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1874
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The scarlet and gold horsemen of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
are a living reminder of Canada’s historic past.
Soon after the adoption of the British North America Act in 1867 the
newborn central government had acquired an enormous area stretching from
the Red River Valley to the Rockies, and from the United States to the forests
of Northern Saskatchewan. The government needed an instrument for the
enforcement of law and eventually for the safe construction of the trans-
continental railroad which was British Columbia’s price for entering Confe-
deration,
Three hundred mounted riflemen, known as the North West Mounted
Police, marched from Manitoba to the Rockies in 1873. Their mission was to
pacify the warring tribes and protect the country from adventurers. Two
years later the force had won the confidence and respect of native chiefs and
their people. To gratify the Indians’ fondness for the scarlet tunics of Queen
Victoria’s soldiers who had been stationed in the West, the police were provided
with the time-honoured dress.
The quelling of the Indian uprising in 1876, the transition from buffalo
hunting to cultivation of the western plains, the construction of the railroad,
the Louis Riel Rebellion in 1885, and the rush for gold in the Yukon in 1895,
have all formed links in the force’s colourful history.
By 1918 the force covered the whole of Canada. Two years later its head-
quarters were transferred from Regina to Ottawa, and it was renamed the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. At this time aeroplanes came into use.
Famous Arctic patrols in 1924 pushed deep into the new territory east of
Hudson Bay. The most important exploration since then was the forcing of
the North West passage in 1942 by the R.C.M.P. Schooner St. Roch. ‘This
historic trip from Vancouver to Halifax lasted 28 months.
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