Canadian Mountie Fiction — a Literary History.

How did a handful of real-life Policemen become National Mythic Heroes?  Meet the Top 10 Writers of Mountie Fiction!

The GREATEST AUTHORS OF NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE FICTION…

Or WRITERS OF THE SCARLET SERGE

 

Introduction: Canadian Mountie Fiction

“To the sweet-voiced, dark-eyed little half-Cree maiden at Lac-Bain, who is the Minnetaki of this story.  And to Teddy Brown, guide and trapper.  And loyal comrade of the author in many of his adventures, this book is affectionately dedicated.” – James Oliver Curwood

Her hand, seeking his hand, crept into his palm, and her fingers clung to his fingers.  He could feel the thrill of the miracle passing through her, the miracle of the open spaces, the miracle of the forests rising billow on billow to the purple mists of the horizon.  The miracle of the golden Saskatchewan River rolling slowly and peacefully in its slumbering sheen out of that mighty mysteryland that reached to the lap of the setting sun.

She looked up swiftly, her eyes brimming with the golden flash of the sun.

“It’s wonderful!  And off there — “

“God’s Country,” he said devoutly…

From THE RIVER’S END: A New Story of God’s Country, a novel by James Oliver Curwood.

 

Mountie Fiction & Hollywood…

On July 1st, 2013, Turner Classic Movies decided to celebrate Canada Day by showing “Canadian Classics.”  Like River’s End, a 1940 Warner Brothers film based on the hugely bestselling novel of 1920 by wilderness writer James Oliver Curwood.  This third Hollywood making of River’s End starred Dennis Morgan in the double roles of convicted murderer John Keith and Sgt Derry Conniston of the Mounted, as well as Elizabeth Inglis and George Tobias.

And Men of the North, an MGM “Northern” starring Gilbert Roland as the falsely accused trapper Louis the Fox and Robert Elliot as the Mountie out to get him.

Also Peg O’ The Mounted, a parody of Hollywood’s vision of Canada written by Bert Sterling and starring child actress Baby Peggy.  Rose Marie (of course!) with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy.  God’s Country and the Woman (1937) with George Brent and Beverly Roberts, also based on a Curwood novel [1].  Northwest Rangers, with William Lundigan as the tormented Mountie who must arrest his boyhood friend, played by James Craig, screenplay by David Lang.  Northern Pursuit, starring Errol Flynn as the RCMP officer tracking down Nazi spies, screenplay by the great Frank Gruber.  And Cariboo Trail with Gabby Hayes and Randolph Scott, also written by Frank Gruber.

All of them were Northwesterns, which together gave us lots of Mounties, horses, sled dogs, romantic adventure and the vast silent forevergreen Northwoods…

My favourite Northwestern motion picture, The Wild North — based on the true story of Constable Albert Pedley and written by Frank Fenton — wasn’t shown.  And I grumbled about that.

Today, except for Jack London’s writings, the Northwestern genre, especially Mountie fiction, is mostly remembered because of those old Hollywood movies.

Buck Jones stars in McKENNA of the MOUNTED — “Indomitable Will in the Service of the Law!”   A Columbia Picture.

Over 600 Northwestern movies!  300 of those with Mountie-referenced titles including words like “Law” and “Royal” and “Mounties.”  A common title format ended with “…of the Mounted” and began with such heroic names as Cameron, Channing, Clancy, Glenister, King, MacDonald, Mason, McGuire, McKenna, Moran, Morton, O’Garry, O’Malley, O’Rourke, Renfrew, Steele…

But it wasn’t always that way.

The Northwestern genre first appeared in popular fiction magazines.  Then in published book form.  And it thrived! [2]

Mountie Fiction, especially, had caught the public fancy.

The best, like Ralph Connor’s CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE: A Tale of the MacLeod Trail, sold 100,000’s of copies each, some over a million. [3]

 

Since early boyhood, I’ve been given, borrowed, bought and collected the great writers of the Canadian wilderness.  Writers like Sir Charles G D Roberts, E Pauline Johnson, Jack London, Grey Owl, Ernest Thompson Seton, H A Cody, George Marsh.  And (later) Farley Mowat and Pierre Berton.

When older folks heard of this, they began to give me treasured old copies of books by writers I’d never heard of.  Ralph Connor, Samuel Alexander White, James Oliver Curwood, William Byron Mowery and James B Hendryx.  Most were tales of our own legendary Mounted Police.  And those red-coated Mounties had heroic adventures that kept you glued to the pages.  I still have some of those books — so many moves, especially as a kid, and stuff gets left behind somehow.  But I have ’em on pinewood shelves right now, faded covers hiding glorious stories of our Once Bright Wilderness Nation.

GREATEST WRITERS OF MOUNTIE FICTION Top 10 Writers Canadian Mounted Police.

So step up on the foot boards of your dog sled, mon ami, grab the handle, yell “Mush!” to your team of huskies.  And prepare to hit the long snowy trail.  Here’s a look at my personal Top 10, my favourite WRITERS OF THE SCARLET SERGE:

 

IAN ANDERSON

“By age six, the Australian Ian Anderson had already decided what he wanted to be when he grew up — a red-coated Canadian Mountie.  By the age of seven, he also knew he wanted to be a writer.”

