Contents:
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
- Royal Canadian Mounted Police: History
- Introduction to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
- Resources
- Notes and References
- Guide to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Expansion to a National Role Introduction to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History After the war Newton W. Rowell, a federal cabinet minister, was sent across western Canada to assess the future of the Mounties. The options were either to eliminate the North-West Mounted Police or to expand it to become a national police force. When labor unrest swept western Canada and culminated in the Winnipeg general strike of 1919, the balance was tipped toward expansion. The Mounties were merged with the Dominion Police, who had enforced federal laws since 1868 in central and eastern Canada, and on February 1, 1920, were renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. During the 1920s they were especially concerned with subversion and narcotics control. The force also extended its presence in the north, using a ship, the Saint Roch, as a floating post in the Arctic islands and carrying out pioneering dogsled expeditions across the eastern Arctic. Major General James Howden MacBrien, who was commissioner from 1931 to 1938, directed an expansion and modernization of the force. Training was expanded, and advanced methods of criminal investigation were promoted, including the force's first forensic laboratory. An aviation section was added. Six provinces, including Alberta and Saskatchewan, contracted for policing services (two more were added in 1950). The number of officers rose to 2350. World War II (1939-1945) brought new responsibilities in national security and counterespionage. Potential enemy collaborators were identified and interned. Close liaisons were established with foreign police and security agencies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States. Counterespionage and countersubversion activity became particularly important functions of the RCMP after 1945, when Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its Ottawa legation, defected and turned over evidence of Soviet espionage. The Cold War, a 40-year period of hostile relations with the Soviets and other Communist countries, had come to Canada. For most of the next four decades the RCMP was in the forefront of counterespionage and countersubversion activity against the threat of Communism. In the 1960s two relatively minor security scandals became media sensations and led to creation of the Royal Commission on Security. The commission's report, in 1968, recommended that the security function be given to a civilian agency. This recommendation was rejected by the government. In the late 1960s the force refocused its security work toward an internal threat from terrorists seeking independence for the province of Québec. In October 1970 a terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec, kidnapped the British trade consul in Montréal and kidnapped and murdered the Québec minister of labor, Pierre Laporte. After this crisis the government instructed the Mounties to intensify their undercover operations in Québec. They did so successfully, but some of their methods-break-ins, barn burnings, and other actions of dubious legality-caused a series of scandals in the 1970s. In 1981 a commission of inquiry again recommended that the RCMP's security and intelligence functions be transferred to a civilian agency. This time the government acted, creating the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984. The Mounties still retain responsibility for investigating criminal acts of espionage or terrorism.” (1) Resources Notes and References
Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
Royal Canadian Mounted Police: History
Introduction to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
In the late 1860s the new Dominion of Canada acquired Rupert's Land, a vast region of prairies, mountains, forests, and tundra, from the Hudson's Bay Company. Settlement of this wilderness would inevitably disturb the lives of the indigenous peoples, particularly those who hunted bison, also called buffalo. Consequently, the Canadian government decided to establish law and order on the frontier before allowing settlement so that Canada could avoid the experience of the United States, where the Western frontier was the scene of bloody warfare between indigenous peoples and white settlers.
Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald looked to the British Empire for models of policing. In 1869 the Royal Irish Constabulary was adopted as a model for a centralized, paramilitary force that would keep order until settlement was complete. However, before the force could be organized, the most settled part of Rupert's Land, the Red River colony, became the scene of the Red River Rebellion, a resistance against the transfer to Canadian rule. After the resistance, the area around the Red River colony became the province of Manitoba, responsible for its own law enforcement.
The remainder of Rupert's Land, now called the Northwest Territories, still needed policing. This was brought home to the Canadian Parliament in 1873, when 20 to 30 members of the Assiniboine nation were massacred by American wolf hunters in the Cypress Hills. Parliament passed an act to begin recruiting for the new force, and by the spring of 1874 the North-West Mounted Police had 300 recruits. The force's first commissioner was Lieutenant Colonel George Arthur French. Below him were commissioned officers, of the rank of superintendent and inspector, and noncommissioned officer ranks of staff sergeant, sergeant, corporal, and constable. The force was not only a policing agency: Its commissioned officers could serve as justices of the peace, with limited authority to conduct trials at law.
Lightly armed, using horses for mobility, and clad in striking scarlet tunics, the new force moved west that summer in a long march from Manitoba across the prairies to present-day southern Alberta. There, people from Montana had set up a trading post and were illegally trading whiskey to indigenous peoples. When the Mounties arrived in September 1874, they promptly arrested the traders, thus earning the respect of Chief Crowfoot of the Blackfoot nation. This set the tone for generally good relations between the Mounties and the indigenous peoples.” (1)
Resources
Notes and References
Guide to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
Royal Canadian Mounted Police: Expansion to a National Role
Introduction to Royal Canadian Mounted Police History
After the war Newton W. Rowell, a federal cabinet minister, was sent across western Canada to assess the future of the Mounties. The options were either to eliminate the North-West Mounted Police or to expand it to become a national police force. When labor unrest swept western Canada and culminated in the Winnipeg general strike of 1919, the balance was tipped toward expansion. The Mounties were merged with the Dominion Police, who had enforced federal laws since 1868 in central and eastern Canada, and on February 1, 1920, were renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. During the 1920s they were especially concerned with subversion and narcotics control. The force also extended its presence in the north, using a ship, the Saint Roch, as a floating post in the Arctic islands and carrying out pioneering dogsled expeditions across the eastern Arctic.
Major General James Howden MacBrien, who was commissioner from 1931 to 1938, directed an expansion and modernization of the force. Training was expanded, and advanced methods of criminal investigation were promoted, including the force's first forensic laboratory. An aviation section was added. Six provinces, including Alberta and Saskatchewan, contracted for policing services (two more were added in 1950). The number of officers rose to 2350.
World War II (1939-1945) brought new responsibilities in national security and counterespionage. Potential enemy collaborators were identified and interned. Close liaisons were established with foreign police and security agencies, especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
Counterespionage and countersubversion activity became particularly important functions of the RCMP after 1945, when Igor Gouzenko, a cipher clerk for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in its Ottawa legation, defected and turned over evidence of Soviet espionage. The Cold War, a 40-year period of hostile relations with the Soviets and other Communist countries, had come to Canada. For most of the next four decades the RCMP was in the forefront of counterespionage and countersubversion activity against the threat of Communism. In the 1960s two relatively minor security scandals became media sensations and led to creation of the Royal Commission on Security. The commission's report, in 1968, recommended that the security function be given to a civilian agency. This recommendation was rejected by the government.
In the late 1960s the force refocused its security work toward an internal threat from terrorists seeking independence for the province of Québec. In October 1970 a terrorist group, the Front de Libération du Québec, kidnapped the British trade consul in Montréal and kidnapped and murdered the Québec minister of labor, Pierre Laporte. After this crisis the government instructed the Mounties to intensify their undercover operations in Québec. They did so successfully, but some of their methods-break-ins, barn burnings, and other actions of dubious legality-caused a series of scandals in the 1970s. In 1981 a commission of inquiry again recommended that the RCMP's security and intelligence functions be transferred to a civilian agency. This time the government acted, creating the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984. The Mounties still retain responsibility for investigating criminal acts of espionage or terrorism.” (1)