 CHAPTER 1 1883-84 REGINA It was a glorious morning in the early part of July 1883 when I left the Windsor Hotel in Regina and started to walk the two-and-a-half miles of rolling prairie that intervened between the hotel and the barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police, some of the roofs of which were distinguishable in the distance. Regina had been selected by Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dudney as the capital of the Northwest Territories and had been christened by Her Royal Highness the Princess Louise whose husband, the Marquis of Lorne, was then Governor General of Canada. The Mounted Police had been ordered to make Regina their headquarters and the transfer from Port Walsh had not been quite completed at the time of which I write. In order to facilitate the housing of the police in their new home a number of so-called portable buildings had been shipped in from eastern Canada. These had been made in sections and were readily put together on the spot. Needless to say they were cold habitations and every room on the ground floor required to have a stove to itself. The prairie was carpeted with wild roses. For a time I tried to avoid stepping on them, but they were so plentiful that the avoidance of them became irksome and I hardened my heart and walked on. I found the officer in command to be Superintendent William Hirschmer, known all over Prince Rupert's land as Colonel Billy. Wents he derived his title of Colonel I do not know, but he assumed it and it stuck to him. I sought him out and reported my arrival and he took me round and introduced me to the other officers in the post. These were Dr. Jukes, the senior surgeon of the fours, Inspector P. R. Neal, the supply officer, and inspectors A. R. MacDonald, Greaseback, and A. B. Perry. The latter had served a short time in the Royal Engineers at Chatham, but the atmosphere of the School of Military Engineering seemed to have proved uncongenial and he had returned to his native country to accept a commission in the northwest mounted to police. The commissioner of the fours, Colonel A. G. Irvine, was not in Regina at the time of my arrival, and as he had more room in his quarters than he absolutely required for himself, I was installed therein for the time being, having with me a folding bed-stead which I had used in the Ashanti campaign of 1873 to 4, and a light kit I was easily housed until my quarters should be ready for occupation. Inspector Neal was married and comfortably settled, and he and his wife were kind enough to ask me to take my meals with them, which I was very glad to do. The empty shell of a house, a story and a half high, was placed at my disposal, and I was invited to partition it off to suit my convenience, which I did. Carpenters were at once set to work on it, and two rooms were added downstairs, which made it a sufficiently commodious and convenient habitation. Seeing that there was no rent to pay and that the government provided stoves, fuel and light, I considered myself supremely fortunate. After a few days the adjutant, superintendent John Cotton, arrived, and General Orders then announced the appointment as inspector of R. B. Dean Esquire, although my credentials from Ottawa showed that I had been a captain in the imperial service. The mounted police force had been in existence for ten years, and had not a standing order or regulation of any kind. I was expected to remedy this defect, and as I had been, for five years, adjutant of a division of Royal Marines consisting of three thousand to five hundred non-commissioned officers and men, besides officers, and had served afloat and ashore for close on sixteen years, it was child's play for me to draft regulations for a little force of five hundred men, when once I had become acquainted with the conditions of life and service in the country. Regulations were needed badly enough, but what was more urgently required than anything else was the driving power to compel the wheels of the machine to turn smoothly. I had been told in Ottawa that I should find the mounted police, an armed mob, and I certainly discovered them to be so. I spent the best part of the months of July and August in Regina trying to teach the hay leg, straw leg, business to some recruits, and when the Comptroller visited the post towards the conclusion of that interval he said that he noticed an improvement in the bearing of the men. At the beginning of September I went to Toronto to fetch my family, who were installed in a house there, and brought them, all westward, early in the next month, wife, five children, and a domestic servant whom we had found in Winnipeg, a telegram from T. C. Patterson to Mr. George Stephen, President of the Canadian Pacific, now Lord Mott Stephen, expedited the transmission of the car containing our household goods, and we soon settled down in our new home and awaited the advent of our first northwest winter. The first line of study that it was incumbent upon me to take up was obviously that of the criminal law. I was familiar with military law, and it was fortunate that I was so, for there was no one in the country, either at the bar or on the bench, who knew anything about it, and it devolved upon me, a few years later, to teach the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories the true relations between itself and a court constituted by the Mounted Police Act. The particulars of this will be found under the chapter entitled Mounted Police Law. The study of the criminal law that we were to administer in the country was, at that time, a little complicated, for only certain statutes were in force in the Northwest Territories, having ascertained from Colonel Richardson, the senior stippendiary magistrate, which those were, I was set to work to epitomize them into the form of a manual which a constable could carry about with him, so as to inform himself as occasion might require. Colonel Richardson was very kind and devoted several hours to going over my work with me, and to making corrections and suggestions. I studied also all the police manuals which I could procure, the principal ones being those of the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Melbourne Force. In this manner I spent the winter of 1883 in equipping myself for my future duties and the time was well spent. So far as any idea of a constable's manual was concerned, the police department at Ottawa had no interest in nor sympathy with any such project. My manuscript was promptly consigned to a pigeon hole where it remained until a sympathetic fire came along some years later and made an end of it, and of other records in the departmental building at Ottawa. I next turned my attention to the problem of standing orders, which were very urgently needed, and with that object in view I studied all the literature that I could procure. I have already remarked that, however desirable regulations might be, it was equally desirable that there should be some driving power which would keep the machine moving, and an illustration of this may be offered. One of the officers stationed at headquarters had been detailed for railway duty, and in pursuance thereof he used to travel on a pass and to talk mysteriously about the people with whom he used to come in contact and so on. After I got to know him better he told me that he did not know what his duties were, and that he had never received any orders on the subject. To my knowledge he never made a report, and his chief object in life seemed to be to buy a script cheaply from the half-breeds. He had begun to acquire one thousand acres of land in Manitoba, and thought of little else. I do not know what good the purchase did for him, for when he died he did not leave a penny. Presumably he bought more land than he could pay taxes on, with the consequence that in time it was sold to cover the arrears. This is an apt and true illustration of the Goezu please manner in which the Mounted Police Force ran itself in the year of our Lord, 1883. In April 1884 the Commissioner appointed a Board of Officers, of which I was one, to formulate a single-rank drill for the Force and to draft standing orders. The drill was soon disposed of, and then glances of inquiry were cast at me. If I asked if there were any means of ascertaining the contents of the Commissioner's office, as there was necessarily therein a certain amount of material which would have to be worked into standing orders, and this ought to be at our disposal. It seemed that there was no way by which we could obtain the required information, and I therefore said that I did not see how we could make any progress. The Board died a natural death then and there. The Commissioner, who had been to Ottawa during part of the session, returned on Good Friday, and announced that I was to be promoted to Superintendent, and appointed Adjutant from April 1st. The appointment, however, did not actually reach Regina until May 14th, and on that day I took charge of the Commissioner's office. The staff consisted of Staff Sergeant W. H. Irwin, now Clerk of the District Court at Lethbridge, and Sergeant, now Superintendent, Rutledge. The care and attention which my predecessor had not bestowed upon his office were evident by the fact that there was not even an index to the correspondence, and it was necessary for us to sort and examine the entire contents of the office and to make a correspondence register as we went along. This gave me the opportunity that I was looking for a finding out what orders there were for incorporation in my new work, and although the operation exhausted several weeks the time was not ill spent. The lack of a correspondence register explained some funny little dockets with which the table in the Commissioner's office was covered. These were all neatly folded up, with labels describing their contents, and an India rubber band around each of them. When the office was properly fitted up I asked the Commissioner if he had any objection to my removing his treasures, piecemeal, and answering them. There was no very great difficulty in so doing, although I was a stranger to the country. One docket I remember related to a claim made by an old widow at Battleford, whose oat-crop had been trampled by some police-horses which had broken through her fence. I recommended payment of a hundred dollars to settle her claim. Another prolific source of correspondence were the numerous claims made by men when taking their discharge from the force or compensation on account of having received some injury while in pursuance of duty. One docket related to a claim for five thousand dollars made by a non-commissioned officer, and it caused us a great deal of trouble to hunt up old ration returns and such like documents to find out where he was on certain given dates. There was nothing on record to show that the so-called injury had ever been reported at the time, and this obviously called for a remedy in the future. In the Royal Navy I knew that when a man was injured on duty he was given what was known as a HURT certificate, and I made provision that, in cases where a man was injured in the force, a board