Under their various names the Mounted Police have played a vital, colourful, but often controversial role in Canadian history, and nowhere has this been truer than on the northern frontier. The police were the agents through which the central government asserted sovereignty over the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, just as it had done earlier on the Prairies. This book describes to what extent the RCMP shaped the northern frontier -- a frontier which steadily shifted, separating territory under actual government control from that in which it was nominal. The chapters treat each new spurt in this expansion and the period of contact and transition which followed.

William R. Morrison is professor emeritus of history at the University of Northern British Columbia.

William R. Morrison's profile page

Morrison has well articulated this perspective of the central role of the Mounted Police in the Canadian North.  His book will force others to recast their studies and to amplify what is set forth in this brief presentation, and it will serve well as background to Canada's post-World War II increasing realization of the geopolitical strategic importance of the area.

Journal of the West

Showing the Flag is an excellent study of the role of the Mounties in the Canadian North from 1894 to 1925.

Native Studies Review