These words began the author’s bio in Seal Book’s first Canadian printing of CORPORAL CAVANNAGH and THE RETURN OF CAVANNAGH in the early 1980’s.  With the publication of the CAVANNAGH titles, Anderson had achieved both dreams.

Ian Stuart Anderson was born March 3, 1930, on the outskirts of Melbourne, which lies on the temperate southern tip of Australia.  Amid the bustling city streets lined with Victorian Age stone buildings with “gargoyles and cast-iron lacework” and the “idyllic views across the Yarra River” he lived a typical Depression era boyhood.

He grew up at the height of the Northwestern movie craze.  Films like Call of the Wild (with Clark Gable), Code of the Mounted, O’Malley of the Mounted, King of the Royal Mounted, Red Blood of Courage, North of the Yukon and Cecil B DeMille’s North West Mounted Police packed local theatres in Caulfield and Melbourne.  Ian saw and thrilled at them all.

Besides loving the wilderness and sports, Ian was an avid reader…

Ian began his quest of becoming a Mountie by serving with the South Australian Mounted Police, where he “learned to ride a horse, fight bush fires and battle with sword and bayonet.”

In 1948, age 18, he journeyed to Canada, where a year later he achieved his dream of joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Regimental Number 15812).  And donning the world-famous red serge jacket and broad-brimmed Stetson.  His postings were in Alberta.  Corporal in Charge of Jasper Detachment in the soaring Rocky Mountains, as well as Lethbridge, Fort MacLeod, Coutts and Medicine Hat.  The very settings of the early exploits of the NWMP.  He was a member of the RCMP until 1965.

After that, he served as a sub-inspector in the Royal Papua-New Guinea Constabulary, including a stint at the Bomana Police College in Port Moresby.  Ian then returned home to Australia.  There, he and his wife Mary settled into life in Melbourne.  As well as working as a private investigator, he sat down to write.

In 1982, he began writing his Scarlet Riders Series, starting with CORPORAL CAVANNAGH.

The worst kind of scandal: a brave young cavalry Lieutenant and another officer’s wife.  After resigning his commission in the U.S. Seventh Cavalry in disgrace, John Tarlton Cavannagh rides north, where he joins the new North-West Mounted Police.

But he must prove himself.  “You’ll nae be wearin’ the Queen’s scarlet yet, Mister Cavannagh,” Sgt. MacGregor growled.  “That’s a privilege ye have tae earn!”

The novel was first published by Seal Books, an imprint of McClelland & Stewart-Bantam, who published his next two:

THE RETURN OF CAVANNAGH

and BEYOND THE STONE HEAPS.

When Zebra Books of New York bought the World rights to the Scarlet Riders Series, they republished his first three Seal Books titles and put out four more new titles up to 1988:

SERGEANT O’REILLY

FORT TERROR

THE FLYING PATROL

and DEAD OR ALIVE.

Cover art for the first two titles was by Walter Rane (both Seal and Zebra editions).

With his Scarlet Riders, Ian took the old Northwestern movie and pulp fiction story-lines he had grown up with and rewrote them with the verisimilitude that came from having served in the RCMP.  And having visited all the historic settings.

The result was a unique mélange of national myth and personal experience.  And just great storytelling.

The riveting series takes place over a thirty-year period.  From a year after the arrival of the Mounties in 1874 to 1905, when some of the men who had served in the harrowing South African War (Boer War) had returned to the Force.

The first three titles tell John Cavannagh’s story, reflecting the heroic battles of the Force’s early years.  THE RETURN OF CAVANNAGH actually dealt with an historic episode rarely even mentioned by Hollywood and American pulp magazines.  The bloodthirsty attempt of organized outlaw gangs and whiskey traders to wipe out the newly-arrived Mounted Police.  BEYOND THE STONE HEAPS dealt with arrival of Sitting Bull’s Sioux in Canada after the Battle of the Little Bighorn — and the death of many of Cavannagh’s former comrades in the Seventh.

Although the other four novels featured different central characters, we still meet Cavannagh, seeing him rise to Inspector and then Major (a rank earned in the South African war).

In FORT TERROR, Corporal Robert James Parsons, stationed in the one-man Lone River outpost, searches for a mysterious community hidden deep in the Rocky Mountains — a group reported to consist of “women with hair the colour of the sun and robed and bearded killer monks…”

THE FLYING PATROL tells of the violent spread of organized cattle rustling into the Canadian prairies in the early 1890’s.  Major Sam Steele, officer commanding of the Fort MacLeod area, responded by creating the Flying Patrols: groups of rough riding Mounties stationed in small outposts and ready to answer the call to duty at a moment’s notice.  These valiant men stopped to rest only when their horses needed it.

Sgt. Colin Campbell MacGregor is a gruff, stiff-backed former soldier who had been a Mountie since the Force’s inception.  In DEAD OR ALIVE, Sgt. MacGregor is joined by U.S. Marshall William Edson in tracking down a gang of Montana outlaws.

