May 1973 — VOL. 54, No. 5 — A Century of Law
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The Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
completing this month its hundredth year of service, has the
most extensive area of jurisdiction of any single police force
in the world. Its beat is 3,256 miles from Atlantic to Pacific
and 3,000 miles from Canada's southern border to the North
Pole. Celebrations from coast to coast of this vast territory
mark the Centennial, graced by the presence in Regina, site
of the R.C.M.P. training school, of Her Majesty the Queen.
Known first as the North West Mounted Police, with a mandate
to carry law and the Queen's Peace into the Far West, the
Force keeps alive today all the colourful and inspiring traditions
of the past while using the most modern methods of law enforcement.
The North West Mounted Police came into being in 1873, when
a report to the federal government described the Far West
as being "without law, order, or security for life or property."
Its duties included suppression of the whiskey traffic, calming
unrest among the Indians who had been suffering the loss of
possessions to unscrupulous traders, and stamping out lawlessness.
The first three troops of fifty men each were recruited
in the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario. A recruiting notice
said: "Candidates must be active, able-bodied men of thoroughly
sound constitution and exemplary character. They should be
able to ride well, and to read and write either the English
or French language." Payment was $1 a day for constables.
Today's recruitment is nation-wide. The man who joins the
Force is a career man who looks forward to pensionable service,
with opportunities for promotion based on merit. All officers
of the Force are commissioned from the ranks.
The history and development of the Force are told in a 46-page
booklet entitled The Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
issued by the Force, and the terms of enlistment are told
in a booklet entitled A Career in Scarlet.
Not all glamour
Exciting incidents have been seized upon by moviemakers,
but everyday police life has little of glamour. Much of the
Mountie's work is devoted quietly to the prevention of crime.
The R.C.M.P. enforces federal statutes and gives frequent
assistance to and in behalf of various departments of the
Canadian Government. In all provinces except Ontario and Quebec
the Force has an agreement to carry out the duties usually
performed by provincial police. In addition, many municipalities,
cities and towns have an agreement with the Force to police
their areas. In the Northwest Territories and in the Yukon
there is no other police force than the R.C.M.P.
Members of the Force have served Canada in three wars. In
the South African war, the Lord Strathcona's Horse drew its
officers from the commissioned ranks of the N.W.M.P., and
245 members of the Force served with the 2nd Canadian Mounted
Rifles. In the 1914-1918 war, two cavalry squadrons from the
Force saw service in France and Siberia. In the Second World
War the R.C.M.P. engaged in counter-espionage work with such
good success that the authorities were able to announce that
subversive activities had been almost wholly disrupted by
the speedy arrest of hostile elements. Volunteers from the
Force formed a Provost Company in the First Canadian Division.
Special Divisions
Riding is a very minor and emergency aspect of R.C.M.P.
work, but equitation is retained as an incomparable school
of audacity, calmness, perseverance, mental alertness and
sportsmanship. Members of the Force are ranked among the world's
finest horsemen.
The first N.W.M.P. band was organized at Swan River in 1876,
and the band became an official part of the Force's activities
in 1938. The present R.C.M.P. Band ranks among the best on
the continent.
The Air Division, formed in 1937, has aircraft based at
points across Canada, but its work is of particular value
in the Arctic and the sub-Arctic, where vast distances that
once required weeks and months of laborious travel can now
be covered in a matter of days or hours. The Air Division
engages in search and rescue work, carries supplies to R.C.M.P.
posts beyond the Arctic Circle, and makes patrols to enforce
control of hunting and fishing.
R.C.M.P. boats patrol the Canadian coasts and the Great
Lakes as a safeguard against smuggling and infraction of the
marine and fishing laws, and give aid to vessels in distress.
How it started
All these duties and services grew out of an urgent need
to rid Canada's West of whiskey traders and pacify the warring
Indian tribes.
Fortune hunters surged toward Canada's empty land. There
came, too, desperadoes fleeing before the law, seeking to
live where there was not yet any law. Suffering most from
the liquor peddlers were the prairie Indians who rapidly learned
to crave the cheap whiskey and willingly traded their robes
and ponies and buffalo hides for it.
The westward march of the Mounties has inspired many books
and movies. Commissioner George A. French, who was in command,
warned his men of the hardships to be expected, and urged
those who might have second thoughts to apply for discharge.
He entered upon the expedition, therefore, with men who knew
what they were letting themselves in for and nevertheless
wanted to go.
