Policing the plains

by R. G. MacBeth

CABIN OF REV. FATHERS LE ROUX AND ROUVIER.
Murdered by Esquimaux, as found by Mounted Police, September, 1915.

And it is very interesting to find in the same year Superintendent Wood, who was in command of the Yukon country with headquarters at Dawson, standing up against reports in Eastern papers which stated that the enforcement of law is lax in that country and morals at a low ebb. Wood heaps up testimony to the contrary. He quotes from two Judges, Dugas and Craig, both widely known and respected, who affirm that law is enforced there as well as anywhere else, and that there are few cities where men and women can go about at any hour as freely and safely as in Dawson. The minister of a prominent church wrote to the London Times and said, "Regarding Dawson, our city is most orderly and seldom is a drunken man seen on the streets. The Mounted Police rule with a firm hand, and life and property are safer in Dawson than in London." A gentleman who spent eleven years in Dawson, interviewed in 1907 in an Eastern city said, "I have seen more trouble and immorality here in a week than I saw all the years I was in Dawson." And Wood winds up by the strong admonition of a man who will not allow his corps to be slandered for laxity in law enforcement: "Let those who are so anxious to redeem the people of this Territory commence their crusade in their own city or town. Judging from the outside Press there are few if any places in Canada that can presume to give Dawson a lecture on morals."

But the Yukon service where the Police were at the beck and call of every case of need or distress or danger, no matter how much hardship and exposure they involved, was taking its toll. The men of the corps were paying the price for the proud privilege of preserving the Pax Britannica in a remote region inhabited by a mixed population and showing a record for justice and law-enforcement such as no area of a similar character in any part of the world had ever seen. For in that year 1908 Inspector D'Arcy Strickland, an officer of kindly generous nature, who had gone into the Yukon with Constantine at the very beginning, died at Fort Saskatchewan, the report stating that he had never recovered from the effects of that pioneer service in the North. In the same year Inspector Robert Belcher, C.M.G., who had won that decoration in the Boer War, retired after thirty-four years' strenuous service. It was Belcher and Strickland who had first flown the flag and established custom-houses amid the snow and blizzards and tremendous cold of those deadly summits of the White and the Chilcoot passes in the days of the gold rush. Wood himself, and Constantine the pathfinder, never threw off the effects of the Yukon days, though the former moved back as Assistant Commissioner to the prairie and the latter did much strenuous work in the Athabasca district where conditions were almost as severe as in the Klondike country. Many others there were, gallant officers, and no less gallant men, who bore the mark of their northern vigils and patrols to the end of their days. And this applies not only to the men of the Yukon but to those who in the Hudson Bay, Peace, Mackenzie and Athabasca areas were abroad in polar seas or on land that for months was hidden deep by snow and ice.

The year 1908 witnessed some notable trips and patrols. In order to wind up all matters connected with the Peace-Yukon trail Inspector A. E. C. Macdonnell was instructed by the Commissioner to proceed from Fort MacLeod via Calgary, Vancouver and the Skeena River to Hazelton in British Columbia to dispose of stores that were there and bring the horses back to Fort Saskatchewan. The Peace-Yukon trail was begun in order to have a road to the Yukon mines over British territory, and during its construction a great deal of valuable information as to the country was acquired and given out in reports by the Mounted Police. But the dwindling down of the rush to the mines rendered the trail practically unnecessary. The British Columbia Government did not desire to assist and police detachments could not be spared, hence Macdonnell's trip. It involved a route by saddle horse and pack train of over 1,200 miles, but it was carried out in perfect order.

Inspector J. D. Moodie, a noted sea and land patrolling officer, was asserting the jurisdiction of Canada in the regions of the Hudson Bay where there was much trading by people from the outside. Sergeant McArthur, who held a lonely post at Cape Fullerton, receiving word that the natives were being urged by traders to kill musk-ox contrary to law, undertook on his own initiative, in the Arctic midwinter, a patrol which lasted fifty days. Sergeant Donaldson, soldier and sailor too, who was to meet a tragic death the next year, made a dangerous voyage from Fort Churchill to Fullerton and return. A patrol with mail went from Regina to Churchill, Assistant Surgeon LeCroix being sent with this patrol. Staff-Sergeant Fitzgerald, hero of many trails, and who also was to find a tragic end in the "white death" frosts of the Yukon, made that 1908 winter a patrol in a whaling ship to Baillie for the purpose of ascertaining the condition of the natives and asserting Canadian jurisdiction. Superintendent Routledge, going from Regina to Smith's Landing, some 1,100 miles, looked into the matter of wild buffalo herds, as did Sergeant Field and Sergeant McLeod, who went from Fort Vermilion to Hay River on a similar errand.