Ian’s best realized character, Hugh O’Reilly, appears in two titles.  As a young constable in THE FLYING PATROL and an experienced, decorated campaigner returned from the Boer War in SERGEANT O’REILLY.  O’REILLY is Ian Anderson’s longest novel, taking on almost epic proportions as the story of one man’s determination to Uphold The Right, even if it meant refusing an unlawful order and being charged with desertion:

“O’Reilly snapped off a crisp salute, spun around on heel and toe, and marched out of the office.  The moment his spurred boots touched the veranda floor outside, he reached up to the medals on his tunic, unclasped them, and thrust them into his breeches pocket.  All around him deep green forests of pine swept up the sides of towering gray or brown mountains, while the sky was a brilliant blue…”

The character of Sergeant Hugh O’Reilly “who hailed from Halifax… was loosely based on Inspector Fitzgerald — or perhaps inspired would be a better word — of the Lost Patrol of 1911 fame,” Ian explained in a letter to this writer.

Besides his Mountie fiction, Ian also contributed some well-researched articles about the Force to top magazines.  Such as “Bathurst Inlet Patrol” in The Beaver, Canada’s History Magazine, and “Escape from Fort Pitt,” in Canadian Frontier Magazine.  “Escape from Fort Pitt” told the story of Inspector Francis Dickens (son of author Charles Dickens) whose decision to abandon the fort to Cree chief Big Bear during the North-West Rebellion led to his forced resignation from the Mounted Police.

While working on an article about “the friendship between Sitting Bull and James Walsh of the Mounties” that appeared in Wild West Magazine, Anderson decided to “broaden the article into a book.”  The result was SITTING BULL’S BOSS: Above the Medicine Line with James Morrow Walsh, Heritage House, 2000, an excellent study of the subject.  He had first happened upon the story of Major Walsh while visiting the RCMP museum in Regina.  “As for Major James Walsh, I feel as though I knew him personally,” wrote Anderson.

Ian passed away on April 10, 2013.  He was 83.

His SERGEANT O’REILLY remains one of my favourite adventure yarns, any genre.  I treasure my oft-read copy…

 

The man who established the Archetypal Mountie Fiction…

RALPH CONNOR   When Charles William Gordon (1860-1937) first began to publish narratives about his experiences in the Northwest during the mid-1890’s, he didn’t know that he was embarking on a literary career that would make him one of the world’s best selling authors of the early 20th Century.  His first three books sold over five million copies.

Charles Gordon was born in Glengarry County, Canada West (soon to be the Province of Ontario).  “A wild new land it was, peopled by emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland who, driven forth by their overlords from their little crofts among the hills, gallantly gave themselves to the high adventure of taming the dark Canadian forest into fruitful farms and happy homes for themselves and their children, carrying in their hearts the fear of God but knowing no other fear.”

Educated at the Universities of Toronto and Edinburgh, he was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1890.  After three years of missionary work in Banff, he returned to Winnipeg, where he began to write and publish stories under the pen-name “Ralph Connor.”

His earliest short stories, published in periodicals like The Circle, Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly and Westminster Magazine, reflected his belief in “red-blooded Christianity” and drew an enthusiastic readership.

When his Westminster stories were collected in book-form as BLACK ROCK: A Tale of the Selkirks (1898), he was on his way.

BLACK ROCK told the tales of the hard men of the lumber camps in the heart of the Selkirk Mountains.  Narrated by a man introduced to the Presbyterian minister as “Mr Connor, sometime medical student, now artist, hunter, and tramp at large, but not a bad sort.”  In turn, Mr Connor described Minister Craig as having “good eyes that looked straight out at you, a clean-cut, strong face well set on his shoulders, and altogether an upstanding, manly bearing.”

His next book, THE SKY PILOT: A Tale of the Foothills (1899), became a best seller.  It told the story of the Rev Arthur Wellington Moore, who was determined to bring the Gospel of Love to the rough, hardworking, sometimes brawling, pioneers, ranchers and cow punchers who lived in the foothills of the Rockies.

Ralph Connor’s life after that was divided between that of writing and of serving Church and Country.  During the First World War, he served overseas as Senior Chaplin of the Canadian Armed Forces in France and the 9th Brigade British Expeditionary Force.

It was the publication of three adventure novels that he’s most remembered for today.

THE MAN FROM GLENGARRY (1901) told of the rowdy Highlanders from the Glengarry region of colonial Ontario — their exploits in the lumber camps of the Northwoods, their fights with wolves and men, the joyful maple-sugar parties, the passionate church meetings…  They were men, as Connor wrote in his autobiography, “as wild as the wild creatures of the forest in which they lived, fearing no man or beast or devil.”

His other two adventure novels were

CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE: A Tale of the MacLeod Trail (1912)

and THE PATROL OF THE SUNDANCE TRAIL (1914).

Both books told of the exploits of Allan Cameron of Her Majesty’s North-West Mounted Police.  Connor based the character of Cameron on the real-life Sergeant William Fury.  In fact, the first book recounts a fictionalized version of Fury’s arrest of the violent railroad strikers at Kicking Horse Pass in 1885.

SUNDANCE TRAIL deals with the unrest of the Blackfoot Nation during the heated Northwest Rebellion.  Connor’s technique of using real cases and real Mounties as the basis for his stories became common for Canadians writing Mountie fiction.

Ralph Connor became a worldwide success, warmly welcomed into the homes of pioneers and policemen, professors and publishers, Presidents and Prime Ministers.  President Teddy Roosevelt told the writer, “I know your books!  I could pass an examination in BLACK ROCK and SKY PILOT.”  When President Woodrow Wilson later asked him, “Just what do you Canadians think of us Americans?” the fierce Highlander Padre and veteran of the bloody Battle of the Somme told him.