of officers should be immediately convened to take the evidence of the person's cognizant of the facts, and to give an opinion in accordance with that evidence. That settled the question. Another source of acrimonious correspondence was the question of discharge by purchase which had never been either recognized or in contemplation, for the simple reason that it cost the country so much money to bring men into the West, that the least return the government could expect was that the men should serve the term of five years for which they had engaged. However, so many men claimed that recruiting officers had led them to believe that they could buy out if they did not happen to be satisfied, that I introduced a system from my old core by which applicants for purchase had their names placed on a list, and were allowed to take their turn at the rate of three per month. Sir John MacDonald was pleased to approve of this suggestion, and it was adopted in the Mounted Police. The principle involved was all right, but the accession to power of the Board and Government in 1911 it laid itself open to abuse. In the year 1912 no fewer than fifty men were allowed to purchase their discharge out of a force numbering only six-hundred and fifty-four men. An amendment to the Mounted Police Act was made in the following year, increasing the pay of the various ranks and reducing the term of a constable's engagement from five to three years. In review of this reduction I wrote to Mr. R. B. Bennett, MP for Calgary, and advising that discharge by purchase should be abolished except in very special cases. He replied, saying that he agreed with everything I had written, and would take the matter up with the Comptroller. The vigorous manner in which he did so may be gauged by the fact that in that year, 1913, out of a total number of seven-hundred and eight non-commissioned officers and constables, no fewer than seventy-one had been permitted to purchase their discharge prior to November the first. Out of the aforesaid total number, forty-three men deserted during the same time, and forty-nine were dismissed for bad conduct. The figures are significant, as tending to show that, in spite of the shortened term of engagement and the increased pay, the Mounted Police was unable to obtain and retain desirable men. In my opinion a great mistake was made. The engagement should have remained at five years, and additional pay should have been given to bring the total wage up to the market level. As it has turned out the government took away with one hand what it gave with the other. That it increased the pay is true, but it took away from the issue of kit, and the price of some of the articles of clothing has been raised to a prejudicial extent. Canadians as a whole are very proud of the worldwide reputation which the force has made, but they may as well face the unquestionable fact that the force is now on the downgrade, and should be abolished before its reputation is quite gone. Five years were none too long a time to teach a constable the multifarious duties of a Mounted Policeman. But when in addition to the reduced term of three years there is the added pestilential discharge by purchase whenever a man chooses to ask for it, it necessarily follows that the force is able to render to the public nothing better than a very inferior kind of eye service. As an illustration of what I mean, a constable who had joined the force on August 12, 1912, was in course of time transferred to my division, and was subsequently detailed for detachment duty at Bankhead, where there is an anthracite mine. He was, by way of being a handyman, and the manager offered him two dollars and ninety cents per day to run an engine in the mine. He applied to purchase, was given instant permission to do so, and on December 1, 1913, took his discharge upon payment of sixty-one dollars and fifty cents, that is, three dollars per month for the unexpired portion of his engagement. Another constable was sent to replace him at Bankhead, and on February 5, 1914, he too applied for permission to purchase, which was instantly allowed by the commissioner, and he took his discharge upon payment of eighty-five dollars and fifty cents. It seems that a surveyor had offered him forty-five dollars a month to join his survey party. To an officer in charge of a police district such eccentricities as these are simply maddening and heartbreaking, and the public suffer as a result. The worst case known to me happened in the early part of 1914. There was a constable on detached duty at Bank, but he was so utterly neglectful of his duties that I was in process of making arrangements to withdraw and replace him. To my intense astonishment I received a telegram from the commissioner's office at Regina to give him his discharge by purchase. This order had, I subsequently learned, emanated from Ottawa, and, of course, governed both the commissioner and myself, but any such proceeding cannot fail to be subversive of discipline and is antagonistic to the best interests of the force. The people amongst whom I have lived and worked in the West for over thirty years will concede that I am as competent a judge of disciplinary administration as any person in Canada, and they will understand that I am telling them historical facts which they are likely to learn from no one but me, and which it is time they were told. This constable was given his discharge, and his successor, quite a competent young man, had hardly been in his place for one calendar month when he too applied to purchase and was allowed to do so. From all the foregoing it will be seen that the mounted place-force has developed into a philanthropic organization whose objects are laughable enough, so far as providing young men with means of livelihood is concerned, but hardly so satisfactory to the lonely settler when constabulary duties to be done, nor is it possible to regard the philanthropic provision of openings for young men as the purpose for which a police force exists. To return, however, to the commissioner's office in Regina, the model that most wanted straightening out was in connection with the medical staff. Whether rightly or wrongly the department at Ottawa had acquired the notion that the medical officers at the various divisional headquarters posts in different parts of the country were dispensing drugs, etc., supplied by the government for the use of the non-commissioned officers and men in their private practice. Oddly enough an officer could not get any medicine at the police surgery. In order to remedy this state of affairs, an oldish medical practitioner at St. Catharines in Ontario was persuaded by Sir John Macdonald to give up his practice there and bring his family to the north-west in order to take up the appointment of senior surgeon. All sorts of promises had been held out to induce him to take this step, and the old man used to complain bitterly that faith had not been kept with him. However that may have been, and I have no personal knowledge of the matter, the appointment was not in any way acceptable to the various assistant surgeons, who seemed determined to do all they could to make Dr. Juke's life a burden. Correspondents used to be carried on directly between the medical officers, and if the senior surgeon wanted any information or returns which were not quite palatable, the assistants frankly told him to go to the devil. As soon as I felt myself securely seated in my chair I issued a general order to the effect that in future direct correspondence between the senior and assistant surgeons was to cease and was to be carried on through the commissioner's office and the officer's commanding divisions, each of whom would be held responsible that information required by the senior surgeon was promptly and accurately rendered, and that replies to the correspondence were couched in proper terms. As soon as the order reached Ottawa the com-troller at once wrote me a private note saying, General Order so-and-so settles the medical question, as of course it did in a very obvious and simple manner, and there was no more trouble. Dr. Juke's became a great friend of mine, and was a very fine old gentleman, and also a very competent practitioner. The Conservative Party treated him abominably, when in course of time his memory failed and he became past work, they laid him on the shelf with a paltry superannuation of about twenty-five dollars per month. There was a clause in the act whereby he could have been allowed to count ten more years than he had actually served, but therein lies the difference between the two political parties. The Liberals looked after their friends, while the Conservatives do not. Take my own case, when Sir John McDonald's party met disaster at the polls, in 1896 I was not mean enough to leave it at a time when it most needed loyalty and service, as so many of the old chieftains appointees did, but remained in its ranks until the Liberals went out of power in September 1911 over the reciprocity question. At that time both the Commissioner and the Assistant Commissioner were men who had been appointed by Sir John, but after that fateful 1895 election they had turned their coats and had thus secured promotion over the heads of their seniors. In 1913 a new appointment was made, that of an Assistant Commissioner for the province of Alberta, and I was by eight years the senior superintendent of the forest I naturally expected to obtain the appointment. The whole Western country had the same expectation, but I reckoned without my host. One of the superintendents had a brother in the Dominion Parliament representing an Ontario constituency, and conceived the brilliant idea of obtaining promotion for himself over the heads of his seniors and betters. His amiable design in some way became known to another superintendent, senior to himself, and a scion of an old Quebec family. In self-protection, for I do the man justice to believe that he would never have done so otherwise, he set to work to pull political strings, with the result that he got the appointment. All such trickery as this is quite come ill-fought in Canada. No one thinks any worse of a man for trying to supersede his superior, and it is the spirit which accounts for the numerous changes which have taken place in the past thirty years in the general officers sent to Canada from England to command the militia. The two officers at the head of the Mounted Place of whom I have spoken are graduates of the Royal Military College at Kingston, Ontario, and Britishers do not sufficiently assimilate the principle that Canada is for the Canadians, and that when a Canadian wants a job no Englishmen need apply. When General Colin McKenzie could not get on with the impossible minister of militia, whom most of his party take as a joke, nothing more needs to be said. Sir George French brought the Mounted Police into the West in 1873, and his treatment by the Canadian Government of the day is a matter of history. As a comment on the injustice with which he was treated by the Canadians, the home government gave him the Queensland command. END OF CHAPTER I CHAPTER II. THE YEAR