Horses were sacrificed for the arrest, but the M.P.s are worse than bloodhounds when they scent the track of a smuggler, and they fetch their men every time.
—John J. Healey
Fort Benton Record (Montana), 1877
*
Perhaps no other national image so perfectly symbolizes the degree to which women were positioned as unequal members in Canadian society as the figure of the dashing Mountie. Since the nineteenth century, the Mountie has served as both an iconic symbol of Canada and an ideal representation of Canadian manhood. With his imposing physique, tailored red tunic, riding boots, and Stetson hat, few images better invoked ideal masculinity than the virile hero astride his horse. The Mountie was not only a gendered representation of Canada, but a racialized one. As a representative of the state, the Mountie symbolized the dominance of white men over civilized society. Indeed, for much of its history, the RCMP was composed solely of men of Anglo-Celtic birth or descent.[10] Aboriginal people, women, and ethnic and cultural minorities were not considered suitable as regular members of the police force for the better part of one hundred years. Policies such as these tell us a lot about the assumptions and traditions from a previous century that shaped the foundational beliefs of the police force, beliefs that persisted long after the arrival of women in 1974.
The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was the brainchild of Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald. As early as 1869, Macdonald envisioned a mounted force that would serve both a civil and a military function in the newly acquired North-West Territories. The police force was essential to attracting white settlers and economic investment to the region, and its presence was meant to communicate that the more than fifty thousand Aboriginal people living on the land were peacefully assimilated.[11] American whiskey traders had long been involved in selling illegal alcohol to the Aboriginal population north of the border, contributing to increased alcoholism and unrest. The Canadian government was anxious to end the whiskey trade, and an armed police force was viewed as a way to enforce liquor prohibition. Macdonald was inspired by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the Empire’s largest and most professional police force at the time. Organized to control civil strife and social unrest in Ireland using men from the local population, the RIC served as a model for many of the Empire’s colonial forces.[12] Macdonald planned to build a similar paramilitary force.
But the formation of the police force encountered a number of economic and political delays until a crisis threatened to dismantle the government’s plans. In 1873, anarchy on the prairies appeared imminent when ten white hunters from Montana crossed the border into Saskatchewan and murdered thirty-six members of an Assiniboine tribe they suspected of stealing their horses. The event, known as the Cypress Hills Massacre, spurred the government into action, and thirteen days later, on May 23, 1873, the NWMP was hastily formed. An initial contingent of 150 men was dispatched from eastern Canada to Winnipeg, Manitoba, later that summer. Recruits enlisted for three years of service and were paid one dollar a day.[13] The mandate of the Riders of the Plains, as Mounties were sometimes called, was clearly summarized in the final stanza of “The Riders of the Plains,” a poem written for the Saskatchewan Herald:
Our mission is to plant the right
Of British freedom here—
Restrain the lawless savages,
And protect the pioneer.
And ’tis a proud and daring trust
To hold these vast domains
With but three hundred mounted men—
The Riders of the Plains.[14]
Shortly after the police force was formed, the scarlet-clad Mountie became a widely popular figure. The print media and the force’s own commanding officers played a central role in cultivating the legend of the Riders of the Plains.[15] George Arthur French, the NWMP’s first commissioner (1873–1876), was the first to make strategic use of the media to cultivate positive public opinion about the force. French enlisted the help of journalist and artist Henri Julien from the Canadian Illustrated News to record the march west of a second contingent of Mountie recruits in 1874.[16] French was aware that Macdonald’s successor, Alexander Mackenzie, was interested in disbanding the NWMP and he was hopeful that Julien’s accounts would convince Canadians that the police force was a necessary and viable enterprise.[17]
French’s tactic worked. Julien’s account of the NWMP’s arduous journey to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains captured the public’s imagination, and the police force remained. But his strategy also proved to be a double-edged sword. It was not long before commanding officers found it necessary to create regulations prohibiting lower-ranking Mounties from speaking to the media. By the end of the nineteenth century, the force’s regulations stipulated that any police officer who communicated to journalists without the approval of the commissioner was liable to face arrest, trial, and a heavy fine.[18] The police force remained intent on reinforcing its popular image, but on its own terms. It was the start of a long and often fractious relationship between the mounted police and the press.
