Heritage: North-West Mounted Police and Law Enforcement, 1873-1905 (PDF)

The North-West Mounted Police were cerated in 1873 specifically to ensure that Canadian administration and settlement of the newly acquired North-West Territories were carried out in a peaceful and orderly manner. They did so with a remarkable degree of success. Contacts between the white and Indian societies were peaceful, and crime and violence amond settlers remained under control at all times. becasue of their efficiency and popularity with the public, the Mounted Police were able to make the transition from policing the frontier to maintaining law and order in a settled and developed community. R.C. Macleod traces the evolution of the force and also investigates why it was so successful. He finds both structural and sociological reasons. The North-West Mounted Police had advantages not enjoyed by similar organizations elsewhere in the world. Its officers exercised extensive judicial powers; indeed, for its first decade or so of existence, the force carried out virtually all functions of government in the Territories. Sociologically, the elite nature of the force -- it attracted a consistently competent group of men and officers -- and public acceptance of the high social standing of its members freed them from the pressures of local opinion and power. Above all, the NWMP was not an ailen imposition, but a genuine expression of the society it served. Its members played so large a part in the creation of western Canadian society that by the time their original assignment was complete they were an important part of the way in which that society defined itself, and hence indispensable to it.