committed.

When Canada entered the First World War in , the government became concerned that national security might be threatened, either by immigrants who still sympathised with their home countries in central Europe, or from citizens of the United States with German or Irish backgrounds crossing over the border.

The mounted police initially began their wartime operations by focusing on the activities of immigrants and carrying out border security, but quickly widened their operations.

The demands of the force's new security role, combined with its traditional policing responsibilities, soon overstretched the police's resources. Conscription was introduced in Canada during the final years of the war, which was accompanied by labour shortages, pressures for social change, and the rapid unionisation of the remaining workforce. Meanwhile, Commissioner Perry had put forward three options for the future of the mounted police: Instead, in December Borden reorganized the federal Canadian security system by splitting the policing of the country geographically, with the mounted police running the western half and reporting to the President of the Privy Council , and the Dominion Police running the eastern side, under the oversight of the Minister of Justice.

The government remained deeply concerned about the Bolshevik threat, and in May the Winnipeg General Strike broke out, creating a national crisis which ministers feared would lead to a revolution. The events in Winnipeg highlighted the chaotic and ill-coordinated management of security issues across Canada, the artificial division between policing organizations in the west and east of the country, and the absence of a single senior leader for security work.

In response, Prime Minister Borden amended the policing legislation in November , bringing together the Royal North-West Mounted Police and the Dominion Police to form the Royal Canadian Mounted Police , with the new force responsible for federal law enforcement and national security across Canada under the command of Perry. When the North-West Mounted Police was formed in , it initially had a rank structure of inspectors , sub-inspectors, staff constables, constables and sub-constables, with the force as a whole headed by the commissioner and the assistant commissioner: George French from —, James Macleod to , Acheson Irvine to , Lawrence Herchmer to and Aylesworth Perry, who led the force until its amalgamation in Although at first the force answered to the Prime Minister, in control was passed to the Secretary of State, an arrangement which was reinforced in the Mounted Police Act of The force was divided into various divisions, each typically commanded by a superintendent.

Although the force was commanded by its commissioner, there was also an influential senior post of comptroller, created in in response to Macleod's financial mismanagement of the force. The NWMP was commanded by a relatively small team of commissioned officers, having an establishment of 25 officers in its early years, of whom around a quarter were medical and veterinary officers, rising to 50 after , a ratio of approximately one officer to every twenty enlisted men.

The officer corps formed part of the social elite in Canada, and considered themselves to be much closer to the prestigious, regular military than to their equivalents in the local police forces. The first enlisted men to be recruited in came from a wide variety of backgrounds, but most had some military experience.

The first contingent of police enlisted for a three-year term of service, but later recruits enlisted for five year periods, with the possibility of their purchasing an early discharge. Early in the force's history, the police lived in buildings that they termed "forts", typically one-storey buildings constructed by the police themselves from logs , with sod roofs.

Commissioner French complained to Ottawa about the "exposure and hardship" that the police detachment were enduring.

North-West Mounted Police

Gradual improvement began to be made in the s and s; the later police barracks lost the title of "fort" and were professionally assembled, made from planed lumber , often prefabricated in the east, and fitted with modern technology and iron beds. The first recruits to the force in were issued uniforms comprising scarlet Norfolk jackets — issued from the militia stores and chosen on the advice of Colonel Patrick Robertson Ross and Governor Alexander Morris — brown belts, white helmets, grey breeches and brown boots, with a round forage cap for their undress uniform. Changes were made in , introducing more elaborate uniforms for commissioned officers based on those worn by the 13th Hussars , with similarly militaristic uniforms for the other ranks, using gold braid to distinguish the non-commissioned officers.

A tension remained between uniforms which were perceived as smart, reflecting the force's military heritage, and practical uniforms which were suitable for the daily work of the police. The first police to deploy to the Yukon equipped themselves with specialised cold-weather clothing, and subsequent detachments were equipped with deer-skin parkas , fur hats and boots. The force's badge emerged around and became commonly used by the late s.

The mounted police were established to be an armed force, primarily due to the perceived threat from the First Nations on the prairies. In addition to rifles and carbines, the police also sometimes carried revolvers. The early recruits used. When the force marched west in , it brought twenty-five British Army pattern lances along on the expedition to impress the Blackfoot First Nation. The force was also equipped with artillery, primarily to deter attacks from the First Nations.

The mounted police initially deployed with horses in , both as mounts and as draught animals, but large numbers of these died on the march, and for much of the s there were shortages of horses, impacting on the police's work. The police did not rely solely on horses, using pack ponies and mules to carry equipment and supplies, and using oxen as draught animals in the early years of the force.

In the early 20th century, the development of the automobile began to make horses redundant for most police work, with the exception of crowd control. The mounted police also purchased various boats for work along Canada's coasts and rivers.

The Keewatin , a sailing vessel, was bought in for use on Lake Winnipeg , but it capsized later the same year. Early on in the force's history, most of its equipment and weapons had to be imported from abroad, due to the lack of indigenous Canadian industry. The early reputation of the force was shaped by journalistic accounts published in the s and s, followed by various biographical accounts written by retired officers.

The first appearance of the mounted police in fiction occurred in Joseph Collin's The Story of Louis Riel , published in These novels used standard characters and plot. British writers often portrayed the police as upper-class colonial soldiers, carrying out their duty in serving the British Empire on the fringes of civilisation.

During the s and s, the force became the topic of many radio broadcasts and films. Radio series such as the Renfrew of the Mounted and Challenge of the Yukon continued the portrayal of the mounted police as iconic heroes, Challenge later translating onto television in the s as Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. The extensive historical archives of the North-West Mounted Police were combined with those of its successor, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police RCMP , in , although the early archives from to had been destroyed in a fire in This traditional, historical portrayal of the North-West Mounted Police influenced that of the RCMP, who used their predecessor's history to build their own status as a Canadian national symbol.

During the early s, professional historians began to reevaluate the force's history. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Warden of the Plains - And Other Stories of Life in the Canadian Northwest (1896) (Paperback)

For the film, see North West Mounted Police film. North-West Mounted Police in the Canadian north. Mounted police commissioners, left to right: North-West Mounted Police in popular media. The popular historian Arthur Haydon, for example, scorned the newspaper accounts which blamed the officers and men as "incapable", "inexperienced" and "careless", arguing that the march was "truly one of the most extraordinary on record", of which "all Canadians might well feel proud.

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Macleod observing that "the difficulties of the Long March Macleod, for example, noting that Irvine's failure to reinforce Middleton "can only be explained by excessive caution Macleod champions the argument that the mounted police's role was marked by their "disinterestedness", suggesting that the force was "effectively neutral in almost all labour disputes".

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