On July 8, 1874, the long scarlet line of N.W.M.P. rode
out from Dufferin, a settlement on the Red River, Manitoba.
For two months the ox carts, wagons, cattle, field pieces
and agricultural equipment crawled westward. By late September
they had traversed a vastness of stark and silent desolation,
throughout which there were probably not more than a hundred
white people.
The Force reached its destination near the location of present-day
Lethbridge, and selected the site of their post. They named
it Fort Macleod in honour of their Assistant Commissioner,
James F. Macleod, second in command of the expedition.
During the first five years of patrolling the plains, not
a single member of the Force lost his life by human violence,
nor did the police fire a shot in anger, yet the law was introduced
and enforced.
The first outlaws brought to justice at Fort Macleod were
four men arrested after an Indian chief reported trading two
ponies for two gallons of whiskey. The whiskey traders were
fined, and the police seized two wagon loads of liquor.
All Canada west of the Great Lakes was opened up by traders
and settlers under the wing of the Mounted Police. The policeman
became, as was required, guide, counsellor and friend; doctor,
settler of disputes and protector. He fought prairie fires
in summer, sought and rescued persons lost in winter blizzards,
carried the mail, and arranged weddings and funerals. These
services contributed more than merely enforcing the law would
have done: they made the law a friend of all the family of
settlers.
Friendly Indians
Meantime, the Force was busy pacifying the warring tribes
of Indians and persuading them into new ways of living. The
Red Coat became the badge of friendly authority. It meant
to the Indians honesty, courage, wisdom and square-dealing.
It was due to this bond of trust between the Indians and
the police that the Blackfoot Treaty was successfully negotiated
in 1877.
The Treaty, signed by the Blackfoot, Blood, Sarcee and Stoney
tribes, surrendered 50,000 square miles of tribal land to
the Government of Canada, established reserves for the Indians,
and provided for treaty payments, food allowances, and other
benefits. The text of this momentous Treaty is reproduced
in a history written by the late Archdeacon S.H. Middleton
at the request of Head Chief Shot-on-Both-Sides of the Bloods
(Lethbridge Herald, Lethbridge, Alberta, 1954).
Chief Crowfoot of the powerful Blackfoot Confederacy, a
significant figure in Canadian history, was the great friend
of the North West Mounted Police. He refused to join Sitting
Bull, Chief of the Sioux, in making war on the white settlers,
and later he rejected the Crees' invitation to join in the
Riel uprising.
After the signing of the Blackfoot Treaty in 1877, Crowfoot
testified to the belief and faith of his people in the Mounted
Police: "If the police had not come to this country where
would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so
fast that very few of us would have been left today. The police
have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from
the frosts of winter."
The Sioux invasion
It was an event in the Cypress Hills, named for the cypress
or jack-pine forests in the vicinity, that stirred the government
to organize the N.W.M.P.
A gang from Benton, Montana, crossed into Canada searching
for horses stolen by a raiding party of Salteaux and Crees.
They came upon a camp of Assiniboines and massacred the inhabitants.
Equally without reason, a camp of Peigans numbering 170 was
killed by white men.
Then came the Sioux, the most powerful, fierce and implacable
tribe in all the north-western states. In June 1876 the bitter
warfare between the United States army and the Indians of
the Plains culminated in a battle on the Little Big Horn River.
Colonel George A. Custer and his mounted force of 250 men
were wiped out by Chief Sitting Bull and his 2,000 well-armed
warriors. The Chief and some 5,000 of his people fled to Canada.
The Mounted Police were hard pressed. They had to snuff
out threatened uprisings, prevent the invaders from persuading
the Canadian Indians to join them in fighting the whites,
and preserve the Blackfoot hunting grounds from the Sioux.
Superintendent J. M. Walsh, with a dozen constables, rode
into the Sioux encampment. Walsh explained the laws of Canada,
commanded the Sioux to keep peace with the Canadian tribes,
and assigned them hunting spaces. Until they returned to the
United States four years later, the Sioux behaved well.
In 1870, just as today, many troubles started because of
lack of consultation and dearth of communication. The government
sent surveyors to lay out the country in townships and sections
for settlement. This alarmed the Métis (persons of
mixed white and Indian blood) across whose lands the surveyors
ran their lines. They feared their homesteads would be taken
from them. Their first uprising has been described as not
so much a rebellion against the British Crown as an assertion
of the basic rights of British citizens.
