On today’s date in 1873, the North-West Mount Police (NWMP), a predecessor of today’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), was established following an Order in Council signed by Canada’s third Governor-General Lord Dufferin.
Earlier that year, the government of prime minister John A. Macdonald proposed an act to establish a mounted police force for the North-Western Territory, which was a major region of British North America until 1870 and included present-day Yukon; the mainland Northwest Territories; northwestern mainland Nunavut; northwestern Saskatchewan; northern Alberta; and northern British Columbia.
The new force was unveiled as the “North West Mounted Rifles,” but following concerns about antagonizing both the U.S. population to the south and the Indigenous population at home, the force was renamed the NWMP when it was officially established in 1873.
According to Library and Archives Canada, the general duties of the NWMP included:
- establishing law and order;
- collecting customs dues;
- enforcing prohibition;
- supervising the treaties between First Nations and the federal government;
- assisting in the settlement process;
- ensuring the welfare of immigrants; and
- fighting prairie fires, disease and destitution.
A 1973 eight-cent stamp commemorates the NWMP’s ‘march west’ alongside commissioner G.A. French.
NWMP, RCMP STAMPS
In 1935, Canada’s Post Office Department (now Canada Post) issued a 10-cent stamp depicting an RCMP officer on horseback.
The horse and landscape were engraved by Harold Osborn while the officer was engraved by Sydney Smith. The stamp was designed by Herman Herbert Schwartz.
In 1973, the Post Office Department issued another stamp, this with a face value of eight cents and featuring the NWMP’s “march west” alongside commissioner G.A. French.
Canada Post celebrated the RCMP’s sesquicentennial on a Permanent stamp in May 2023.
The NWMP was tasked with policing about 777,000 square kilometres of the northwestern Canadian wilderness in an effort to suppress the whiskey trade, calm the growing unrest among the Indigenous population and diminish lawlessness throughout the vast territory.
“Fear of the Fenian raids from the south and the possibility of losing the West by default made it imperative that Canada quickly take official possession of the area,” reads a press release issued by the Post Office Department in 1973.
“July 1874 saw three hundred raw recruits under G.A. French, the first commissioner, set out from Dufferin, Manitoba, across the plains to Old Man’s River in what is now southern Alberta. There they constructed Fort Macleod, named for the Assistant Commissioner.”
“The rigorous trek … revealed in the men a stamina that augured will. Within a very few months the Indians came to sense the meaning of the scarlet tunic and the motto it represented: ‘Maintiens le Droit,’ ‘Uphold the Right.’”
More recently, in May 2023, Canada Post marked the RCMP’s 150th anniversary with a Permanent stamp.