OF OUR LORD, 1884, was a very busy year for me, in addition to the work in the commissioners and adjutants' offices. I had the work in the post and its interior economy to look after, and the training of men and horses to supervise. My outside staff consisted of Sergeant Major Robert Belcher, now Lieutenant Colonel Strathcona's horse, and Staff Sergeant Walter Simpson, ex-Staff Sergeant Royal Artillery, and two old-fashioned soldiers such as these could be trusted to render good and loyal service without having to be watched. For the horses I employed Constable Montague Baker, who was probably the best rider in the post, and for the clerical work of the division I had a smart young corporal named S. G. Mills, who subsequently obtained a commission, and after his retirement, was visited by a terrible affliction, the loss of his sight. I am glad to know that, in spite of his troubles, he is today a happy and prosperous citizen of Hamilton, Ontario. Montague Baker was a very useful man, and I finally appointed him to be Sergeant Major of the newly formed Division K in the autumn of the rebellion year, when the strength of the fours had been increased to one thousand men. I was sorry to learn the other day that he had recently joined the majority. In the summer of 1884 I made two notable engagements. Two men, named Charles Ross and G. P. Arnold, presented themselves, saying that they had crossed the line to Homestead near Moose Jaw, but had come to the conclusion that farming conditions were hardly favourable, and that they proposed to join the mounted police. I sent them to Dr. Jukes for medical examination, and presently the old gentleman came across the square. Do you know that those men you sent to me for examination are very fine specimens of muscular manhood, but that they bear the scars of bullet wounds? How do you account for them, Doctor? I queried. Oh, well, they say that they have worked as scouts for the United States troops, and have been wounded in scraps with the Indians and so on. All right, Doctor, I replied, if they have seen shots fired in anger, they are the men for my money, and if you say they are sound I shall engage them and take chances on their respectability. I had no occasion to regret doing so, and did not bother my head about their past history. They were dead shots, they could write anything with hair on, they did not drink, and they were not afraid of work. What more did a man want? Ross was, after a time, sent to Calgary and Arnold to Prince Albert in the north. Arnold was killed at Duck Lake at the outbreak skirmish of the rebellion. He received one bullet wound in the neck, but paid no attention to it, and continued to peg away at the enemy until he was shot through the lungs, and that was conclusive. He and Ross were great friends. The latter, early in the rebellion days in the north, whither he was sent, became known as Charlie Ross, the famous scout, and stories were told of him during the fight at Cutknife Creek, how whenever he had sent an Indian or half-breed to the happy hunting grounds, he would mutter to himself, another for Arnold, with a man who habitually shot wild rabbits with a bullet through the head in order to avoid spoiling the meat. A poor Indian or breed did not stand much chance, so long as there was enough of his dusky carcass visible for Charlie Ross to draw a bead upon. In my company he followed a horse's trail across the prairie for about fifteen miles at a gallop, and it was none too plain a trail, either. Another valuable recruit who offered himself for acceptance during the same year was T. J. Kempster, an upstanding specimen of a man who had served as a trooper in the Second Lifeguards, and proved to be a very capable riding instructor. The wild eccentricities of the prairie-bred horse astonished him at the outset, but I induced him to undertake the training of them upon the principles of M. Bocher of the French army, Montague Baker, and he used to work together. Baker, by the way, had a very narrow escape on one occasion, a bronco, that is, an unbroken horse, from the wild and woolly west, a savage brute who was rather more intractable than his compiers, succeeded in planting a hind foot fairly and squarely in Baker's face, but under Dr. Duke's care he recovered perfectly. In the course of the same year, in company with the Lieutenant Governor, I visited the famous Bell Farm at Indian Head, which consisted of, I forget, how many thousand acres. The climate and the country were not, at that time, conducive to any such experiment, and when the rebellion of 1885 broke out the management were only too glad to hire out their teams and men to the militia department, for the transport of stores, etc., at the rate of ten dollars a day. They had, I thought, at the time, only one useful practice, which was a regulation requiring all their stables to be locked, and the keys returned by night o'clock every evening to the timekeeper of the establishment, who lived at the Head Quarter Farm. I thought that the principle was so good that I immediately adopted it. Our four stables stood east and west with doors at each end, the eastern end facing the Barrick Square. I secured the western end with Yale padlocks on the inside, and the eastern end with similar contrivances on the outside, and the stable picket had the keys strapped onto his belt. On September 15, 1884, I received a telegram from Major Bell, that in the course of the previous night, fifteen horses had been stolen from the Bell Farm, and driven rapidly southward towards the line. Sergeant Blight and a couple of men from the Regina succeeded in recovering seven of the horses in Montana, and as the tracks of only nine animals could be found on the south side of the Missouri River, it was conjectured that the others had been driven to exhaustion, and some of them possibly drowned in attempting to cross. I asked Major Bell afterwards how it was that the thieves managed to get the horses out of locked stables, and he replied, Oh, we gave up that practice, it's became too tiresome. I had an amusing experience with Bell in 1885, when Lord Landstown was touring the country in the autumn after the rebellion. The first stop he made in the Northwest Territories was at Indian Head. There I had orders to meet him, with an escort of a hundred men, all of whom we could not mount, and there was thus a most incongruous force of men riding in dead acts, that is heavy wagons and so on. Mr. Assistant Commissioner Crozier had recently come into Regina, and these were his ridiculous orders. However, when our arrival at Indian Head Major Bell was promptly on deck, and said, I have chosen a most delightful spot for you to pitch your camp. It is just an convenient view from my drawing-room windows, and I am sure his Excellency will be immensely pleased with the prospect. That may be so, Major Bell, I replied, but I have hardly traveled over the fifty odd miles between this place in Regina to contribute to the aspect of your scenery. Canada holds me responsible for the safety of her Governor-General, while he is in my charge. And I have already sent a non-commissioned officer ahead to select a ground for our camp in proximity to the railway station, that is, where our camp will be pitched. I am sorry to upset any of your arrangement all the same. We camp, therefore, just behind the station buildings, when the Vice Regal train came into the station in the very early morning, a sentry was posted at each end of the Governor-General's car, and thinking that everything was seraphic I slept the sleep of the just. His Excellency told me, later in the day, that he thought four sections, sixteen men, would be ample escort for him on the forthcoming forty-five mile ride next day. And so it was that we started out the next morning with a smart escort of sixteen men, under Sergeant Kempston, en route for Fort Capelle, via Quatepois, where we had lunch in at Father Huguenard's Indian School. From there we went to Fort Capelle, where the Hudson's Bay Company had a store, et cetera, and there his Excellency had a powwow with the Indians of that neighbourhood, and made them the usual presence of food, tobacco, et cetera. Thence, at the suggestion of the Hudson's Bay Factor, with whom Lord Melgend was driving ahead, we started by a round about road to Capelle station on the railway. We rode and rode and rode, and it looked suspiciously as if the Factor had lost his bearings. So after a time his Excellency said to me, well, Captain Dean, I am in your hands. I think we had better head for our train. I had taken care to provide a scout who knew every inch of that country, and he took us by a B-line to where the Vice Regal train had pulled up westward from Indian Head. The Governor General was due to address a small deputation on arrival, and he then asked me to dinner. In the year 1884 an incident occurred which recalled to my mind, an observation made to me by a very astute Indian named Usope at Crooked Lakes earlier in the year. He imitated that the Indians fully recognized the power for evil that lay in their hands with regard to the railroad, and it is much to their credit that they have abstained from such mischief during all these past years. Probably if there was one individual who, more than any other, exercised an influence for good in this respect, it was the Reverend Father Lacombe, O. M. I., for he had great influence with Crowfoot, the honoured Chief of the Blackfoot Nation, and the Blackfeet made no trouble when the Canadian Pacific passed the northern edge of their reserve. It was pathetic to hear the old man say, in 1905, after the province of Alberta had been formed out of the Northwest Territories amid great ceremonies at Edmonton. They said everything nice about themselves, but never a word about the police or the priests. I replied, Father, you have put the cart before the horse. Everyone who knows anything about it knows that the police would have been of little use without the help of the priesthood. In the month of June it was reported that an iron rail had been found, placed across the track at a point about seventy miles west of Regina, and a sergeant, an interpreter, and three mounted men were at once dispatched westward by rail, with orders to work back along both sides of the track. They returned next day, bringing with them three Indian prisoners whom they had arrested on suspicion. As I was engaged in investigating the matter it transpired that two of the Indians, who were Asiniboins, were brothers and were able and willing to point out the real culprit. A passing freight train was detained, and men and horses, with one of the informers, were immediately dispatched westward again. Two days later they returned, bringing in an Indian named Buffalo Calf. The brothers had seen him place the rail on the track, and he was subsequently convicted on their evidence and sent to the penitentiary for two years. The year wore on with never an idle minute, until Christmas approached, and then it became my duty to write the Commissioner's annual report for presentation to Parliament. This entailed about a month's work, but the report was duly dispatched to Ottawa on Christmas Eve. The Montreal Gazette was good enough to say that it read like a romance. CHAPTER III. OF MOUNTAIN POLICE LIFE IN CANADA. