Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted PoliceMacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
History
Policing the plains : $b being the real-life record of the famous Royal North-West Mounted Police
MacBeth, R. G. (Roderick George)
Northwest, Canadian -- History; Royal Canadian Mounted Police
And when Commissioner Perry wrote in his report as above quoted, he was
able to support his statement by actual facts from that very same year.
He said: "All over the North-land members of this Force are carrying out
these difficult journeys. Attached to this report you will find many
reports of equally dangerous patrols. Sergeant Hayter, 700 miles return
journey from Fullerton along the West Coast of Hudson Bay to Rankin
Inlet, to meet Sergeant Borden, who went up from Fort Churchill,
carrying mail and taking a census of the Esquimaux; Sergeant Walker from
Fort Churchill to York Factory and return; Sergeant Nicholls from Norway
House to Fort Churchill and return to Gimli; Sergeant Edgenton from
Split Lake to Fort Churchill, arriving with dogs abandoned by the way,
and three days without food; Sergeant Munday from the Pas to Lac de
Brochet and return, 900 miles in fifty-one days; and Sergeant MacLeod
from Fort Vermilion across the Caribou Mountains to Great Slave Lake."
This is a most formidable list, and to anyone who knows the country and
the climate it affords the imagination a moving panorama, in which
constant danger and almost incredible endurance are portrayed. All this
forcibly reminded Canada of the devotion of her sons in the Northern
hinterland, and that was the purpose of it being definitely stated. And
it gives us a sort of veneration for the memory of the four men of the
Fitzgerald patrol whose magnificent strength, after having been tried
and proven on many similar journeys for years, succumbed before a
combination of intolerable cold, blizzard-swept trails, unfamiliar river
passes, shortage of provisions and starving train-dogs. For it was the
death of these men that brought home to the people the astonishing
achievements and heroisms of Canadian chivalry on the frontiers.
Fitzgerald himself, as we have already seen, had been famous for years
as an intrepid patrol man, and had been promoted to the rank of
Inspector for his services. All the others, Kinney, Taylor and
ex-Constable Carter, had been more than once mentioned in dispatches.
This is a legitimate expression, because in reality the Mounted Police
were always on active service, and their merits were made known in the
reports of their superior officers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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