Ebook Mounted Police Life in Canada

It was a glorious morning, in the early part of July, 1883, when I left the Windsor Hotel in Regina, and started to walk the two and a half miles of rolling prairie that intervened between the hotel and the barracks of the North-West Mounted Police, some of the roofs of which were distinguishable in the distance.

Regina had been selected by Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney as the capital of the North-West Territories, and had been christened by H. R. H. the Princess Louise, whose husband, the Marquis of Lorne, was then Governor-General of Canada.

The Mounted Police had been ordered to make Regina their head-quarters, and the transfer from Port Walsh had not been quite completed at the time of which I write.

In order to facilitate the housing of the police in their new home, a number of so-called "portable" buildings had been shipped in from Eastern Canada. These had been made in sections, and were readily put together on the spot. Needless to say, they were cold habitations, and every room on the ground floor required to have a stove to itself.