Because Canada was a colony of imperial Britain, ideologies of race and class from the seat of the Empire occupy an important place in the history of the police force. The close link between the NWMP and the Empire was evident during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in London, England, in 1897 when a small contingent of NWMP officers made their debut on the international stage. The men caused a sensation amongst the crowds when they appeared on horseback wearing their red tunics, white gauntlets, black boots, and new felt hats, which were on display officially for the first time.[19] To observers, the dashing Mounties symbolized romance and adventure on the furthest edges of the Queen’s Empire. Their appearance at the celebrations solidified the relationship between the British monarchy and the police force, and since that time, contingents of RCMP officers have appeared at every royal funeral, wedding, and coronation.
Gentlemanly values such as manners, courtesy, and respectability were often attributed to the Riders of the Plains, further enhancing their popular appeal. Social class figured just as prominently as rank in the hierarchical organizational structure of the NWMP and mirrored practices commonly found in nineteenth-century British military units. Historian A.L. Haydon claimed in 1919 that the NWMP officer was a gentleman and a man of action who possessed an inner strength that demanded respect for his authority.[20] Lower-ranking non-commissioned officers and constables were usually culled from higher levels of society than those they were policing. According to the NWMP’s Colonel Samuel Steele, recruits were “smart young fellows from the old country [Britain] and eastern Canada, well-educated, but unaccustomed to manual labour, lured to the wild west by the halo of romance.”[21] Criminality was assumed to be a function of the lower social orders, so it was important that members of the NWMP be socially superior to those who broke the law.[22]
All Mounties were trained to follow codes of gentlemanly conduct modelled by commanding officers who were from the upper classes of British and Canadian society. Commanders were well educated and most had received officer training at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. Many served with the British military in locations throughout the Empire. All adopted symbols that conveyed their social status and rank. Commissioned officers enjoyed the services of special constables who were hired specifically as officers’ servants to perform “domestic assistance” for them in the field.[23] Gentility gave the men of the police force “distinctiveness and exclusivity in the popular view” according to another historian who observed that most of the officers were “well bred.”[24] Ideas of class and race were foundational to the identity of the NWMP and were deeply embedded in the organizational structure of the police force from the outset.
The importance of maintaining upper-class codes of conduct and hierarchical social structures was emphasized by public figures such as Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement and British hero of the Anglo-South African war. Baden-Powell frequently singled out the men of the NWMP in his speeches and writings as the epitome of manliness, men “whose manhood was strong and rich, and whose lives were pure.”[25] In contrast to such portrayals, English feminists began to critique codes of gentlemanly behaviour by arguing that the motivation behind courtesy and chivalry was a belief in the inferiority of women. While women were expected to act with deference and subordination toward men in Victorian society, men were expected to act in a gentlemanly manner toward the “weaker sex,” as women were known. Chivalrous behaviour, such as the lifting of a hat or the opening of a door, was increasingly seen by feminists as condescension to an inferior rather than a demonstration of respect for an equal.[26] All the same, Mounties continued to value gentlemanly behaviour as an outward sign of true manliness well into the twentieth century.
As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the health and survival of the white race, contingent on Darwin’s theories of the survival of the fittest, was cause for concern for people across the Empire.[27] There was a growing emphasis on virility and physical strength, and men on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean looked to the outdoors and wild, untamed geographical spaces to reassert their manliness. The emergence of the cowboy figure coincided with this interest. Cowboys represented a rugged masculinity, and they were often portrayed in highly romantic terms. Values such as honour, endurance, hard work, discipline, and loyalty to Empire were often ascribed to the cowboy. In his memoirs, Colonel Samuel Steele insisted that the “cowboy has no superior in the world, and in spite of his free life he takes to the order of military experience as if he were born to it.”[28] The popularity and influence of the cowboy are visible in the uniforms of police and military units from this period. Indeed, Baden-Powell’s boy scouts wore neckerchiefs and a felt Stetson hat, both recognizable parts of cowboy dress.
