Denny's Trek: A Mountie's Memoir of the March West

David W. Leonard is the project historian (Northern Alberta) in the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development. He
is the author of Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909 and
co-author of The Lure of the Peace River Coun

Among the engaging characters of the famous North West Mounted Police
Trek of 1874 was a remittance man named Sir Cecil Denny. Denny’s life
was a series of ups and downs, complicated by fondness for alcohol and
women, and an acute streak of independence. Born the 6th Baronet of
Tralee Castle in 1869, he was sent to America at age 19, family funds
assisting. After failing in business, he went to Canada and joined the
NWMP in time for the ’74 trek. Probably because of his lineage, he was
accorded the status of Inspector.

Convicted of assaulting the husband of a woman he was wooing, he was
dismissed from the force but made an Indian Agent. In this capacity, he
acted with sympathy toward the Blackfoot, but in defiance of
departmental policy. He resigned, but served as a special agent in the
rebellion of 1885. He went on to ranch and work as a scout and guide
until 1922, when he was appointed archivist for the Provincial Library
in Edmonton. In later years, colleagues recalled Denny to have been
perpetually drunk, and he was dismissed in 1927.

Denny’s appointment as archivist was probably due to the 1905
publication of Riders of the Plains. Another book called Law Marches
West was released posthumously in 1939. It is these publications for
which Denny is chiefly remembered, and they are extensively cited in the
many histories dealing with the NWMP and the Trek of ’74. Denny’s
Trek includes a good, short biography of Denny, but anyone truly
interested in Denny’s story will want to go to his complete original
works.