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.
Rocky Mountain Rangers (1885)
The Rocky Mountain Rangers were one of the volunteer militia units raised in Canada's North West in response to the 1885 North-West Rebellion. It was a body of mounted irregulars, mostly cowboys and ranchers from the area around Fort Macleod (District of Alberta), the headquarters of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, about west of Medicine Hat (in what was then the District of Assiniboia). This unit is not to be confused with the present-day Canadian Army Reserve unit The Rocky Mountain Rangers of Kamloops, British Columbia. Rather, it is the ultimate ancestor of the South Alberta Light Horse.