Three Canadian-made movies based on his books dominated the box offices internationally: God’s Crucible (1921), Cameron of the Royal Mounted (1921) and The Man from Glengarry (1922).  Popular Hollywood productions included The Heart of a Lion (1917) and The Sky Pilot (1921).

Later popular novels were THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN’S LAND (1919), THE ARM OF GOLD (1931) and TORCHES THROUGH THE BUSH: A Tale of Glengarry (1934).

“A Ralph Connorish thrill…”

“Ralph Connor,” as Dick Harrison puts it in his BEST MOUNTED POLICE STORIES (left), “did more to create the literary image of the Mountie than any other writer, probably because he had a gift for telling uncomplicated adventure stories.”

In her 1915 book MY CANADA, Elinor Marsden Eliot wrote, “At Regina I saw my first Mounted Policeman.  He was altogether beautiful.  The red coats of the North-West Mounted Police — What a Ralph Connorish thrill it gives one!”

In his classic Christian and adventure novels, as well as short stories like “Swan Creek Blizzard” and “Beyond The Marshes,” Conner established many of the essential archetypal characters of the Canadian Northwestern Genre: the steadfast red-coated Mountie, the independent heroine, the wild Anglo-Celtic lumberjack, the dedicated reformist clergyman, the isolated pioneer families, the endangered Aboriginals, the passionate Métis (although he sometimes depicted these last two groups with the misunderstandings of the day, he was made Honourary Chief of three tribes)…

Adding these to the already established Klondike era characters such as desperate prospectors, saloon girls with hearts of gold, ruthless outlaws, devious bankers, crooked Eastern politicians, the avaricious fur baron, the good-hearted French Canadian trapper, not to forget the ferocious huskies and wolves and the savage Northcountry itself — and these characters would play out their stories in print and on film for decades to come.

It was the writer who dubbed himself Ralph Connor who created the archetypal Canadian character, who he called the “True Northman Strong and Free.”

The Rev Charles William Gordon’s autobiography is POSTSCRIPT TO ADVENTURE.

In Chapter XXIV “A Padre in the Trenches” he wrote:

There is no volley firing in a Front Line burial.

They filled in the yellow earth upon the gray blanket, placing a board with his name, his battalion, his age, the date of his death, and the platoon marched off in charge of a sergeant.

I stood for a time beside that lonely grave.  The German machine guns were still spitting about us.  I forgot all about them.  The lieutenant touched my arm.  “I think, sir, we had better move into cover,” he said.

 

RIDGWELL CULLUM  Englishman Sidney Groves Burghard (1867-1943) had already lived an adventurous life when he arrived in the Canadian Yukon Territory to try his hand at trapping and trading.  In Africa, he had been involved in diamond and gold mining and fought in the Anglo-Boer conflicts.

His venture in the Yukon was less successful, almost costing him his life from hypothermia and starvation.  After leaving the Yukon, he tried ranching in Montana.

Settling back in England in 1899, he turned his hand to writing adventure yarns.

Using the pen-name “Ridgwell Cullum” he co-wrote (with English writer Charles Wingrove) two short stories “Stolen Locomotive” and “Struggling With Longitude.”  They appeared first in The Harmsworth Magazine and were reprinted in the American magazine The Argosy.

More stories, written on his own, appeared in Phil May’s Annual and All-Story Cavalier Weekly, with his best short story being “Black Wolf,” which was published in the March, 1925 issue of The Story-teller.

He set out to write full-length novels in both the Northwestern and Western genres.

His first novel, THE DEVIL’S KEG (released in the US as THE STORY OF FOSS RIVER RANCH), was set in southern Alberta and involved a murder investigation.

His second novel, THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH, was based on his own misadventures in the Yukon.  The opening chapter began dramatically with a man staggering alone under the pallid sun of an Arctic winter, lost and starving: “The poor wretch was swathed in furs; snow-shoes on his feet, and a long staff lent his drooping figure support…  Every now and again he raised one mittened hand and pressed it to nose and cheeks.  He knew his face was frozen, but he had no desire to stop to thaw it out…”

THE HOUND FROM THE NORTH caught on with a public eagerly seeking more adventure yarns in the Jack London tradition and a best selling literary career was launched.

At a time when many writers treated the First Nations with contempt — easy villains — Cullum occasionally wrote of natives with some first-hand knowledge, even dealing with friendship.

In his 1920 novel THE HEART OF UNAGA, Cullum told of the friendship between Inspector Steve Allenwood and his two Mounted Police scouts:

“Allenwood was a police officer who represented the white man’s law in a district as wide as a good-sized European country, and these scouts were his only assistants.

“A wonderful companionship existed between these men.  It was something more than the companionship of the long trail.  They had fought the battle of life together for eight long years, enduring perils and hardships which had brought them an understanding and mutual regard which no difference in colour, or education could lessen.

“For all the distinction of the police officer’s rank, they were three friends held by bonds which only the hearts of real men could weld…”

Although he didn’t create a continuing Mountie character, Cullum’s Mountie novels were among his most popular, including:

THE LAW-BREAKERS

LAW OF THE GUN

THE HEART OF UNAGA

THE RIDDLE OF THREE WAY CREEK

CHILD OF THE NORTH

THE NIGHT RIDERS

WOLF PACK

THE MYSTERY OF THE BARREN LANDS

THE BULL MOOSE

ONE WHO KILLS

Among his other popular Northwesterns, not featuring Mounties, were THE TRIUMPH OF JOHN KARS: A Story of the Yukon and the tragic IN THE BROODING WILD.

