Canada's Mounties: Myth and Reality
R.C. Macleod re-tells the story of the force that began by policing the Klondike and ended by spying on separatists and 'subversives'.
Canada acquired the police force that is one of its most recognisable symbols almost by accident. When the government of Sir John A. Macdonald passed legislation in 1873 allowing for the creation of a police force in the North West Territories, it was intended to meet the immediate needs of the region for a decade or two and then disappear. Instead, the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) developed into such a popular western institution that Ottawa found it impossible to phase it out long after the frontier conditions it was designed to cope with had ceased to exist. So the NWMP quite unexpectedly emerged as a national police force in 1919 as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). By the middle of the century the RCMP, in addition to its national responsibilities, was the provincial police force in all provinces except Ontario and Quebec, and acted as a contracted municipal police in many towns and cities. The only significant check to the growth of the ‘Mounties’ came in 1984 when responsibility for national security was transferred to the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
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