The Mounties: As They Saw Themselves

Louis A. Knafla is a professor of history at the University of Calgary
and the co-editor of Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal
History.

William Kelly, a former RCMP Deputy Commissioner and Director of
Security and Intelligence, has assembled in this volume 43 short
articles (written by Mounted Police officers and journal editors) that
were originally published in the RCMP Quarterly between 1933 and 1994.
Divided into sections titled The Prairies, The North, Personalities,
Humour, Wartime, Horses, and Police Work, the articles are not without
some passing human interest, but they lack sufficient depth and context.
For example, the articles in the Police Work section touch on
interesting subjects, ranging from murder to robbery cases and from
internment camps to Soviet spies, but they fail to address with any
depth events more central to a Mountie’s work. Finally, although there
are three maps and, for each article, a brief editor’s note, the book
lacks a general introduction, annotations, a bibliography,
illustrations, and an index.