Cullum also wrote traditional Westerns based on his Montana experiences such as TWINS OF SUFFERING CREEK, THE GOLDEN WOMAN: A Story of the Montana Hills and THE ONE-WAY TRAIL, which matched bestselling frontier writers of the day like Ralph Connor and Zane Grey in sales.

He published one adventure yarn set in Africa, an Edgar Rice Burroughs styled “Lost City” novel THE VAMPIRE OF N’GOBI.

A number of his works were adapted as silent movies in the early 1920’s.  Such as The Forfeit, The Way of the Strong, The Trail Of The Axe, Twins of Suffering Creek and The Yosemite Trail.  The films softened some of the dark realism of his storytelling.

 

JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD    When James Oliver Curwood (born in 1879) was expelled from school in his birthplace of Owosso, Michigan at age 16, it was a blessing in disguise.  It began a wandering life that took him to the wilds of northern Canada.

He traveled by canoe, by snow shoe and by dog sled, throughout the Peace River country, the Hudson Bay wilderness and the Arctic tundra.

Curwood spent as much as nine months out of a year in the Canadian wilderness, even building log cabins to live in.  He enjoyed hunting for meat and for sport, until an encounter with an enraged grizzly bear that could have killed him — but didn’t. [4]

First as a reporter, then as a short story writer and novelist, James Curwood would spend the rest of his life telling of his wilderness travels.

His translation of the Cree meaning of Manitoba — “God’s Country” — would become a world renowned phrase.

His popular BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY was a collection of his best magazine short stories.  Six of them were Mountie stories: “The Fiddling Man,” “The Case of Beauvais,” “The Match,” “The Yellow-Back,” “The Mouse” and “Wapi The Walrus,” the last having been adapted into the 1919 worldwide box office smash hit Back To God’s Country, a silent movie with Canadian Nell Shipman writing the screenplay and acting in the lead role.  The success of the movie put Curwood on the best seller book lists.

While chiefly remembered today for his masterful Nature Trilogy — the animal stories THE GRIZZZLY KING and KAZAN, the story of a wolf-dog, and BAREE, SON OF KAZAN — his many other Northwesterns were best sellers by the 1920’s.

Among his popular Mountie novels were

PHILIP STEELE OF THE ROYAL NORTHWEST MOUNTED POLICE (later retitled STEELE OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED)

THE HONOR OF THE BIG SNOWS

ISOBEL: A Romance of the Northern Trail

THE GOLDEN SNARE

THE COUNTRY BEYOND

A GENTLEMAN OF COURAGE

THE RIVER’S END: A New Story of God’s Country (his first novel to shoot to #1 on the Best Seller Lists)

VALLEY OF SILENT MEN: A Story of the Three River Country 

THE FLAMING FOREST: A Novel of the Canadian Northwest (my pick as his best Mounted Police novel)

The last three titles formed his popular THREE RIVERS TRILOGY, set along the Athabasca, the Slave and the Mackenzie rivers, on which “the fur fleets of the unmapped country had been toiling since the first breakup of ice… Picturesque tide of life and voice, of muscle and brawn, of laughter and song…

“Strong men and strong women, living in the faith of their forefathers.”

THE FLAMING FOREST told the story of Sergeant David Carrigan and Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain.  It must have been Marie-Anne who had lain in wait to shoot the Mountie.  And who may well be the wife of the richest, most powerful man in the Three River Country.  A joyous novel!  The joy of prowling the vast, untamed Northwoods — la joie des voyageurs sauvages des fleuves.  Curwood’s celebration of primitive human passion reminds me of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ earliest Tarzan novels.

By 1922, Curwood’s writings had made him a very wealthy man.

He lived out a youthful fantasy by building the “Curwood Castle” in Owosso.  Constructed in the style of an ancient Norman fortress, his castle overlooked the Shiawassee River that he used to fish and trap as a barefoot boy.

“From the first, the Shiawassee River had taken its destined place as my greatest teacher and the guardian angel of my fate,” wrote James Curwood.

“In fair weather or foul, regardless of the season, I was up at dawn to check my muskrat and mink traps along its banks.  I caught scores of them between the two bridges at Washington and Oliver streets, a half-mile stretch which even then was in the heart of the residential part of Owosso.  By the time my second school year in Owosso had begun, the river had claimed me utterly.  I had traps, a gun and my Indian dugout canoe.”

In one of the castle’s two large turrets, Curwood built his library and office, where he would do the rest of his writing.

In later years he was accompanied in his travels by his wife Ethel: “For months at a time we would bury ourselves in the wilderness, hundreds of miles away from civilization.  And when we would leave the shack we had built it was departing from a beloved home.”

His fiction, Curwood once explained, “is eighty per cent fact so far as country, environment, geography, customs and manners go.”

Curwood said often that it was his love of the Northern wilderness that motivated his writing.