The merging of the two iconic cultural images, the cowboy and the English gentleman, was complete by the time of the Anglo-South African War. In 1900, Donald Smith (Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal), Canadian High Commissioner in London, formed and equipped an elite mounted Canadian regiment at his own expense to serve in the war. Strathcona’s Horse, as it was known, was made up of “cowboys and frontiersmen of Western Canada and members of the North West Mounted Police,” demonstrating a close connection between cowboy culture, the NWMP, and the pursuit of war.[29] Once in South Africa, the regiment soon gained international fame as an elite fighting force. When conventional warfare was replaced by guerrilla tactics during the conflict, “the regiment spent the next seven months scouting for the columns pursuing the elusive Boer commandos.”[30] As mounted troops with light equipment and uniforms more suited to climatic conditions on the South African veldt, the men of Strathcona’s Horse excelled as scouts.
Strathcona’s Horse was commanded by Colonel Samuel Steele, one of the more colourful members of the NWMP. He is described in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography as “Physically strong and courageous … tall, barrel-chested, and handsome, inspiring confidence in men and admiration in women.”[31] In this description, Steele’s physical attributes are equated with imperial masculinity, inspirational leadership, manliness, and sexual attraction. But the description of Steele’s body also implied that policing and war were masculine pursuits dependent on physical strength and a tall, muscular physique. Revisionists have since refuted idealized representations of Steele, who was remembered by one fellow officer as “ungentlemanly” for his frequent use of foul language, drunken behaviour, and the “negligent and callous treatment of his men” that verged on the sadistic. Steele was said to have once ordered a dozen men “suffering from piles to gallop flat out for five miles, his cure being to burst them and make them bleed.”[32]
The effectiveness of the Horse’s scouting techniques masked the darker side of warfare that the men were engaged in. Reports emerged in August 1900 that the regiment had conducted an impromptu court martial and hanging of six Boers suspected of killing members of the South African Light Horse. Although Steele denied these reports in his memoirs, historian Carman Miller has determined that there was little doubt that the hangings occurred and were later covered up by those involved, including Steele.[33] In this case, reality was far from the gentlemanly ideal propagated by popular discourses about the police force. Despite the controversy, members of the NWMP distinguished themselves on the battlefield, and popular appeal, thanks to the media’s coverage of the war, once again prevented politicians at home from disbanding the police force. In all, seven Mounties died during the conflict and several received medals for exemplary service.[34]
The successes of Steele and his mounted regiment impressed Baden-Powell, who was by this time a British war hero for his successful defence of the town of Mafeking. Near the end of the conflict, when he was given the task of organizing the South African Constabulary (SAC), the general recruited men from every region of the Empire to man his police corps.[35] Steele was one of his more notable recruits. Steele later claimed that he helped the general organize the SAC based “on the character and methods” of the NWMP.[36] The pursuit of war defined the men of Strathcona’s Horse as patriotic and loyal to the Empire. They emerged as exemplars of Canadian masculinity whose actions were tempered by codes of gentlemanly conduct and notions of chivalry. In recognition of the contributions made by Strathcona’s Horse, and perhaps in acknowledgement of their popular appeal, King Edward VII officially granted the prefix “Royal” to the name of the NWMP in 1904.