The North West Mounted Police took part with militia units
in suppressing the second rebellion in 1885.
George S. Howard, former editor of the R.C.M.P. Quarterly,
has an interesting story to tell about this rebellion, associated
with a name famous in world literature. Mr. Howard, now living
in Islington, Ontario, retired from the Force in 1939 after
21 years service, with the rank of Sergeant, and has collected
an extensive library dealing with the R.C.M.P.
His story has to do with the adventures of a gold watch
which belonged to Francis Dickens, third son of England's
great novelist, Charles Dickens. He inherited it upon his
father's death in 1870.
Francis Dickens joined the N.W.M.P. in 1874, and nine years
later he was appointed, with the rank of Inspector, to garrison
Fort Pitt with 24 men.
He was in command there in 1885 when, 35 miles away at Frog
Lake, all the male inhabitants except one were slain. There
were no civilians in Fort Pitt, and the Mounties, outnumbered
ten to one by an Indian war party, retired to Battleford.
Included in the personal belongings left behind was Inspector
Dickens' watch. It found its way to the belt of Wandering
Spirit, war leader of the Cree Indians.
When the rebellion was quelled, the insurgents surrendered
their loot, including the watch, which was returned to Inspector
Dickens. After passing through many hands it reached E. S.
Williamson, grandson of a celebrated Dickensian lecturer.
Mr. Howard, to whose long and persistent search is due the
rediscovery of the watch, said: "The watch that had timed
the pages of Mr. Pickwick in the quiet of Charles Dickens'
study and the duties of Dickens' son in a beleaguered N.W.M.P.
fort, and decorated the war belt of an Indian chief, had an
extraordinary career."
In the Arctic
The story of the North West Mounted Police in the northern
territories is sprinkled with tales of incredible adventure,
hardship, and accomplishment. Their duties are to uphold and
enforce Canada's sovereignty in an area that covers 1,516,750
square miles, about one-third of the land mass of Canada.
Dealing and living with the Eskimo calls for a sense of
humour, fair play, and willingness to do manual labour when
necessary. The policeman who does his share and becomes as
capable as the Eskimo in travelling and hunting gains respect,
co-operation and admiration.
The first post in the true North, beyond the coast, was
established on Herschel Island in 1903, where the N.W.M.P.
put a halt to the harm being done to the Eskimo by whalers
who wintered there.
One incident will illustrate the varied knowledge, the tracking
skill, the initiative, and the courage needed by members of
the Force. A white trader was murdered by an Eskimo on Northern
Baffin Island. Staff Sergeant (later Inspector) Joy carried
out the police investigation, found the body, conducted an
autopsy, and arrested three suspects. In his capacity as coroner,
he held an inquest, and in his capacity as Justice of the
Peace he conducted the preliminary hearing of the charge and
committed the accused for trial. At their trial before a judge
they were found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment.
Discovery of gold in the Yukon thrust new duties upon the
Police. The police presence kept serious crime to a minimum
in a society where criminal elements abounded, and the trained
first aid services of the Police preserved many lives.
Mrs. George Black, who climbed Chilkoot Pass, a 100-yard
notch through a 3,500-foot high barrier of rock in 1898, wrote
in her book My Seventy Years (Thomas Nelson & Sons
Ltd., London and Toronto, 1938): "We left Dyea on July 12
at noon, to walk the dreaded trail of forty-two miles over
the Chilkoot Pass... a trail of heart-breaks and dead hopes.
It was here that I met for the first time members of the North-West
Mounted Police, and I thought that finer, sturdier, more intelligent-looking
men would be hard to find."
The St. Roch
The search for a sea passage north of the continent of America
to Asia goes back at least to Sir Martin Frobisher's voyages
in 1576-1578. Amundsen, 1903-1906, sailed through the North-West
Passage from Davis Strait to the Bering Sea.
In 1940 the R.C.M.P. schooner St. Roch, used on patrol
duties in northern waters and to carry supplies to isolated
police posts, became the first ship to navigate the hazardous
passage from west to east. Then it sailed back through the
passage, traversing waters never before sailed by any vessel.
On another occasion St. Roch sailed from Vancouver to Halifax
by way of the Panama Canal, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate
the continent of North America.
Her adventures started very simply. While lying in harbour
in British Columbia, the most unusual assignment ever given
a police vessel was received by Sergeant Henry Larsen, F.R.G.S.