“Nature is my religion.  And my desire, my ambition.  The great goal I wish to achieve is to take my readers with me into the heart of this Nature.  I love it, and I feel that they must love it — if I can only get the two acquainted.” – GOD’S COUNTRY: The Trail to Happiness, Cosmopolitan Books, 1921.

After an adventurous and often arduous life, James Oliver Curwood died suddenly in 1927, at the age of 49.  His last work was his stirring, authentic autobiography SON OF THE FORESTS.

 

JAMES B HENDRYX   James Beardsley Hendryx (1880-1963) was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, an area of rolling hills, woodland and lakes.

Like James Oliver Curwood, Hendryx spent more of his young life hunting, fishing and exploring the outdoors than sitting at a schoolroom desk.

A boyhood friend was Sinclair Lewis, who made this early entry in his diary: “I went with Jim Hendryx on his Rural Free (newspaper) delivery route this morning.  Jim was dressed like a ‘pony express rider’ – broad sombrero, brown flannel shirt open at neck & arms & belt.  His face and hands are bronzed from exposure.  He has always been a great hunter, fisher & trapper.  He hunted birds eggs, fished, hunted, trapped, rode boxcars with Claude (Sinclair’s older brother). . .”

About his schooling, Hendryx once wrote: “Attended public school for a vast number of years during which I learned to fish, hunt and trap.  After leaving the Sauk Centre high school by expulsion, rather than graduation, I studied law for two years at the University of Minnesota.  I absorbed so much of the curriculum that even yet fragments of it work to the surface and have to be carefully removed.”  Although he later said that he had “soaked up enough law school to stay out of jail.”

From boyhood, he had always had the look of an outdoorsman.  Even in later years: “Jim was a tall, lean, outdoorsy man with a rusty handlebar mustache and keen blue eyes set in a weatherbeaten face.  Dressed in woodsman’s boots, ducksback breeches, a red-checked flannel shirt and Stetson hat.”

Hendryx worked as a traveling salesman, insurance agent, tan bark buyer, night foreman on an Ohio River Dam, ran a fruit farm in Michigan.

And punched cattle near Chinook, Montana, where he met and befriended two members of the notorious Wild Bunch — Kid Curry and his brother Lonny.  Those affable Canadian-born brothers no doubt told Jim stories of their exploits.  Including their times in the outlaw hideout known as Hole-in-the-Wall.

And he worked as a cowhand on a Saskatchewan ranch before heading for the rich gold fields of the Klondike in 1898.

Accompanied by a cowpuncher buddy, with a grubstake of $1400 they’d won in a poker game, Hendryx spent over a year in the Canadian Yukon territory, “chopping cordwood, gouging gravel, playing poker and chopping cordwood and chopping cordwood…”

“We didn’t make much,” he later concluded. “Got there too late and our claims were poor. And living was too high. In Dawson, in ’98, eggs went to $2 apiece and flour to $100 a sack.”

It was Hendryx’s experiences in the Klondike that inspired him to write Northwesterns. While working as a reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, he began his career as a fiction writer.

With the publication in 1915 of THE PROMISE: A Tale of the Great Northwest, his career was launched and he “quit punching time clocks forever!”

DOWNEY OF THE MOUNTED (1926) gave the world one of the great Mountie characters.  A kind of Byronic hero of the wilderness (he’s haunted by a lost love).  Corporal Cameron Downey is also persistent, a dedicated lawman, intelligent and capable of moments of kindness.

As well as Corporal Cameron Downey, the author also created Black John Smith, the big black-bearded leader of an outlaw community on a creek just “half a day’s paddling” from the Yukon-Alaska border.  The forest hideout thrived during the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890’s.

With the recent release of three more Halfaday Creek titles from Altus Press, assembling the previously uncollected magazine novelettes, Hendryx’s Halfaday Creek book series is now at sixteen volumes.

In the novel GRUBSTAKE GOLD, from Doubleday Books, New York, 1936, Black John explained his most infamous crime of holding up the United States Army in Alaska: “It was only part of the army, a major and three common soldiers, to be exact.  And the loot was about forty thousand, lacking a few dollars.  The incident was more in the nature of a sportin’ event than a theft.”

Cpl. Downey was based on real Mounted Policemen who the author had met. While Black John — a rugged, roguish, grizzled man with a frontiersman’s sense of sudden justice and gentle humour — is his most popular character.  I believe Jim Hendryx based Black John on himself.

Told with humour, at times wry, Hendryx’s vision of the Northwest was closer to reality, and a canoe-load of fun.

His highly-regarded fiction, both full-length novels and many short stories, was published in the top fiction magazines of the day, including Adventure, All-Star Weekly, Short Stories and Western Story Magazine and then published in hard cover books.

Among his best books of Mountie fiction are:

BEYOND THE OUTPOSTS  A fast-paced yarn with romance, bootlegging, gold fever, murder and Constable Crowley of the Mounted — who first reaches out for a cup of illegal booze, then reaches out for $500 cold cash to let his man go free.  Corporal Downey ties it all together at the end.

GOLD — AND THE MOUNTED  Gold fever!  Constable Kincaid of the Mounted Police investigates a murder in the Churchill River country.  Like a number of “Corporal Downey Novels,” Downey weaves his way in and out of this book.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE NORTH  A wandering story first published complete in a 1922 issue of Short Stories.  A melodrama about a fur theft and the pulpwood timber business in which Cpl. Downey appears several times, including in the dark, vengeful finale.

