Debunking the Mountie Myth

The activist website telling unofficial stories about the RCMP

When I was preparing to go to the Basque country in the mid 1990s to do research for my doctoral thesis, my plans were temporarily suspended by an unexpected diplomatic row between Canada and Spain. The so-called Turbot War broke out when a Spanish fishing trawler was spotted operating on the edge Canada’s east-coast Exclusive Economic Zone. Today I’d have something sharper to say about the absurdity of framing industrial fishing rights as an international political storm rather than an environmental crisis or animal rights issue. But my main memory of the event is a clipping from a British newspaper, given to me my PhD supervisor: a cartoon of a smiling police officer dressed in jodhpurs and a wide-brimmed hat, dangling a dead fish in one hand, with the caption “The Mounties always get their fish”.

The sketch not only summed up the British media’s light-hearted coverage of the affair, but the affection with which the much of the world views the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The fantasy of the Mounties – which last month celebrated their 150^th anniversary – as a colourful brigade merrily galloping through forests, over prairies and foothills in their Stetsons and bright red coats is part of what a friend of mine once called Canada’s “fluffy bunny image”. In an ongoing endeavour to correct that misconception––not least in the eyes of Canadians who have themselves bought into the mythologisation of the RCMP––one group of activists and historians have set up the RCMP Heritage Site.

The first line on the About page reads:

This is not an official RCMP site.

The Mounties’s image as a proud and benign national police force has become increasingly tarnished in recent decades. Central to this change has been the work of Indigenous people rewriting the devastating history of Canada’s genocidal past, with the RCMP –– alongside different levels of government and various Christian churches –– at the centre (indeed, I was alerted to this activist website in an article by Anishinaabe journalist Tanya Talaga about the RCMP’s role in Canada’s residential school system). Another nail making its way into the coffin of the Mounty myth is the report on the force’s gross mishandling of the country’s worst-ever mass shooting in 2020, during which 22 people were murdered in Nova Scotia by a man dressed in an RCMP uniform.

The Heritage website features a series of short articles and links to other resources, from online archives to books and films, divided historically by theme. The largest section is, appropriately, dedicated to RCMP–Indigenous relations, including not only residential schools and forced removal of Indigenous children from their families (a system of state-sponsored abduction overseen by the force over a period of 76 years), but also specific articles on the RCMP’s relations with Métis and Inuit communities. In the latter case, the national police played a central role in the relocation of dozens of Inuit communities in the Arctic in the mid twentieth century. There’s also a piece about the sexualised violence against committed by the police against Indigenous women, children, and Two-Spirit peoples.

Misogyny and racism are also uncovered inside the force. Women were only admitted as full officers in 1974, and since then there has been a string of harassment, bullying and sexual misconduct cases. During the Cold War, the RCMP was active in purging gay men and suspected homosexuals from the public service. More recently, the force has contributed to Canada’s War on Terror, and collaboration with US forces made it complicit in the rendition of prisoners to Syria for torture. Closer to home, officers have been involved in a long list of civilian deaths, through the use of tasers, guns or neglect. The Mounties also have a history of targeting social justice movements, and have actively intervened to end peaceful activist protests and occupations, including on Indigenous land, violating the civil rights of citizens and the work of journalists.

The RCMP Heritage website is a stellar example of activist history, serving the public by taking history out of archives, universities and classrooms into much-needed wider discussion. In recent years, in the light of Rhodes Must Fall and other movements against the iconisation of colonial leaders of the past, conservative commentators have sometimes criticised progressive attacks on celebratory imperial history as attempts to rewrite history and even erase the past. Such accusations are based on a serious, perhaps deliberate, misunderstanding of how history is written, one that cynically attempts to equate the process of decolonising history with denying historical fact. While writing history involves the careful weighing of evidence, it is always an ongoing process of interpretation, driven by the uncovering of new sources and re-examination of older ones in the light of new information and ideas. In other words, writing history is by definition also a process of rewriting history.

Websites such as the RCMP Heritage site exist precisely because official histories are always selective with the facts, leaving out crucial evidence, including that which has been deliberately destroyed by governments trying to cover their shameful pasts.

In an era when movements for police and prison abolition are on the rise, largely influenced by US-based Black activists such as Angela Davis and Black Lives Matter, it is more important than ever to tell police histories in all their complexity, including the violence and exclusion. But it’s equally vital to highlight alternatives to policing. The RCMP Heritage website includes a special section on the grassroots organisations that have stepped into the huge hole left by oppressive and inadequate policing by cultivating justice beyond a reliance on an armed colonial police force.

Such stories allow us not only to imagine worlds in which the police are held accountable for their abuses, but in which policing in its present, oppressive form does not exist at all.

Pen in Fist, a newsletter on writing and activism, is written by me, C Lou, aka Dr Carrie. For information on my other writing and projects click here. If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to this newsletter for free here.