FAMOUS CANADIAN MOUNTIES

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 242, 9 July 1938, Page 2 (Supplement)

FAMOUS CANADIAN MOUNTIES

Much Altered Force

EFFICIENCY UNIMPAIRED

One of tlie most-prized positions in Canadian Civil Service is 1 lie command of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to which Colonel Stewart Taylor Wood, a veteran of the force, has been appointed. While this is a popular choiqe in Canada it should be no less popular in the United States, for Colonel "Wood’s great-great-grandfather was no less a person than Zachary Taylor, American soldier and President of the United States, says Lloyd Lewis. Thanks largely to the splendid work of his predecessor, the late Sir James Maeßrien, the new Commissioner takes over an organisation that is as little like tlie original Royal Northwest Mounted Police as an aeroplane is like the old covered wagon. From 1573 to 1920 a Mountie was usually mounted, in the accepted sense of the word, and his duties consisted largely of patrolling the great areas beyond the jurisdiction of city and provincial police. Then the Machine Age caught up with this picturesque lint horsebound force and began to do amazing things with it. Other Provinces besides those of tlie prairies asked for protection, mid the “Northwest” in its named was changed to “Canadian.” The personnel began to increase in numbers (there are now nearly 3000) and the mounts to disappear. The scarlet uniforms (except for special services and occasions) were packed away in mothballs. The training course for new recruits was broadened from athletics, first-aid. equestrianism, anti military drill, to embrace everything appertaining to the prevention and detection of crime. Individuals specialised in chosen fields, such as the preventive service, the air service, the marine service, or the Arctic service. Every discovery of use in police work was brought into action —motor-cars and motor-cycles, aeroplanes and gunboats, ballistic experts, finger-print specialists. chemists and photographers. Most recently, a splendid new building was provided for the headquarters staff at Ottawa. In brief, the Mounties had “goiri modern.” and yet in doing it had succeeded in retaining in a degree all that was traditional and romantic — the scarlet and blue uniform, saddle horses (22G of them), the courage and patience that eventually, even if It requires years of effort and globe-trotting, always "get their man,” Knows His Force. Colonel Wood already knows his force, having joined it on graduating from the Royal Military - College at Kingston, Ontario, been stationed at many posts throughout Canada! and been acting-Commissioner for several months past. But it will take a long time for him to become familiar with all its activities through first-hand knowledge. I doubt if any Commissioner ever visited every post "north of 53” from the Atlantic to the Pacific and up to the Arctic, or ever took one of the long perilous patrols that are a

regular part of his constables’ “beats.” But lie will see it all through tlie eyes and the reports of officers and men. lie will note seaplanes hovering over the Nova Scotia and British Columbia coasts with watchful eyes for every incoming craft, and especially small fast craft that may be rumrunners, and lie will have the satisfaction of know ing that such patrols are proving efective in combating drug and liquor smuggling into Canada. He will see armed cruisers operating the year around, pursuing suspects on to tlie high seas and even into United States territorial waters under new co-opera-tive arrangements between the United States Coast Guard service and tlie Canadian preventive service, to tlie great discomfit of lawbreakers. In cities, towns, and camps, wherever there is serious labour trouble, lie will see a small group of mounties taking charge, unostentatiously and even unarmed. Although many duties call for the carrying of heavy service revolvers, it i.s one of the traditions of the force that firearms are never fired except in times of gravest emergency and as a last resort. To “shoot it out” with a desperado would be tantamount to a confession of failure. Tlie reluctance to shoot is the cause of a few casualties, but. on the other hand, it increases respect for tlie police and their eer tainty of ultimate victory. Varied Duties. The Commissioner will see his men charging thousands of men and women annually witli infractions of the law under Federal and Provincial statutes and the criminal code, and securing an impressive proportion of convictions, too.

Turning toward unsettled regions Colonel Wood will find solitary constables, decked out in furs, mounted on snowshoes, skis, dogsleds or horses, moving slowly along unmapped trails on errands of mercy, investigation, and punishment. He will watch them bringing out lost or hurt trappers, Indians, prospectors; he will see them taking the census in distant forts and settlements; mediating disputes between tribe and tribe, husband and wife: enforcing game laws and gathering details on flora, fauna, and men. He will find his inspectors flying down the Mackenzie to Aklavik and into Great Bear. Lake (the site of radium mining) ; sailing on the annual Government expedition to. the scattered posts in the archipelago of the Fur North; holding improvised “court” for Eskimo grievances. He will peruse reports for a region as great as all Europe.