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. CHAPTER III. REBELLION YEAR, 1885, REGINA. On March 10, in response to a telegram from Ottawa, Colonel Irvine left Regina with four officers, eighty-six non-commissioned officers and men, and sixty-six horses en route to Prince Albert, two hundred and ninety-one miles distant. This journey was made in seven days, the average daily travel, being forty-two miles, which, considering the short days and the severe weather, was pretty good travelling. His departure left the Headquarter Post with myself, and thirty-two non-commissioned officers and men, and no horses. Fortunately the Indian Department had a few ponies which they were able to lend us, and with them we had to do the best we could. At the end of March a cipher telegram from Ottawa announced that three hundred men in Chicago had bound themselves together, by oath, to invade Canada in the interests of the half-breeds, and that their objective point in the first instance would probably be Moosja, forty miles west of Regina. Although I did not take this proposition very seriously, I could not, of course, neglect any responsible precaution and so open negotiations with some suit Indians, who had been for some time camped in the neighborhood of Moosja, with a view to engaging them as scouts, but the negotiations fell through, chiefly owing to the difficulty in mounting them. It happened that just about that time, a man named Louis Legaré, who lived at Wood Mountain, a settlement about ninety miles southeast of Regina, came into town to represent to the Lieutenant Governor that a large number of half-breeds in his neighborhood were in a starving condition, that they wished to remain where they were so as not to be implicated in any way with the rebellion, and that they would be glad of any employment which would keep the wolf from the door. Legaré undertook to see that the work was properly done, and to vote for the good faith of the men for whose selection he would be held responsible. And this arrangement, having been sanctioned in Ottawa, forty scouts were engaged, and an officer was sent to Wood Mountain to supervise proceedings. At this year's session of the Dominion Parliament, the strength of the force was increased from five hundred to one thousand men, and in order to provide accommodation for them, a number of large square tents, etc., were sent to us from Ottawa. These we pitched round the barracks square in the intervals between the portable houses. On May 3rd a telegram was handed to me. One hundred and thirty recruits will reach you at midnight and require supper. The men duly arrived. It took us several days to get them all clothed and settled down, for our stock of clothing, etc., was entirely insufficient, and we ransacked all the shops in the town to buy the necessary under-clothing, blankets, etc. Considering that there was not much money in circulation, this was a godsend to the local storekeepers. This consignment was the first of about six hundred men who joined us in the course of the year. As soon as their training was completed, the men composing each squad were dispatched to one point or another in different parts of the country. Of the recruits I can only say that they were the finest and best-behaved lot of men that I have ever been connected with. They gave no trouble and settled down to learn their business with determination. In consequence of a little incident that occurred when there were from two hundred and fifty to three hundred men under Canvas, it occurred to me to have a heart-to-heart talk with them. I was impelled to this by various considerations, to explain the chief one of which I must hark back a little. Colonel Irvine, soon after his arrival at Prince Albert on March twenty-fourth, received from the Comptroller at Ottawa a telegram which read, Major General, commanding Militia proceeds forthwith to Red River on his arrival in military operations take orders from him. Now Colonel Irvine, having discussed the subject with the leading men of the neighborhood and being in possession of all the ascertainable facts, had come to the conclusion that it was his duty to place Prince Albert in as defensible a position as was possible in the circumstances and to protect the many women and children who were gathered there. He accordingly refused to abandon his helpless charges and to move out into the field. The force at his command was not sufficient to admit of his doing both things. General Middleton had enough men with him to eat the rebel half- breeds, moccasins and all, but seemed to have some ridiculous ideas about the risking of human life, and hesitated and demurred until Colonel Williams' regiment got tired of being made fools of and rushed the half-breed trenches out of which the dusky occupants scrambled without any ceremony whatever and were lost to sight. It was this redoubtable outfit that General Middleton wanted Colonel Irvine's force to attack from the rear, without giving him any instructions to that effect and without making any plans to that end, and because Colonel Irvine did not do so, the gallant general permitted himself to say on one occasion, alluding to the mounted police, where are these gophers, why don't they come out of their holes? That expression naturally ran round the country, and I made it the text of a sermon which I preached to my men, whom I formed up in three sides of a hollow square. I began by telling them how very gratified I was at the manner in which they had got down to business, and hoped that they would continue in well-doing. I said in effect, we are not playing at soldiers here, we have got the strictest and most tedious kind of duty to perform. We have upwards of fifty rebel prisoners to guard, and if any one of you men fail in his vigilance when on guard disaster may ensue. We have, as you know, nine centuries posted round the barracks at night, and the safety of all government property depends on the ceaseless attention of each of those nine men. Take the hay corral, for instance. What is there to prevent some evil disposed person from crawling up to that hay-stack and setting it on fire? There is nothing to prevent it but the vigilance of the sentry. The stables are locked, it is true, but there are over a hundred horses picketed in the stable-yard. What an easy matter it would be for two or three rebels to ride into those lines and stampede those horses while attention was being devoted to the burning hay-stack. Under cover of the double excitement it is conceivable that an attempt might be to rush the guard room, but I want you all to understand that under no circumstances whatever are the guards to leave their prisoners. They have positive orders to that effect, their rifles are loaded and they will not hesitate to use them. I tell you these things in order to impress upon each man of you the responsibility that rests upon you. The whole of the north-west knows and you know that the general officer commanding the militia has so far forgotten himself as to apply the term gopher to our comrades in the north. Are you content to remain under such a reproach? I tell you candidly that I am not, but I cannot remove it without your help. Will you help me to remove it? You are aware that Parliament has increased the strength of this force from five hundred to one thousand men. That means that five hundred additional men will be trained in these barracks this year and you are part of that number. The addition of five hundred men cannot fail to have an influence upon the force as it existed a few weeks ago. Is that influence to be for good or for bad? Are we still to be called gophers and to submit to the jeers of the criminal classes whom we are to control? Or are we to earn the respect of all right-thinking men in this north-west world by proving ourselves to be the best disciplined and the most efficient corps in Canada? It will be a proud day for me if ever that time should come and I believe it will come. Will you think it over and make up your minds? Will you in your barrack rooms cultivate a little esprit de corps? Will you consider the responsibilities that lie ahead of you in policing these vast territories and determine first to learn and then to do your duty with honour to yourselves and your corps and with benefit to the people amongst whom you may have to live and work? You can do it if each one of you will harden his hearts and stiffen his back and say to himself, I will. But the issue rests with you and not with me. I can only hope for the best. Sergeant Major dismissed the parade. As a matter of fact the men were so keen that I do not believe a cat could have crept through the line of centuries unseen. They picked up one man who had the appearance of a tramp but who had a pocketful of matches. He had, of course, a plausible tale to tell about having been trying to get employment from ranches, etc., and beyond locking him up for the night there was no adequate reason for punishing him as a vagrant. He was thus sent away in the morning and advised not to stop in town. He went a few miles eastward, as far as a place called Balgoni, where there was a railway bridge, and to this he set fire. We soon gathered him into the fold again, and this time he went to the Manitoba Penitentiary for two years. In the autumn of the year the town of Regina got some athletic sports, and our men were invited to participate. One event was a tug of war, and for this there were three entries, namely the town team, the Montreal Garrison artillery, and ourselves. The artillery team were easily beaten by the town, who had a very good team, including a powerful, big man, who stood about six feet six inches, and whose build and weight were inadequate proportion. Him they placed at the tail end of the rope as anchor, and they thought themselves unconquerable. For my part, in my old core, I had seen little of tug of war teams trained by expert gunnery instructors, and when the police team was finally chosen, and got down to work, my impression was that there was nothing in Western Canada to touch it. It turned out just as I expected. The police team never budged. They held their opponents while they pulled themselves out, and then, very gradually, but very surely, hauled them across the line. As soon as the tug of war was over, I turned aside to talk to the Lieutenant Governor and Mrs. Doudini, who were close by in their carriage, and had hardly had time to say a few words, before a woman clutched my arm and said, Stop them! I looked to see where she was pointed, and saw that a merry, free fight had begun between the men and the riff-riff of the townspeople. I ran into the fray, and the first man I came across was a hot-headed Irish corporal who held a townsman by the throat, and was choking the life out of him. I ordered him to let the man go, but he effected not to hear me, or not to recognize my voice, so I took hold of his face with both hands, and turning it so that he could not help seeing who I was, said, If