Policing the plains

by R. G. MacBeth

And we cannot turn over the page of the Boer War and leave it in history without recalling that a few pages above reference was made to the fact that Canada had gone into the war more because she had faith in the judgment of the statesmen of Britain, whose life-long training and world-vision inspire confidence in their decisions, than because she had studied out the situation at first hand. British statesmen have made mistakes here and there, but since the tragic day when through ignorance of the situation they failed to recognize the rights of British colonists on the American continent to have a voice in the government of the country, they have not erred by refusing their Dominions overseas the privilege of governing themselves where they have proved their capacity for so doing. But there was a bold and world-startling faith manifested when they granted self-government to the Boers within a short time after the war ended. True, these same statesmen had led up to it by the ministry of reconciliation exercised by the high-souled Kitchener with a Canadian Mounted Policeman, Colonel Steele, a noted administrator, as Chief of the South African Constabulary. And these and others who worked with them to remove bitterness and misunderstanding from the minds of the conquered Boers had supporting evidence of good-will on the part of the conquerors in the fact that our soldiers had acted chivalrously in the enemy's country during the years of war, so that no woman or child in all that region was ever knowingly hurt or molested. All this with the gift of responsibility transformed our gallant enemies into loyal friends who stood by us splendidly in the recent war, and who contributed to the councils of the Empire in a critical hour the magnificent ability and statesmanship of Botha, Smuts and others.

Meanwhile, in the homeland here in Canada, the steadfast, unflinching and imperturbable Mounted Police were doing their duty just as pronouncedly as their comrades on the veld. They had practically all wanted to go if required, but the Government had interposed and, as we have already quoted, it was not a question of who should go, but who must stay at home. And they were greatly needed here, for nothing is gained by consolidating the Empire abroad if we allow it to disintegrate right under our eyes and around our own threshold. The Pax Britannica—the orderliness of British rule—had to be preserved in the vast spaces of the North and West of Canada. Thousands of potentially lawless men were surging through our mining country in the Yukon, challenging Canadian administration with the dictum that huge frontier mining camps had necessarily to be outlaw regions where every man did that which was right in his own eyes. And it became the duty of the Mounted Police to back the administration of law, to answer the challenge of lawless men, and to prove to them and to the world that the dictum above quoted was a lie in so far as Canada was concerned. And these intrepid men in the scarlet tunic did their duty so well that the world learned a new lesson by seeing policemen preserving order without killing anyone where it could be avoided, even at the cost of their own lives. The Mounted Police know how to use their "guns," but they never in all their history degenerated into "gun-men."

And, in addition to policing the Yukon mining country, these few hundred men had to guard human life and property in the immense stretches of the Middle West where, into a country larger than several European kingdoms, tens of thousands were pouring in a tidal wave of immigration. From the ends of the earth these immigrants were coming, hosts of them, alien in race and tongue, as well as in religion and morals—people who had lax ideas as to the sacredness of human life and the sanctity of home. They, too, must be taught to keep the peace, and to become loyal to the institutions of the free land where they had sought asylum from despotism and oppression. And nothing but consummate tact, endless patience along with unvarying coolness and courage, enabled the men of the old corps successfully to meet this unprecedented situation.

