Like every little boy growing up in Canada, I had a great fascination with the Mounties. With their dress uniform of a low, broad-brimmed hat, scarlet jacket, and blue trousers with a yellow stripe, their Musical Ride, their horses, everything associated with them. They had dogs called King and saved the world from all types of dastardly deeds and they 'always got their man'. Imagine my joy when I learned that the Mounties had been associated with Freemasonry from their inception.
    Early in the 19th century, residents of British North America began to fear that the United States wanted to absorb all of North America. As a result many colonists sought to unify the British colonies. In 1867 the British Parliament passed the British North America Act which formed the colonies into a union called the Dominion of Canada: the first four to join were New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Quebec.
    By 1873 the Canadian people and their government were stirred by the prospect of a greater Canada. A new era had dawned, expansion and unity had become the foremost topic of discussion, a call to adventure had been sounded. That same year the government's attention was drawn to an Imperial proclamation of 1870 by which Rupert's Land and the North-West territories had been added to Canada and further, that it pledged the Dominion of Canada to care for, and protect, the thousands of Indians who lived there. This was in strong contrast to the situation south of the border where a state of war against the Indians prevailed.

A Police Force for the Territories

The Canadian Government had, from time to time, contemplated the patrol of the Western frontier with a small number of mounted men but it was felt that something more comprehensive was essential. An adequate application of the law, without show of aggression, was the primary requisite. On 28 April 1873, the Prime Minister, and Freemason, Sir John Macdonald, gave notice of a Bill: 'Respecting the Administration of Justice and for the Establishment of a Police Force in the North-West Territories'. The following day an invasion from Montana culminated in an outburst of frontier depravity. In Battle creek in far off southern Saskatchewan, blood lust and liquor had combined to wipe out a hapless band of innocent Indians wrongfully accused of stealing horses. Wholesale murder on the part of the Missouri River gangs had reached an outrageous climax on Canadian soil.
    As news of the 'Cypress Hills Massacre' spread, indignation and anger exploded on the front pages of Canada's Eastern Press and when warnings of further trouble arrived arrangements for the guardianship of the far away territories were speeded up. On 23 May 1873 Royal assent was given to the bill and the North-West Mounted Police became a reality. Its first 150 men were sent to the West and they spent the next winter at Lower Fort Garry. It was quickly realised that more men were needed and 150 more joined them the next year. This enlarged force travelled into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains where a barracks was built at Fort MacLeod.
    The Commissioner, Lt.-Colonel French, and half the men then moved east leaving Colonel MacLeod in command of the barracks. The latter was soon fully engrossed in pacifying thousands of Indians, including Chief Sitting Bull, who had moved into Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn in which Custer and his regiment of the Seventh Cavalry were annihilated. MacLeod and his men routed out the American whisky traders and smugglers and assisted in the forging of treaties with the Indian tribes.

Freemasonry and the Mounties

Some three months earlier the North-West Mounted Police Headquarters were set up in Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan. The Grand Lodge of Manitoba, which had jurisdiction over all the North-West Territories, granted a dispensation for the formation of a masonic lodge there. This became Lodge Wascana, No. 23. Among the members of the North-West Mounted Police were several Freemasons. Most of them became affiliated with the new Lodge; others were initiated into it. By the mid 1880s it was decided to found a new Lodge solely for members of the Mounties. Eventually, on 24 August 1894, a meeting was held of fourteen Freemasons. eleven came from Lodge Wascana, one from Ancient St John.s Lodge, No.3, one from Bow River Lodge, No. 28 and one from the Lodge St. John, No. 175, in Greenock, Scotland. who put their signatures to a petition to the Grand Lodge of Manitoba at Winnipeg. They became the founder members of the new Lodge: North-West Mounted Police Lodge, No. 61. The first bylaws of 1895 contained an historical introduction:

In a large body of men such as the North-West Mounted Police, whose members are scattered over such a vast extent of territory, and who are gathered from almost every civilised country in the world, a certain percentage of Masons are bound to be found, and it would not have been consistent with the usual perseverance and enlightened teachings of Freemasonry had the members of the Order failed to organize a Lodge among themselves, and so be in a better position to carry out the precepts and tenets of the Order than could otherwise have been done while so many different Lodges were represented by them.

The first Master was the third most senior officer in the Regiment, Robert Belcher, who had joined the Mounties in 1873, rose through the ranks and was commissioned in 1893. The altar, Warden's pedestals and columns were made at the Regina Barracks. They were painted white and trimmed with the Mounties. colours of blue and gold. The pillars can still be seen in the Regina Masonic Temple. The original sword was presented by Inspector Church who originated the famed Musical Ride. His father had carried it in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Also at the Temple in Regina may be seen the original rough and smooth ashlars, hewn by the first members of the lodge.
    As the Mounties grew in stature so too masonry flourished in it, and more and more members became initiated into Freemasonry. This was a natural development as the high ideals of the one are similar to and intermingled with those of the other.
    With the huge Dominion Government immigration policy starting in 1896, the discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1898, and the Boer War, members of the North West Mounted Police were exceedingly busy serving in all spheres and assuming manifold responsibilities. The number of members at Regina H.Q. became comparatively small, and of these only two Masons remained to keep the Lodge alive. The Grand Master of Manitoba moved to arrest the Charter. But the brethren wished to save the Charter, and to do so relaxed the custom whereby only police members could enrol in the Lodge.
    Thus in 1906 it was decided to hold future meetings in the City of Regina. Deputy District Grand Master Isaac Forbes, himself a member of the Force, reported to Grand Lodge in the following words:

N.W.M.P. Lodge No. 11 (G.R.S.), Regina. I paid my official visit to this Lodge on May 2nd. This being my own Lodge, and attending regularly myself, I take a great interest in it. Owing to the fact that all the members belonged to the N.W.M. Police, and that the majority of them had been transferred to different places, leaving the Lodge short of members with whom to hold meetings, for the last four years it has been going down hill. I am pleased to say that this is now a thing of the past. The removal of the place of meeting from the N.W.M.P. Barracks to the City of Regina, which took place on October 4th, 1906, has proved to be of great welfare to Masonry. Since the meeting on October 4th the Lodge has increased from sixteen to fifty.
    The Lodge is now N.W.M. Police in name only, but the name will be a landmark when the Police have gone from the Province of Saskatchewan.

In 1904 King Edward VII honoured the Force by conferring the title 'Royal' so that the force was known as the Royal North West Mounted Police.
    The Lodge, however, retained the name N.W.M. Police.
    By 1920 the Force was Canadawide and was renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A few years later the Provinces asked them to take over their police work and by 1932 the Mounties policed six Provinces; in 1950 the remaining Provinces of Newfoundland and British Columbia followed suit.
    For many years a Degree Team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police annually performed an average of ten Degree ceremonies and two or three exemplifications. The ‘team’ performed in many lodges in Canada as well as in the United States: in Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont. In recent years however the team has disbanded, for however many Mounties remain active Freemasons, any official support or encouragement for their involvement has now vanished.

Nelson King is Editor of the prominent American journal of masonic research, The Philalethes. He is also an author and a well-known speaker to masonic groups in North America.