you don't drop that man this instant, I'll give you six months to more mourning. He let go of the man, fell back and saluted, and I said, Fall the man in over there, indicating a spot by a wave of my arm, and tell them off into sections. I went to the judge's stand and told him I was very sorry that any unpleasantness should have arisen over a simple tug of war, in which the police were unquestionably the winners in a fair and square pole, that the police would not touch the prize which they had legitimately won, and that, as the mounted police were maintained in the territories, to keep the peace and not break it, it was my intention to take them all home immediately to their barracks. By the time these remarks were concluded my men were fallen in and told off, and away they went. They sang themselves home over two and a half miles of prairie between the town and the barracks, and the town was left. The Lieutenant Governor and some of the prominent residents left the ground in disgust. In the course of that evening the mayor sent me, through the town police station, a telephone message urging me to send a patrol to keep order in the town, as a great number of rowdies were causing alarm to the peaceable citizens. I had left but one constable in the station to attend to telephone messages, and him I directed to take my compliments to the mayor, and say that the appearance of a mounted police patrol strong enough to take the rowdies into custody would be likely to cause more disturbance than existed, and might possibly cause bloodshed. I emphatically declined, therefore, to provoke any such breach of the peace, and advised him to swear in special constables to deal with the situation. I concluded by saying the town will have to police itself tonight in any event. After all nothing happened. The reputable people were kept awake for some hours by the disreputable element, but the whole trouble had simmered down before the morning. In the course of the four noon I called my men together and said to them, I told you not long ago that if you would go on doing your duty as you had done it, up to that time you might easily become the best disciplined armed force in Canada. I can this morning go a deal further than that, and say to you, after your magnificent exhibition of discipline on the athletic ground yesterday afternoon, when despite the fact that angry passions were aroused, and there was every prospect of a disastrous row, you answered the call of duty and left your traducers and assailants in contemptuous silence. I say to you that it rests only with yourselves to become the finest force of constabulary in the world, for you have shown to the north-west public that you can control yourselves, you have learned the discipline of the Royal Marines, I am proud of you men, and I thank you for what you have done. I was very much annoyed during the sitting of the Louis Real Court when one day General Middleton's Aid to Camp handed me a half sheet of note paper on which was written. The General will inspect the police at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, by order, et cetera. We were not under the militia department, we were not engaged in military operations, seeing that we were in Assai's court, and the commissioner of the Mounted Police, a stipendary magistrate, was to my mind and titled to at least a more courteous notification than this intimation handed to his agitant by the General's Aid, and my blood fairly boiled. I tried to get Colonel Irvine to object to this inspection, but could not succeed. At ten a.m. next day the parade was drawn up, ready for inspection. The men were all sized, according to the uniform, that had been issued to them, and irrespective of the stages of their training, and the General Officer commanding the militia, rode up and down the rank, and then went off to inspect the tents, et cetera, in which the men lived. I told the commissioner before his high mightiness arrived that if the General should say anything about drill he would have to wait until the afternoon, as it would take some time to sort the men into their various drill squads and rides. As it happened nothing was said about drill, but the Lieutenant Governor remarked to me afterwards. The General was very pleased with the parade, but there was no drill. No, I replied, I took good care of that. When I want General Middleton's assistance in training a force of constabulary I shall be quite sure to ask him for it. Not long after this the Lieutenant Governor went to Winnipeg, where a force of mounted infantry had been recently established. He had seen the men on a church parade, and came back, full of their smartness, et cetera. Without in any way wishing to deprecate the Winnipeg men I remarked. My night guard of thirty men are thereabouts, mounts every evening at seven o'clock. Of course I know that it is an inconvenient hour for you, but it is a pity that you cannot take a look at them. Because if there is anything smarter to be seen in Canada I will apply for leave to go and see it. Towards the close of the year 1885 I was told by a man who was in the know that the Government had decided to supersede Colonel Irvine in the following spring, and that there were three nominees for the position. First, Major, now Sir Edward Hutton, Mr. Lawrence Hirchmer, and myself, Mr. Lawrence Hirchmer was a bosom friend of the honourable Edward Dudney, and Mr. Dudney had Sir John McDonald's ear. Mr. Hirchmer got the appointment. He was some five or six years older than myself, had served three or four years, it was understood, in a British infantry regiment, had tried the brewing business in Winnipeg, and then had been appointed as Inspector of Indian Agencies in the Northwest. A place called Bertle in Manitoba was the home from which he migrated to us. In 1887, when I was on recruiting duty in Ottawa, I took the trouble to ascertain, through the late Sir David MacPherson, then Minister of the Interior, and Mr. George Allen, then Speaker of the Senate, why these things were so. Sir David said that Mr. Hirchmer's father had been an old friend of Sir John McDonald, who felt bound to do something for the son. Colonel Irvine had managed to acquire some very bitter enemies. One of these was Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dudney, another was the late Nicholas Flood-David, editor of the Regina Leader, and to these General Middleton appeared at this stage to have added himself. At all events his idea was to have the mounted police transferred from the Prime Minister's own particular care to that of the militia department, and his reports of the inefficiency of the force were such that Sir John McDonald at last resented them and decided to keep the police under his fatherly eye, and not to hand them over to the militia department. An incident occurred some little time after Mr. Hirchmer's accession to power. A Staff Sergeant of the Fourth had found a woman whom he desired to marry. But the autocrat of the mounted police set his face steadily against matrimony among the non-commissioned officers and men, and he said to the Staff Sergeant, There is a commission coming to you if you remain single, but you will have to choose between the commission and a wife. Thank you, sir," said the other, I'll take the wife. When this story was repeated to Sir John he said, I like his spirit, he shall have the commission too. And he gave it to the bridegroom. Colonel Irvine was subjected to a great deal of very unfair misrepresentation. I knew him for a gallant and honourable gentleman, who would never have stooped to soil his fingers with the looted furs which subsequently formed the subject of a conversation in the Canadian House of Commons. Mounted Police Life in Canada by Captain Burton Dean CHAPTER IV. 1886-88. REGINA. Mr. Lawrence Hirchmer duly presented himself at the office of the Commissioner of the Northwest Mounted Police on the morning of the 1st April, 1885. Colonel Irvine was not there to receive him as he had started off two or three days previously to MacLeod without having said a word, even to me, about his supercession. I had, however, by that time become quite used to the eccentricities of the Mounted Police Force and informed the new Commissioner that, in my opinion, he need not expect his predecessor to hand over his command in person. Mr. Hirchmer therefore sent telegrams to the officers commanding the various posts saying that he assumed the commissionership from that day and that in future all official correspondence should be addressed to himself at Regina. Having done that he went back to Government House where he was staying for the time being. In the evening a farewell order was received by wire from Colonel Irvine and was duly published in General Orders. Among the telegrams sent by Mr. Hirchmer on his arrival was one to his brother, the superintendent in command at Calgary, desiring him to come to headquarters for, as he said, I don't know how my brother may take my appointment. The brother, however, could never have been full enough to think that he was in the running for Colonel Irvine's vacancy and so their need have been no anxiety on that score. He came readily enough in answer to the summons and the first object to which they gave their minds was the breaking up of what they called the MacLeod clique. The officer commanding the police post at MacLeod at the time, that is, Superintendent John Cotton, my predecessor in the adjudancy, had always objected to the transfer of the police headquarters to Regina from Port Walsh, a point which was much further westward, but had nothing to recommend it as far as I could see, beyond its old association, etc. The climate was, it must be confessed, very much less severe than that of Regina, but the post itself was situated in a flat entirely at the mercy of rifle fire from surrounding hills. It was here that Sitting Bull, with his victorious band of Sioux Indians, had presented themselves after their massacre of the American troops under General Custer, and naturally some allowance might be made for the sake of old associations, but they could not necessarily be allowed to militate against the deliberate decision of the government, which was to place the headquarters of the mounted police at Regina. The capital of the Northwest Territories where indeed it would be most convenient. Regina, be it noted, was the choice of Lieutenant Governor Dudney and was christened by the Princess Louise. Mr. Dudney had been severely criticized for selecting such a spot for a capital, and I was shown an old American map wherein the settlement, for it was neither village nor municipality in those days, did unquestionably appear within the apex of a district delineated on the map as the great American desert. All I can say is that it is a pretty fortunate desert to have such soil as it has, deep, rich, and heavy, which will be able to grow wheat and other cereals when less favoured localities will be played out, as some of them are now already. I know something of the Regina soil, for with the exception of that at government house I made probably the first garden in the place. A good