North-West Mounted Police in the Canadian north
The history of the North-West Mounted Police in the Canadian north describes the activities of the North-West Mounted Police in the North-West Territories at the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. The mounted police had been established to control the prairies along the Canadian-United States border in 1873, but were then also deployed to control the Yukon region during the Klondike Gold Rush, and subsequently expanded their operations into the Hudson Bay area and the far north. The force was amalgamated in 1920 to form part of the new Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who continued their predecessors' work across the region.
North-West Mounted Police
The first appearance of the mounted police in fiction occurred in Joseph Collin's "The Story of Louis Riel", published in 1885. The police soon became a popular subject for writers, with over 150 novels about the force and its successor, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, being published between 1890 and 1940 across North America and Britain, along with magazine articles and publications for children. Gilbert Parker, James Curwood and Ralph Connor's works proved particularly popular and influential. Connor's "Corporal Cameron", published in 1912, set the tone for many later books with a tale of its initially dissolute protagonist's redemption through service with the police. Numerous poems were written about the force, with the best known probably being the "Riders of the Plains", which was first published in 1878 and later expanded upon several times.