Police
In Canada, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary was founded in 1729, making it the first police force in present-day Canada. It was followed in 1834 by the Toronto Police, and in 1838 by police forces in Montreal and Quebec City. A national force, the Dominion Police, was founded in 1868. Initially the Dominion Police provided security for parliament, but its responsibilities quickly grew. The famous Royal Northwest Mounted Police was founded in 1873.
The merger of these two police forces in 1920 formed the world-famous Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
English Canadians
Macdonald was also instrumental in the founding of the North-West Mounted Police in 1875, forerunners of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Canada's iconic national police force. The RCMP itself, established to "subdue the West", i.e. the newly acquired Northwest Territories, formerly the HBC's Rupert's Land, as declared in the preamble to its charter. The RCMP, long since eulogized into a moral, symbolic image of Canadian authority, far from its true nature as a paramilitary force commissioned with bringing First Nations and Métis to heel, plays a role in English Canada's perception of itself as a nation of essentially law-abiding citizens that confederated in 1867 for the purposes of establishing peace, order and good government.