garden it was too, though it was made within ten days in the spring of 1884. It is an historical fact that in 1886, when Sir John and Lady MacDonald paid their first visit to western Canada, I sent to government house in time for their breakfast a musk melon which, under glass of course, happened to mature in the nick of time, and was certainly the first of its kind grown within many miles of the spot. It is necessary here to explain that the officer commanding the mounted police at MacLeod had until the time of which I write, that is, A.D. 1886, acted also as a collector of customs for the western country. This brought him a good round sum every year, as all the cattle, horses, and other doodiable goods which entered the country from the south had to pay duty at MacLeod, and the former occupant of the position during his tenure thereof had made about twenty-five thousand dollars in addition to his police pay. At MacLeod also was stationed Dr. George Kennedy, a great friend of Superintendent John Cottons, who was the assistant surgeon in medical charge of the post and district, and the only practitioner in the neighborhood. This was the combination that Hirschmer used to call the MacLeod clique, and between him and it there was bitter enmity. It goes without saying, therefore, that when the Hirschmer family came into power the first sign of attack on the MacLeod clique showed itself in orders transferring C. division and its officers to Battlefield, a post in the far north about five hundred miles from MacLeod. Dr. Kennedy said he would not go and resigned his commission, so that the division went without him, and was replaced by the division from Battlefield. William Hirschmer elected to remain at Calgary, where he was already stationed. The customs appointment at MacLeod was doomed to extinction, so far as the police were concerned, for there were many hungry politicians in the East looking for just that kind of job, and the gift was very soon bestowed upon a stalwart of the Conservative Party in Ontario. As soon as the newly appointed commissioner had learnt, as he thought, enough of the rudiments of his new profession to qualify him for the attempt, he started off to make an official inspection of his brother's command at Calgary, by way of practicing his apprentice hand upon a division which might be expected not to be too critical of his academic methods. E. division fooled him to the top of his bent, and he was delighted with everything he saw. He liked the place. He liked the people. He liked the climate. And as there were lots of trout in the Bull River at the time, some of the men got up early in the morning of his departure, and caught some fish, which they packed in ice for him, and sent him home rejoicing. He was as pleased as a child with his new toy, and took an early opportunity after his arrival to unboozle himself to Lieutenant Governor Edgar Dudney, to whom he imparted his opinion that Calgary would be a preferable place to Regina for the capital of the Northwest Territories. This was the first intimation that his honour had that his quantum protégé was now able to set up and take notice for himself. Meanwhile, life was not too pleasant for me, as Lawrence Hirchmer lost no opportunity to vent his spite upon myself. One instance of his methods was exemplified at the time of his departure to make his first inspection at Calgary as already mentioned. On the morning after he had gone, when I went out into the barracks square, I noticed that the flag was not flying, and meeting the sergeant major. Now, Colonel R. Belcher, C. M. G., of Strathcona's horse, I inquired, what has happened to the flag? Halyard's broken? No, sir, he replied, the Commissioner sent for me yesterday, and gave me orders that the flag was not to fly when he was out of the post. Well, I remarked, he said nothing to me about it, and I saw him last night before he started off for the station. That was just the kind of thing that Mr. Lawrence Hirchmer did, and there was a hood of derision from all over the country at the new rule which could not be kept secret. I have said enough to show that he was quite an impossible man to work with. His appointments did not bespeak the welfare of the public service as the first consideration. For about a year I fulfilled the duties of my office with scrupulous exactitude, and supplied the many deficiencies in the Commissioner's semi-military education, until on the morning of March 14, 1887 he overstepped the line of hard and fast demarcation which I had resolutely drawn, and I told him a little of what was in my mind regarding himself and his methods. It happened that the Comptroller of the Force from Ottawa had arrived at Government House on the previous night and stepped over to the barracks in the morning. He had occasion to pass through my office on his way to see the Commissioner, and as I greeted him I said, The inevitable row has just occurred. Do not make up your mind until you have heard my side of the story. He nodded and passed on. In a few minutes he came out alone. Stop long enough to say, Don't let that trouble you, Dean. I quite see how impossible your position is here. I will come over and see you this evening. And when did his way back to Government House? He came to my house soon after ten that night, and we had a private talk on the existing regime. Daily manifestations of injustice were producing grave discontent. For myself he said that I had put in three years of hard work and should have a rest. He decided to tell the Commissioner in the morning that I should go to the East on recruiting duty for some months, and that thereafter I should be given the command of a post somewhere, possibly at Calgary or MacLeod. In pursuance of this arrangement I left Regina on March 27th with my wife and family for Toronto, which we made our headquarters for the ensuing four months during which time we renewed acquaintance with many old friends there and in Ottawa. On my return I found myself in orders to take command of the depot division to which all recruits were posted, and to which all men at headquarters belonged. This was very much more palatable than resuming my former position in the Commissioner's office. I had dry-nosed him for a full year and was heartily sick of the job. During the autumn and winter months I organised a theatrical troupe, and we had considerable fun from our amateur attempts and from little dances that we occasionally gave. We beguiled the time as best we could, for the winter months were long and dreary. We had, of course, slaying and snowshoeing, but we had no covered skating rink, and it was too cold to skate out of doors. We were, moreover, two and a half miles from town, so that we had to be self-contained while the thermometer averaged twenty to twenty-five degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and occasionally dipped into the thirties and forties. My family and I were always welcome visitors at Government House, for the late Mrs. Doudney and my late wife were great friends, and we were in no way dependent upon the uncongenial society of the Hirschmers, between whom and Government House the rift was gradually but surely widening. It was well understood that the winter of 1887 would be my last in Regina, for the Commissioner had told me, on my return from recruiting, that I was to take e-division from Calgary to MacLeod in the autumn, and although that move had not come off, a transfer to some other post was ahead of me. It was customary at that time for the Commissioner to pay an annual visit to Ottawa during the session of Parliament, so that the Premier might obtain at first hand any information which might be required from the head of the force as to police conditions in the West, and incidentally this gave the visitor an opportunity to do a little lobbying on his own account. Enter Aliyah, movements of officers had to be discussed, and it was therefore without any feeling of surprise that I learned one afternoon from the Lieutenant Governor that he had that morning received a letter from Freddie White, the Comptroller, who told him that it had been decided to transfer me to Prince Albert in the spring. Now Prince Albert was, as I had always understood, a very charming place, a landmark in the country, long before either Regina or Calgary had been thought of. It was one of the old-time headquarters of the Hudson Spade Company, where a chief factor named Lawrence Clark had his habitat, and was altogether a most desirable place to live and work from. It could not, it was true, compete with Regina or Calgary as the metropolis of the Northwest Territories, but what did that matter? I should be only too glad to go anywhere where my services were required. As to taking my family, that was quite another matter. My wife was inexperienced in prairie travel, so were her three younger children, and as there were roughly three hundred miles of prairie to be negotiated in wagons in order to reach this delectable spot, it was quite out of the question for me to subject them to that long journey in weather which was as uncertain as the roads, and I decided to send them to Ottawa. In about a fortnight's time the Governor looked me up again, saying that the Prince Albert Jail is off, I have a letter from Fred White in which he says, We cannot have her here. I replied, All right, Your Honor, it is all the same to me. Fred White is not such a fool as you think, is he? He laughed. As my wife and I had spent some months altogether in Ottawa, we were not entirely friendless there. When the Commissioner came home I learned that we were to be sent to Lethbridge, so-called after the President of the Northwest Coal and Navigation Company, which company had been opened by Lord Lansdowne in 1885. The police post there had only been completed about a year previously, and the place was still shown on maps as Coal Banks. I wrote to the officer commanding, asking for measurements of his various rooms, etc., and he poor chap was quite cut up, for he said he had no previous intimation nor any reason to anticipate a move. He had, as a matter of fact, got into some hot water which had formed the subject of newspaper paragraphs all over the country, and he was moved to MacLeod under a senior officer. There was enforced in those days a dominion statute prohibiting the importation, sale, and even the possession of intoxicants by any person within the Northwest Territories, except by permission of the Lieutenant Governor, and it was the duty of the Mounted Police to enforce this act. When a permit was issued, a notification was sent to the police, and they watched for every consignment, promptly took up each permit, and returned it to the Lieutenant Governor's office. Permits were not altogether easy to obtain, and one uncancelled permit might be used to cover other importations. The suspicion of a permit caused the boys to hang round the Dominion Express office, and wait and wait and watch, until at last after a long time the Express Company could be freed to deliver the consignment. Then there would be a gathering of the Eagles to the slaughter, and the wagon would be followed to its