BLOOD ON THE YUKON TRAIL  Downey investigates the tragedy of three people falling through the ice of the frigid Yukon River, and the murder of a man of the Tagish People who may have witnessed a crime.

BLOOD OF THE NORTH  Maybe Hendryx’s best longer story.  Certainly his most serious one.  A Cpl Downey yarn involving a killer Downey had arrested, but walks out of court a free man.  More murders — and vengeance.

EDGE OF BEYOND  The story of Helene Beloit and Jack Drewry, their love, their adventures in the rip-roaring Klondike Gold Rush.  Cpl. Downey kind of hovers in the background.

CORPORAL DOWNEY TAKES THE TRAIL

“The wariest man hunter of The Mounted gets an Alaskan bad man.”

Corporals Downey and Deering chase a man accused of murder to Halfaday Creek.

Downey wants to find the truth of their case, but Deering only wants the long-awaited promotion that getting their man — guilty or innocent, alive or dead — could bring.

THE YUKON KID  “The dance-hall piano was stilled.  The girls hovered curiously about the edges of the crowd.  And listened as Tommy Haldane recovered himself.  And with every eye in the house on his face, told the story from beginning to end — thudding the little sacks of gold onto the bar as he proclaimed the richness of the strike.”

Then the Greatest Gold Rush is over!  Having made his fortune in the Klondike, Tommy Haldane, dubbed the Yukon Kid, leaves Dawson City to find the woman he had left behind.  But the Kid is accused of killing his guide.  Cameron Downey, now a seasoned Inspector, investigates.

ON THE RIM OF THE ARCTIC was published in hardcover by Doubleday/Double D, New York, in 1948.  And by Museum Press, London, England, in 1952.  Sergeant Mayfair of the Mounted Police protects a self-confessed murderer, who he believes is really innocent.  It was reprinted as a paperback by Dell Books, New York, in 1956 under the title THE LONG CHASE.  “A Texas cowboy bucks the Yukon wilderness.”

MURDER IN THE OUTLANDS was published by Doubleday, New York, in 1949 and Museum Press, London, 1953.  It was published in French translation as LA POURSUITE BLANCHE by Éditions Robert Laffont, Paris, 1951.

“Guess I ain’t done so bad, eh — trailin’ Red to where he got murdered an’ then trailin’ Harpe clear to the railway?”

Downey puffed at his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke ceilingward. “Fetch in any prisoners?” he asked.

Drake flushed.  “I fetched in all there was left of Red Hollis there in that blanket.  An’ I trailed Harpe to the railway an’ phoned his description to Winnipeg.  So it’s already sent out to all the detachments…”

Now stationed in Manitoba, the veteran Downey is reminded the hard way that one murder can lead to another.  Even in this newfangled Twentieth Century.  And he wasn’t impressed with some of the younger generation of Mounties to whom Honour, Valour and Duty seemed to mean so little.

OAK AND IRON: Of These Be the Breed of the North.  Another “Cameron Downey Novel,” taking place a couple decades after his Downey/Black John Klondike adventures.  Centering on the ruthless character of Timber Baron David Gaunt, the melodramatic plot involves two wives and an unknown son.  But this story’s really about the destruction of the great Northern forests happening in the 1920’s.  Hendryx loved the wild forests and hated what reckless Human “Progress” was doing to them.  Inspired by Teddy Roosevelt’s writings on Deforestation, Hendryx showed the need for Conservation.

OUTLAWS OF HALFADAY CREEK was the first collection of the adventures of the hard-bitten men hiding out along Halfaday Creek, their leader Black John and his bartender buddy Lyme Cushing.  Black John didn’t care about a man’s doings before he joined the secluded settlement but expects every man to obey his rules.  “Everything here is going to run so smoothly and morally that there will be no call for the Law…”  Black John’s answer to a crime committed on Halfaday Creek involves a length of good hemp rope.  John likes Corporal Downey, they become friends, but he admits, “I’m shore glad I done my stuff over on the Alasky side!”

INTRIGUE ON HALFADAY CREEK was the thirteenth and last Halfaday book published in Jim’s lifetime, collecting six novelettes.  In one yarn, Black John’s bitter enemy Cuter Malone sends two murderers after the outlaw leader.  Black John’s red-coated friend stands by him when the fireworks begin.  See HALFADAY CREEK BOOKS List in Order

The short story “Routine Patrol,” a Cpl. Downey yarn originally published in Western Story Magazine, was reprinted in Dick Harrison’s BEST MOUNTED POLICE STORIES.

Jim Hendryx also published a series of juvenile books from Putnam’s from 1916 to 1937, featuring Connie Morgan.  Morgan’s rugged adventures took him from Alaska and across the Canadian North.  An early title was CONNIE MORGAN WITH THE MOUNTED.

And his short yarns of Jase Quill, “a doctor, an’ a damn good blacksmith, to boot,” appeared mostly in Adventure magazine in the mid-30s.

Throughout his writing career, Hendryx took pride in the authenticity of his work, making a trip at least once a year to the Canadian Northcountry.  He consulted with members of the RCMP, sometimes travelling with them, and obtained the newest government maps of the wilderness areas.