(later Superintendent), Commander of St. Roch. He told about
it in his report The North-West Passage (Queen's Printer,
Ottawa, 1969): "When our regular duties along the western
Arctic coast were completed, we were to proceed to Halifax,
N.S., by way of the North-West Passage." En route, the vessel
visited the remote Eskimo tribes on Boothia Peninsula and
erected many cairns attesting Canada's presence in the Arctic.
Sergeant Larsen found at Winter Harbour, Melville Island,
a large copper plate inscribed with the Union Jack and the
Canadian Coat of Arms, and the statement: This memorial
is erected today to commemorate the taking possession for
the Dominion of Canada, of the whole Arctic Archipelago laying
to the north of America, from long. 60 W to 141 W, up to lat.
90 north July 1st 1909. It bore the name of Captain Joseph
Elzdar Bernier, Arctic explorer for the Canadian Government.
The achievement of the St. Roch was a triumph for
Sergeant Larsen and the crew of his vessel, but it was also
a moment in history shared by every member of the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police.
The St. Roch made her last voyage in 1958. It was
to Kitsilano Park, Vancouver, where she became the central
attraction at the Marine Museum.
Not backward-looking
While taking pride in its significant service to Canada
over the past hundred years, the Force does not rely upon
its misty past, but is pressing on confidently to deal with
the future.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is one of the world's
best known and most versatile police organizations. It is
continually making refinements and planning new methods to
make life even more uncomfortable for the criminal element.
Six crime detection laboratories at Vancouver, Edmonton,
Regina, Winnipeg, Ottawa and Sackville, using up-to-date scientific
equipment, receive for examination exhibits of all kinds which
are involved in criminal investigations. These services are
available to all accredited police forces and government departments
in Canada.
At R.C.M.P. Headquarters in Ottawa there is one of the oldest
finger-print bureaus in the world. Its facilities are available
to all police forces in Canada, and there is an international
exchange of information between this bureau and the United
States Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scotland Yard, and
INTERPOL, the International Criminal Police Organization.
The R.C.M.P. creed
The duty of the R.C.M.P. is to prevent criminal acts if
possible, to stop their progress when necessary, and to bring
accused persons before the courts.
The law which is enforced by the R.C.M.P. is law which has
grown through the ages, approved by succeeding generations
as a tabulation of what are good and bad acts in society.
The Mounties are not trying to impose restrictions upon society,
but to provide lawfulness so that everyone may be free to
live his life in safety and peace.
"Honour" is a very great word in the creed of the Royal
Canadian Mounted Police. Seeking to give service to the individual
and to the community, members of the Force keep in mind the
three weighty principles of the law: justice, mercy and truth.
The desirability of making the creed and practices of the
Force more widely known has led to a moderating of the reticence
that gave the Mounties the title "The silent force". On taking
the oath of office a member of the R.C.M.P. becomes bound
to maintain discreet silence on many phases of his duties,
thus safeguarding the rights and privileges of all citizens.
This regulation still stands, but in 1952 a Liaison Officer
was appointed, his duty being to make available news and reports
about the Force so as to increase public knowledge of its
aims and work.
An attempt is being made to build closer friendly relations
between Canada's youth and the police, and to show young people
that the police really care.
In many districts there is an enlightened programme of information
arranged between the R.C.M.P., the municipal authorities and
the schools. Members of the R.C.M.P. visit schools, giving
talks on police responsibilities and duties and they participate
in open discussions with pupils.
Uphold the Right
The R.C.M.P. have done so well in preserving the peace and
curbing crime in Canada because of superior organization,
the use of modern equipment, common sense and adherence to
their motto: Maintiens le Droit ( Maintain the Right.
They are men who quietly and incorruptibly take the law into
the far places of the country because of a sense of duty to
be done. They do not use armed oppression, but tact, courage,
understanding and diplomacy.
In his book Canada, The Foundations of Its Future (Privately
printed by The House of Seagram, 1941), Stephen Leacock wrote:
"The North-West Mounted Police became everywhere the symbol
of law and order." He commented on their arduous life, the
patrol of the plains, the control of the desperado, the winter
life in the wooden-shack barracks at twenty below zero. He
concluded his summary by saying: "A poet could write:
'They need no sculptured monument, no panoply of stone,
To blazon to a curious world the deeds that they have done.
But the prairie flower blows softly and the scented rose-bud
trains Its wealth of summer beauty o'er the Riders of the
Plains'."
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