destination at a discrete distance by all the thirsty harpies who wanted to have a drink at the expense of someone else. If the owner happened to be away from home the visitors were out of luck, but if on the other hand he was there the entire crowd would follow the keg in and stay with it as long as it contained a drop. This course of action the present day reader might think would have strained the ties of friendship to the breaking point, but it was not so at all. The generic question of liquor, licit or illicit, was governed by a code of honour all its own. Men whose word in the ordinary transactions of life, always accepting a horse-deal, one would accept without reserve, could not be trusted to speak the truth and nothing but the truth where a liquor prosecution was concerned. The first elected Member of Parliament for the Dominion House, when he went north to canvas his constituents in the Edmonton Section of Alberta, took with him a slayload of carcasses of hogs, and each carcass contained bladders full of whisky, contraband at that, for he never could have obtained permits to cover such an amount as there was, and it had all been smuggled into MacLeod from Montana. The half-breed vote might easily be conciliated with whisky, and the candidate was triumphantly returned at the head of the pole. There were at this time men who made their living by dealing in illicit whisky, playing poker, et cetera, and those who had the wit to take care of their money became well to do. Probably the most imprudent theft on a large scale that came under my notice was that of whisky from a carload of liquor, which passed through the Northwest Territories en route to British Columbia where there was no prohibition law in force. This car was bonded and sealed until it arrived at its destination. It happened, however, that it was side-tracked for a day or two somewhere near Calgary, when the Transcontinental Train Service was in its infancy. In some way the liquor-dealing miscreants had ascertained that the car contained, among the profusion of barrels, kegs and cases that it carried, a barrel of whisky, which stood at a certain spot at its rear end. So with a long auger a hole was borne clean through the bottom of the car into the bottom of the barrel when the rest was easy. They drained the liquor into the receptacles which they had ready and drove off with the plunder. Obviously they would not waste time in trying to cover up the traces of their modus operande and no clue remained to enable the perpetrators to be identified. When Larry, as he was properly spoken of, returned from Ottawa in the spring of 1888 he was feeling, as the saying is, pretty good, and with the true Haasens-Orland spirit, looked for other worlds to conquer, he had a fine new house waiting for him, a flag that was impatiently longing to fling itself into the breeze, and, taking it all in all, he had every reason to think that it was good to be alive. With the hardy co-operation of his visa-tergo, so christened by Dr. Jukes, he thought out a scheme of officially asking the Lieutenant Governor not to issue any permits to members of the Mounted Police unless the applicants were sent through and were recommended by himself. I had private information as to the receipt of this letter in the Governor's office, and knew also that the Governor took several days to consider the proposition. When he assented, which he finally did, a general order was issued by the Commissioner to the Force throughout the country. I was then free to talk to the Governor about this order, and told him frankly that I considered it to be an infringement upon the liberty of the subject, and calculated to bring into disrepute a body of officers without whose co-operation the existing prohibition law could not be enforced. From a personal point of view I represented that I considered the order an insult. I said to him, your honour is quite well aware that liquor is not abused in my household, whatever may be the case elsewhere. He understood the implication without any further enlargement, and said it was within his personal knowledge that, in some instances, it might not be inadvisable to have the order carried out. But that so far as I was concerned he should not think of setting a limit to his own discretion. I might rest assured that he would grant me a permit whenever I might think proper to ask for one. Upon this I simply sat tight, and ignored Mr. Hirschmer in the matter of my permits. It was at this juncture that my family and I left Regina for Lethbridge, but it will be convenient to close upon this controversy at this point. Every successive permit that was issued to me threw my domineering friend into a fresh paroxysm of rage, and while he lost his temper I placidly kept mine and stood to my ground. The end of it was that, after the lapse of some weeks, the minister at Ottawa gave instructions that the offending general order should be cancelled, and a new one issued providing that intoxicating liquors should not be taken into police barracks without the consent of the commissioner. As this was entirely introveres of that officer I cheerfully accepted the conditions during the few years that the prohibition law remained in force. The ramifications of this dispute brought about an entire rupture of the quantum friendship between the Lieutenant Governor and Mr. Hirschmer, and they ceased to speak to one another. This was rendered the more easy so far as the public service was concerned, as the Governor, on the expiration of his term of office in the territories, carried the constituency of Muslimin, and entered the Cabinet at Ottawa as Minister of the Interior. On April the 30th, 1888, my 40th birthday, the Turkey track, so was the narrow gauge railway known, from the Canadian Pacific took me into Lethbridge, a village of about 500 or 600 people, many of the miners, a place where I was destined to spend 14 happy years thence forward. There my boys and girls grew up into men and women, and when the inevitable time of parting came we were all sorry to sever our connection with the people we liked so much, and among whom we had lived so long. There was in those days a camaraderie about life in the North West, which is entirely lacking now, and life was a great deal more worth living. Live and let live was the principle upon which we conducted our business. We constituted a little oasis in a desert, and were as happy a little community as one could find on the broad prairies. I looked back with great pleasure upon our theatrical entertainments, which were given always for a local charity, and also upon little time of stress when our Church of England parson was laid up with a bad throat. I waited for him after the service one day and said, I will read the lessons for you if it will be a relief. It will be a great help, he said, and I did so for one Sunday. Then I said, better give yourself a chance, let me read the prayers, and you preach the sermon. I shall be so glad if you will, said he. The arrangement continued for a while, but the poor chap had to give it up and go to a milder climate. So it was my lot to keep the church doors open and continue the service until a parson could be procured to take the job. In later years when business had become more progressive and renumerative and we had to find maintenance for a parson or to dispense with him altogether, a young Englishman was allocated to our parish and asked me to be his church warden. This was an honour which I had thereto for studiously declined, but at last I gave way. It was a case of the self-supporting rectorship at last, and the question before the vestry was the stipend which we could guarantee to pay. $1200 a year was the irreducible minimum, and I said that I thought we ought to be able to guarantee that much. The people's warden at this juncture was one J. H. Kavanaugh, and he disagreed with me. There were not too many old-timers of that day left in the land of the living now, but such as are in the flesh will endorse what I say about him later on. At the vestry meeting I said, I will find out what it is possible to do and report to the next meeting. All my exertions in the interim showed that we could not, in addition to church expenses, guarantee $1200 a year to the rector. As a government official, independent of business considerations, I was the only person in the community who could try the experiment of securing offers of monetary assistance. I admitted quite frankly to Kavanaugh that he knew more about it than I did. He was a successful businessman in a small way, that is to say, he ran a very reputable grocery, etc., store, of which the stock was paid for before he began to retell it, and he was a man of sterling character. At the time of the miner's lockout he was Grand Master of the ancient order of the United Workmen of Manitoba, and the Northwest Territories, and I was Master of the local Masonic Lodge No. 22. We had a good many ideas in common, and I often used to drop into his shop for a chat. He had a philanthropic disposition, and his death was a distinct loss. Almost the last I knew of him was in 1902, when I returned to Lethbridge from the customs roundup described in future pages. No sooner had I reached home than I was called to the telephone. This is J. H. Kavanaugh. You were elected worshipful master at the last meeting, and old Fred Campness is in hospital like to die. There is not much time to lose if you want to see him. I kicked off at once to the hospital to see the old chap whose only expression was, I am so tired. And I left him with the impression that I had better lose no time in memorizing the Masonic ritual for the dead. It was well I did so, for three days later it fell to my lot, as the first act of my assumption of office, to lay to rest a worthy old brother Mason, who had been in Australia and New Zealand before coming to Canada, and whom at the request of the customs department I had nominated as local assistant collector of customs at Regina in 1885. It was after I left Lethbridge in 1902 that Kavanaugh was seized with appendicitis and died from it. Dr. Muborn, who attended and operated on him, is a graduate of the McGill University of Montreal. He is the fifth of his family in the medical line, and he has for years been known as the first surgeon in the West. What he has done for me and my family I could not adequately tell. We had the benefit of unremitting care and attention and up-to-date skill, for the little man, as I speak of him to mutual friends and acquaintances, was nothing if not up-to-date, although we lived in a little oasis at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. I remember so well the beginning of our acquaintance. Muborn was the only medical man in the place. Naturally it would not have supported, too, and was both the acting assistant surgeon of Mounted Police and medical officer to the mining establishment. For our part we had, on the bank of the Belly River, a small building which had been erected as a hospital. This was about half a mile from the centre of the village and contained room for two or three beds, a small kitchen, accommodation for the