Besides, all that great north country had to be patrolled hither and thither into the circle under the shadow of the Pole itself. Wherever the flag flew, Indians and Esquimaux, as wards of the nation, had to be protected against the dangers of famine, the inroads of sickness, as well as from the exploitation of unscrupulous men. And they, too, had to be taught the sacredness of human life, as well as the rights of private ownership, in order that no loose ideas about property should prevail in the land. Few things, if any, in the history of the Empire equal the hardiness, the courage and endurance manifested in the great patrols of the Police into the ice-bound regions of the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas of Canada. For years the explorers who have searched for the Poles have been the heroes of many a story of thrilling influence on the minds of readers. One would not detract an iota from the achievements of these gallant adventurers. But for the most part they were equipped and outfitted abundantly with everything that money could buy in order that all requirements and emergencies could be met as they arose, and their expeditions were few throughout the years. The Mounted Police, on the other hand, were incessantly at this work, not in parties and highly equipped, but in twos and threes and sometimes singly, with nothing beyond their winter and summer uniforms and dependent largely on their own efforts for food, as they were not possessed of the means of carrying any large quantity. Many of these men probably said, as Inspector F. H. French recorded in his diary during the famous Bathurst Inlet patrol, of which we shall read later: "Have had no solid food for two days, and every one is getting weak; dogs are dropping in their harness from weakness. This looks like our last patrol." Only a brave man could write down words like that, and it detracts nothing from the splendid courage of him and his men that the words were not long written when providentially some deer were sent across their path and saved these men for future work. These men who went out on patrol only gave the barest outline of their experience in the reports which they had to make to their superior officers, and through them to Ottawa, but those who know the country could read between the lines and feel the thrill of admiration and wonder. And these same officers, when not on the particular patrol they were commenting upon, paid unstinted praise to their men in their own reports, but even these reports were buried in the mass of material in the Department, so that the public did not see them. But once in a while we get hold of some comment, as when Superintendent Perry referred to one patrol and said "nothing greater had been done in the annals of Arctic exploration." Or when Inspector Sanders referred to the leader of another patrol and said his action "was in keeping with his brave and manly character." And I like the way in which Superintendent A. E. C. Macdonnell, with some manifest diffidence, introduced into a report from Athabasca Landing the following quotation from the Toronto Star:

"The world takes a lively interest in Polar expeditions, but Canada supports a Northern Police patrol of which very little is heard, and the journeyings of some of these men is quite as daring as anything connected with searches for the North or South Pole. They contend with the same conditions, are inexpensively equipped, and, as a rule, succeed in all that they undertake. A sheet or two of foolscap, giving to the Department at Ottawa an official report of their travels and observations, is the only record that survives. And very few ever read these records, although they sometimes thrill those who do read them."

One other important duty fell to the lot of these Policemen in the home country, and reference has been made to it in the earlier pages, namely, the self-imposed duty of becoming builders of the country by making known the resources of all its various parts. And when they made known the resources of the country they, without any gain therefrom themselves, protected those who came in to develop them. Sometimes they had to protect these people against themselves. In the Yukon gold rush the Police threw a cordon around the entrances to the mining country and prevented foolhardy, unfit and unequipped men and women, crazed with the gold lust, from venturing a journey which would have meant their falling frozen by the wayside or being lost in the angry rapids, which even the inexperienced were ready in their ignorance to essay. These gold-seekers were allowed to go in when they were prepared or when they were under the care of men of experience. Similarly, at the time of this writing, the Police in the Athabasca, Peace and Mackenzie areas are guarding the ways to the reported oil fields of the North, so that the unfit in their wild desire for reaching oilfields may not perish in the midwinter, whose rigours they do not understand.

Yes, the Mounted Police, few and scattered in detachments, from the Great Lakes to the Yukon, and from the boundary line to the Pole, had enormous responsibilities at home, while many of their fellow-citizens were abroad in the Boer War. And the man who was Commissioner of the Police during that period had a burden to carry which only those who knew the situation can estimate. That man was Superintendent A. Bowen Perry, who succeeded Colonel Lawrence Herchmer in August, 1900, but who, from the time of the big gold stampede into the Yukon, had largely the direction of things there, and had taken over the command personally at Dawson City when Steele left there in the fall of 1899. Colonel Herchmer, who had been Commissioner from 1886, was an able and conscientious officer. He had gone over to the Boer War in command of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, but had to come back on sick leave, when he retired also from the Commissionership. From the date of Herchmer's appointment to the Canadian Mounted Rifles to Perry's accession to the Commissionership of the Police, the command of the latter body had been ably held and administered by Assistant Commissioner McIlree. Colonel McIlree, who retired from the Force a few years ago, and whose services won the recognition of the Imperial Service Order, was one of the original men of the corps, having joined at the outset in 1873. He had, therefore, a long record of highly important and creditable service when he retired in 1911, after thirty-seven years on the frontier.

REV. R.G. MACBETH, M.A.