The larger cities had primitive local constabularies small towns and the countryside had no police at all. The government also feared that violence and lawlessness in the new territories might provide American expansionists with an excuse to move in.Ĭanada in the 1870s, like most jurisdictions whose legal systems were based on English common law, had few police forces. Apart from the cost in lives on both sides, the Canadian government could not contemplate the expense of a major "Indian war," which might easily bankrupt the country. At worst, the tensions generated by this process might erupt into the kind of settler-Indigenous warfare experienced in the American West. Thousands of settlers would arrive to occupy the lands where Cree and Blackfoot hunted buffalo without restraint. The Canadian takeover of Rupert's Land, soon to be called the North-West Territories, meant the imposition of a government that would systematically interfere with Indigenous customs for the first time. The company made no effort to govern the Indigenous population. There were few traders, and their livelihood depended on economic co-operation with the Indigenous people. The Hudson's Bay Company had ruled this frontier (what is today northern Quebec and Ontario, all of Manitoba, and parts of Saskatchewan, Alberta and the northern territories) for almost two centuries without serious friction between fur traders and the Indigenous population. After Confederation, when the newly formed nation was negotiating the purchase of Rupert's Land, the federal government faced the problem of how to administer this vast territory peacefully. Policing the FrontierĬanada’s national police service had small, temporary beginnings. Despite a series of scandals in recent decades, the RCMP remains one of Canada's most iconic national institutions. The "Mounties" have a long and proud history dating back to Confederation and the opening of the Canadian West. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) is Canada’s national police force – providing an array of services from municipal policing to national security intelligence gathering. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride.
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