hospital orderly, and a very limited surgery. It was obviously inconvenient to send every man who had a trivial complaint to attend the hospital parade at such a distance from the barracks, and within a few months of my arrival the hospital conveniences were brought within the four walls of the wire fencing and closing our barracks. But that little hospital on the bank of the river while it lasted, answered Dr Muborn's purpose to the full. A chance Indian came to him one day, accompanied by a good many of his relations, and asked if any relief was possible. This case, if my memory serves me correctly, was that of a bad goiter, and the little man, thought he could relieve that condition, with this proviso, as he put it to the patient and his assembled relatives. I think I can do good, but I shall have to make a big cut. If I think right, and if you all do as I tell you after the cut is made, this man may get well, but I cannot tell for sure until I have made the big cut, and then if he does not get well, and if he should die you must not blame me. What do you say, shall I make the big cut? A chorus of, uh, uh, uh, came from the patient and his numerous satellites, and the operation was duly performed. It turned out successfully. And then the little man's fame began to grow. It spread from the bloods to the black feet, and severe cases would go to see the Lethbridge doctor. The official medicals, be it observed, were paid liberal salaries by the Indian department, but not assent came to Dr. Muburn, who undertook the work, not so much for the prestige which it gave him amongst the Indians, as for the experience which he gained for the benefit of the world at large. The Indians grew to have a blind faith in him, and brought him all sorts of cases. The enormous experience thus gained, begot him the subsequent reputation of the first surgeon in the West. In a few years time the primitive conditions under which he had been compelled to work were replaced by an up-to-date little hospital, which the late Sir Alexander Galt built and presented to the company of which he was president. I never shall forget the night of my arrival at Lethbridge. There was only one hotel in the place, and one did not expect very much, but I sat down opposite my bed, and for at least five minutes wondered how I could put in the night. There was a clean pillowcase on the bed, but this only served to intensify the mahogany colour of the sheets. In desperation, at last I wrapped myself up in my blue, cavalry cloak, and was glad when morning came. The police post at that time consisted of nothing more than a number of houses dumped upon the open prairie, forming the four sides of a sufficiently capacious square, with a grand room and cells at one end and two stables, each capable of containing forty horses at the opposite, the north end. The range cattle swarmed all over the place at their own sweet will, and at night they used to come and upset our sloped barrels, and pick over the contents, making a horrible mess outside our back doors. As the months rolled on we overcame these difficulties by enclosing the barrack reserve within a stout wire net fence with a top rail, and by constructing a substantial corral for the three hundred tons of hay which we intended to stack in the coming season. In connection with the stables I once had a bad scare. The commanding officer's house was the nearest to the stables and hay corral, and about eleven o'clock when I was in my little smoking room I heard the stable picket vault over the lower half doors which were locked and shout, fire. Beyond a few patent extinguishers we had in the barracks no means whatever of controlling a fire, and on this occasion I bolted out of my front door and ran like a hare into the stable which was nearest to me. At the far end in the centre-oil I saw the wooden flora blaze. It was just behind the stalls of two very fine shire horses that we used for hulling water from the river. If I had not been too much preoccupied and anxious I could have laughed at the quizzical expressions on the faces of these beautiful creatures as they looked around as much to say, what are you doing? This is bedtime, why don't you leave us alone? I was just in time the fire was on the point of reaching the bedding of one of them. In lying down the horse had pushed some of the straw beyond his stall into the aisle and I whipped off my coat and beat it away. That was all I could do single-handed but the danger was past. I had barely saved the situation when my next door neighbour, Inspector Moody, ran in and helped. Then came Staff Sergeant Charles Ross with an armful of blankets. He was on his way home, saw the flicker of light in the stable windows, and knew that there could be only one explanation thereof. And like the man he was, ran to the Sergeant Major's store, gathered up an armful of blankets, which were always kept handy for transients, and came to the rescue. In a jiffy, too, came the men from their beds with axes, et cetera, in almost less time than it has taken me to write these lines. A plank was chopped through and any remaining fire effectually smothered. Perhaps I should here explain the necessity for the blankets which Sergeant Ross brought. None knew better than himself that a horse will not face fire, and that in order to lead the animals out of their stalls it would be necessary to blindfold them. Happily this was not necessary, and most of the horses did not be stir themselves. All's well that ends well, but I had a bad quirk to err, while I was keeping the flames under, and while I was superintending the subsequent operations. How in hell did this thing happen? Was the question running through my mind? As I subsequently learned, the stable picket had heard a horse, loose in this particular stable, and, as was his duty, went in to tie him up in his stall. He had quietly coked the horse down to the eastern end of the stable, and just as he was about to lay hold of his halter, the brute dashed by him, kicked at the lantern which the man was carrying, and smashed it to smithereens. The lighted oil ran down between the planks, and said alight any inflammable dry rubbish that was there, and so spread. The two horses that I speak of were used for nothing, but to haul our water-tank, and they and the teamster, who was told off to look after them, were kept fully occupied. All water in the town had to be delivered by water-cart in those days, and used to cost ten cents per barrel. The year 1888 was the first of a dry period that lasted for seven years. Dry summers and hard winters went together, and each year became a little drier than its predecessor. Farming was out of the question, even if any one had thought of it, which no one did. That would have been far too much like work. Riding long hours after cattle or horses on the prairie was not looked upon as work. There was a story told of an old-timer in the McLeod District who would not take a contract for digging a well because he could not do it on horseback. The country was intended by Providence for stock growing, and anybody connected with stock who was worth a second glance swore tremendous oaths, wore Mexican spurs and chaps, and possibly a buckskin shirt with a fringe. I myself did a lot of work which, if it was not hard, was steady, for I determined to have a garden at all costs. Experience taught me that the only way in which the seed could be induced to germinate was to make the necessary drills, saturate them with water, then sow the seed, cover it up, and keep on watering. As I had about half an acre of garden and did the work myself, it used to keep my spare hours pretty well occupied. Now and again I used to get a prisoner out of the guard room to help me. There was one to whom I used to give a horn of whiskey the last thing. He was the cleverest and most successful horse-thief in the country. He was a B.A. of Dublin University, and lived with a squaw on the St. Mary's River. He had a bunch of five hundred or six hundred horses running at large on the prairie, most, if not all of them, stolen, and once or twice a year he would round them up, cut out some of the likely ones, and drive them across country into Manitoba where he would sell or trade them for cattle. He had not only a merry life but a long one, for it was years before we could get a clear case against him, and when at length he was convicted for the first time the judge gave him only six months in the guard room. It was during this temporary retreat that he used to learn gardening from Captain Jean, as I found he told his friends afterwards, and earned the little drop of, oh, be joyful, which always sent him happy to bed. Poor Pat, as he was known, did not profit by his experience, for at a later date he came under the notice of Chief Justice A. L. Sifton, who had no sympathy with horse-thieves, and sent him to the Manitoba penitentiary where he died. I had no fewer than seven barrels conveniently disposed round my garden fence which the water-cart man used to keep filled from day to day, and that, to any one, unconnected with the mounted police, meant a daily expenditure of seventy cents. It was no wonder that people could not afford to have gardens in those days, for every little onion had an appreciable value, and my old wife's principal enjoyment in life was to drive a boat in her, theyten, with a goodly basket of vegetables, and give them to her friends. Of cucumbers I always had an abundance, and they were the first of the particular brand to be grown in that country. I had almost forgotten to mention my first tree-growing experiment which turned out so unfortunately. To the south and east there was, for many miles, nothing but a waterless wilderness, with no habitation whatever, and without any semblance of a tree or even bush. Having prison labor and water facility at command I obtained permission from the coal company to take seventy-five suitable saplings from their property in the river bottom and to transplant them on the barracksite. For each tree I prepared a hole measuring roughly three feet each way, and loosened up the bottom with a little rubble for the sake of drainage. With the exception of about six inches of topsoil the rest was clay, very hard to work, which was all taken away. With each tree I brought a cubic yard of the soil that it had been growing in, and, prior to planting the tree, the hole was kept full of water, with the idea of making the walls of clay more negotiable by the roots. I could not foretell that we were simply wasting our time, but so it turned out. As each successive year became a little drier than the last, so the clay subsoil became more and more impervious. Some of the trees lasted one year, some two, some three, but, in spite of the water that we gave them, they succumbed one by one, and of all the seventy-five saplings that I set out in eighteen eighty-nine, and nursed assiduously, there is only one alive to-day. It stands at the turnstile entrance to the barracks in a slight hollow, with the snow gathered in the winter, and the rain drained at other times, and as the subsoil was thus kept moist, the roots were able to take-