Not everyone agreed with the romantic representations of the men of the NWMP, however. The police force experienced a number of problems during its early years, revealing that not all Mounties acted in a gentlemanly manner or with integrity when enforcing the law. At the end of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, commanding officers struggled with a number of issues such as desertions, resignations, improper conduct, and breaches in discipline. Venereal disease became so rampant amongst the men of the police force in the 1880s that the police surgeon at Fort Walsh requested an assistant to help him deal with the number of men infected. By 1884, when the total complement of the NWMP was 557 men, the number of cases of venereal disease had grown to 132. Commanding officers were so concerned about the problem that they considered charging infected police officers for their medical care and confining them to their barracks as punishment.[37]
Desertions were commonplace when men could not purchase their discharge. In 1914, 10.3 percent of members of the RNWMP deserted and 18.32 percent were dismissed for bad conduct.[38] In 1912, Florence Foster of Calgary, Alberta, petitioned the federal minister of justice for a divorce. Foster complained that her Mountie husband, Fred Jenkins, had deserted her when he was sent to London in 1911 to take part in the coronation celebrations of King George V. Jenkins deserted the RNWMP shortly after landing, remarried under an assumed name, and continued to live abroad with his new wife. He later admitted to Foster that he had married her under an assumed name and refused to support her financially.[39] The minister of justice determined that although her husband had married her using a false name and had deserted her, the marriage remained valid.[40] While her husband failed to live up to the values embraced by the RNWMP, Foster was expected to continue to abide by the social values associated with appropriate femininity and remain married to the bigamist Foster.
The consumption of alcohol was a particularly thorny issue for commanding officers given that the police force was created, in part, to control the illegal whiskey trade that was decimating the Aboriginal population. British General Fred Middleton wrote in 1885 that the men of the NWMP were “some of the greatest scamps in the country, broken-down gentlemen who in many cases are called here inebriates.”[41] For Middleton, the men were not good examples of sobriety in a region where alcohol was not permitted. Settlers also resented liquor prohibition and took exception to being regulated by the police in this way, given that senior officers of the NWMP were “notoriously heavy” drinkers. So incensed was the white population over this double standard that one NWMP constable posted outside a saloon in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was arrested and fined by a local magistrate for monitoring the patrons inside.[42]
Not all Mounties were brave and heroic, either. Sub-Inspector Francis J. Dickens, son of the British author Charles Dickens, was an alcoholic whose commission with the police force was purchased for him by his aunt and co-executor of his father’s estate, Georgina Hogarth. She organized his nomination to the NWMP to help him escape the “temptations of London.” Dickens was placed in charge of a small unit of twenty-three NWMP officers who were stationed at Fort Pitt, Saskatchewan, in 1885. He is known for his infamous desertion of the settlers at the fort during the Riel Resistance as Cree chief Big Bear prepared to burn it down. Dickens allowed the civilian men, women, and children at the fort to surrender to the Cree before he escaped with his men by floating downstream on a scow toward Battleford, Saskatchewan. He left behind a number of settlers and a wounded constable at the fort, who were subsequently captured by the Cree.[43] While Dickens later called his decision a “retreat” rather than a desertion, he faced criticism in later years for his questionable actions and lack of leadership. Dickens’s example demonstrates that the men of the NWMP were clearly not as well trained or equipped for military engagement as Macdonald had initially envisioned.
One of the more formidable challenges for the NWMP was policing the Aboriginal population, which sometimes placed the police force between indigenous groups and the federal government. Following the Riel Resistance, the NWMP was charged with aiding in setting up reserves to control the Aboriginal population and with implementing the federal government’s pass system. The pass system prohibited Aboriginal people from leaving their reserves without permission from the local Indian agent. It was intended to limit the mobility of treaty Indians by restricting their access to the land they once used for food and to prevent their interaction with white settler communities. Although the NWMP recognized that the system had no legal basis for enforcement under treaty rights and protested the action, the police force bowed to pressure exerted by government officials to enforce it.[44] The pass system helped fulfill Prime Minister Macdonald’s vision of a white settler society with an Aboriginal population that was wholly assimilated.[45] In the end, the NWMP ensured that Aboriginal people were confined to their reserves, an act that did little to enhance the trust between the police force and the indigenous communities it policed.
*
As World War I approached, the Mountie served as a reminder of a fading Empire and the values that were shifting in the face of rapid modernization and the threat of a new global conflict. Commanding officers were challenged to balance the force’s heroic image and idealized past with a desire to appear more modern and progressive as the century advanced. That was because they continued to embrace the Victorian values, traditions, and paramilitary organizational structures that were so foundational to the beginnings of the police force. Nowhere was this more evident than in the RCMP’s persistent refusal to consider hiring women.