The most extensive patrol of that year was the one undertaken by Inspector E. A. Pelletier, who, accompanied by Corporal Joyce, Constable Walker and Constable Conway and at a later stage by Sergeant McArthur, Corporal Reeves and Constables Travers, McMillan, Walker, McDiarmid and Special Constable Ford, left Fort Saskatchewan on the 1st of June for Athabasca Landing on the way to Hudson Bay via Great Slave Lake, which latter point they left on the 1st of July. They in due time reached Chesterfield Inlet on the Hudson Bay. They were met at that point by Superintendent J. D. Moodie with the Hudson's Bay steamer MacTavish (called after a famous Hudson's Bay Company family). By this boat Pelletier and his men started for Churchill, but the MacTavish in a storm was driven on a reef and totally wrecked. The men all escaped and went to Corporal Joyce's lonely post at Fullerton. Pelletier was anxious to go on to Churchill, but had difficulty in persuading even the natives to go, for they said, "No one travels in December and January—the days are too cold." But the Inspector was thinking of others and writes in his report: "I knew what a lot of anxiety the delay of this patrol would cause and we hurried preparations." The trip was fraught with constant danger from cold and privation, but they made Churchill on January 11. Pelletier modestly says they did not suffer and shows how well off they were when he can state that their dogs were never without food for more than four days at a time! The men ran out of sugar and coffee, but he makes light of that, though both are a great help on a cold journey. They met no natives from whom their stocks of deer and other skins could be replenished, and so when they were stormbound for a day here and there they darned and patched so as to prolong the life of their shoes.

The Inspector lets in some light on the general situation when he writes: "The worst feature of a long journey like this in a country where no fuel is to be procured, is the absolute impossibility of drying clothing, bedding, etc. The moisture from the body accumulates and there are no means to dry clothing to get rid of it in any way, and every day sees it harder to put on in the morning and the beds harder to get into at night, until both clothing and bedding become as stiff as a board from the ice. It is a very uninviting task and disagreeable procedure getting into an icy bed at night and in the morning getting into icy clothes." When both clothes and food were frozen and even the prospect of getting an occasional piece of driftwood was dim, one can imagine the situation and wonder at the endurance as well as the daring of these men.

And when this state of affairs is realized one can appreciate the action of Constable Ford as related by Corporal Reeves and forwarded in the usual way by Superintendent J. D. Moodie, from Fort Churchill. Some driftwood had been secured, and clothes dried when the party, consisting of Sergeant Donaldson (in charge), Constables Reeves and Ford with two natives, were off Marble Island and anchoring their boat, the MacTavish (which was wrecked later, as mentioned). Ford went over to another island in a small boat to get some walrus meat, as they sighted some walrus there. He came back and reported having killed some, and the three constables went over to cut off their heads and bring these over. As they were engaged in this task it began to get dark, so Donaldson and Reeves left for the MacTavish with some heads, leaving Ford on the island to cut up the rest of the meat and one of the natives would come back for him later. On the way to the MacTavish a walrus struck the boat and Donaldson was drowned, but Reeves, who had done his best to help Donaldson, managed to swim back to the island where Ford had been left. Reeves was completely numb with cold and weak with his struggles. There was no means of getting a fire on that island, but gathering all his strength he shouted in the darkness and Ford, who had not seen the wreck, came to his help. Reeves writes vividly of an act of sacrifice on the part of his companion: "By this time I was very numb and helpless through being in the water so long and getting into the night air, which was very cold. My clothing being soaked through, I would certainly have perished had it not been for Constable Ford, who took off my wet clothes and gave me his dry ones—wringing out as much water from my clothes as he could he put them on himself." Then, in this icy suit, Ford searched all night for Donaldson in vain. It was running a most desperate risk of losing his own life, and if done under the eyes of others would have been declared as valorous as the deed of any man who ever rode back to rescue a wounded comrade under fire of the enemy.

Inspector Pelletier's patrol returned to Regina after nearly a year's absence, during which they travelled by trail and water about 3,500 miles, a most extraordinary feat. The report of the patrol decided some important points as to the nature of the country, the conditions of the natives and the places where detachments of Police should be located.