Canadian Tommy McKenna is hunting a killer in the depths of the Yukon. His seemingly impossible mission is not so peculiar when you glimpse the history of the legendary Mountie.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) have a long and respected history that, exploited in literature and in Hollywood, has made them legend. The origin of this rough and ready group is not as well known, however. 

Originally called the Northwest Mounted Police Force, it was created in 1873 to bring law and order to the Northwest Territories.

At the time there were roughly 5,000 “toughs” running loose over an area greater than Europe. This group included outlaws and whisky traders, wolf and buffalo hunters, who were often at war with the Indian nations, including the Blackfoot, Sioux, Cree, Blood and Assiniboine. With their numbers already dwindling from the deadly smallpox disease and the fiery whisky brought by renegade white settlers, these natives had asked the few British representatives they could find at the time to tell the Great Grandmother (Queen Victoria) to send back the red-coated soldiers to protect them. 

The problem, though, was that the British soldiers who had patrolled the area (to protect the interests of the British Hudson’s Bay Company) had been withdrawn because the Territories were now part of a new nation called the Dominion of Canada.

In 1873, prompted by the massacre of a number of Assiniboines by drunken “toughs,” the Canadian Prime Minister at the time, one John A. Macdonald, was forced to rapidly organize a force of 275 men to ride west and establish the Queen’s Law, which they did—smashing the illegal whisky trade and greatly reducing the lawlessness in the area. 

This is also why the tunics the mounties wore were red and similar to the red British military coats—to identify and associate the RCMP as being with the Crown. 

The RCMP rode on to fame—from battling rebels to guarding the gold fields of the Yukon, this police force which asserted sovereignty over Canada was a powerful influence for peace.

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