Even so, he once commented: “I go to great pains and trouble to locate every piece correctly.  But I never yet wrote a story of Canada without getting a letter from some constable up on Hudson’s Bay or Great Slave Lake saying, ‘I liked your story but where the villain sets fire to the teepee and the beautiful Indian girl in the second chapter, the Mackenzie River runs northeast instead of northwest.’ Those fellows are hell on their geography.”

Once he became a successful full-time author in the 1920’s, making up to $50,000 a year, Hendryx worked and lived with his wife Hermione and their three children in two homes in the magnificent Northwoods on both sides of the Canadian-US border.

One home was on 300 acres on Grand Traverse Bay, Michigan (with “no neighbors within rifle range”).  And the other one was a wilderness cabin in the Thessalon area of Ontario.  A 1936 story in the Detroit Free Press described his Michigan home as “a rambling house and log studio workshop with its oxbow over the door and a huge trap under the porch roof.”

An avid fisherman, hunter and poker player, he still made time to write.  Family members remember the sound of him at work — alternately tapping away on his old typewriter and laughing out loud at a new scene.

All in all, James B Hendryx published over 50 books in his lifetime, most of ’em Northwestern novels and story collections.

Of all the creators of classic Mountie fiction, Jim Hendryx is probably the most fondly remembered.

 

W RYERSON JOHNSON Walter Ryerson Johnson (1901-1995) was born in Divernon, Illinois.  He attended the University of Illinois, getting a degree in foreign commerce.  And worked as a coal miner, warehouse manager and seaman, as well as travelling extensively throughout the US and Canada.

At age 21, Johnson sold his first short story “Nimble Fingers,” published in the February, 1923 issue of Detective Tales, a pulp magazine. [5]

Under his own name, he became a prolific author in the Western, Horror and Mystery magazines.  He also published works under the names Matthew Blood, Peter Field, Brett Halliday, Robert Wallace and (with Lester Dent) Kenneth Robeson.

His writing career really exploded when he took the advice of popular Northwestern writer William Byron Mowery to “write Mountie fiction!”

Johnson said, “I didn’t know a mounted policeman from a uniformed doorman.  But Bill loaned me books and I got more from the library.  Official Mounted Police Bulletins and a book by Washburn Pike — The Great Canadian Barren Lands — supplied fundamentals.  I read for a week and took notes.”  Soon he sold his first Northwestern.  The short story “Cougar Kelly Gets a Break” to Wild World Adventures (May, 1930 edition) and his career was picking up.

He published a number of Mountie yarns and “Northerns” in the pulp magazines, producing some of his best work.  Among them were “The Avalanche Maker,” “The Carcajou and the Loup Garou,” “All Trees and Snow,” “The Eskimo Express,” “The Phantom of Forgotten River” (Complete Northwest Magazine, Dec 1938).  And “Webs for One,” “Caribou Gold,” “Back Trail Shadow,” “Mountie Trick,” “Wood on the Snow” and “The Dangerous Dan McGrew.”

You’ll find Northwestern stories by Ryerson Johnson — as well as other writers mentioned here — reprinted in THE NORTHERNERS, edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H Greenberg, and in SCARLET RIDERS: Pulp Fiction Tales of the Mounties, edited by Don Hutchison.

He also wrote a number of Doc Savage novels, under the pen name Kenneth Robeson, including LAND OF ALWAYS NIGHT and THE FANTASTIC ISLAND.

In the 1950’s, Ryerson switched easily to the paperback book format.  Under his own name, he published Westerns like BARBED WIRE FEUD and Crime novels such as NAKED IN THE STREET and LADY IN DREAD.

He won the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award in 1963 for his popular children’s story THE MONKEY AND THE WILD, WILD WIND.

In 1990, editors Pronzini & Greenberg produced THE BEST WESTERN STORIES OF RYERSON JOHNSON, in hardback from Ohio University Press.

Walter Ryerson Johnson once described American pulp fiction as “A never-never land that existed only in the glowing imagination of the writer and the transient ‘suspension of disbelief’ of the reader.  Bigger than life.  Adult fairy stories.”

 

T LUND  Trygve Lund was born in the city of Bergen, on the mountainous west coast of Norway, on September 10, 1886.  Of Norse-Viking descent, he grew up in a military family, becoming a personable, tall, athletic man with piercing grey eyes.  After serving in the 1st Norwegian Dragoons for three years and then training as a civil engineer, he and his young wife Helga sailed to Canada in search of adventure and employment.

Trygve found both when he became a member of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.

With the outbreak of WWI, Lund transferred from the Force to the newly re-mobilized Lord Strathcona’s Horse (of Boer War fame), rising to the rank of Captain.  He shipped out with other members of Strathcona’s Horse for Europe in October of 1915, where they joined the battle in France and eventually became attached to the 1st Canadian Cavalry Brigade.  As part of that brigade, the Strathconas made history when they took the lead in the victorious “Last Great Cavalry Charge” at the Battle of Moreuil Wood.  “It’s a charge, boys.  It’s a charge!”[6]

Lund finished off his active military career as a Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps, 1918 – 1920, returning to temporary duty in 1922 at the rank of Flight Lieutenant to help establish the new Royal Air Force training centre in the Aylesbury Vale district of Buckinghamshire.

Following that, he settled in the UK for over a decade, spending those years writing well-received Northwesterns.

His novels garnered good reviews in England and beyond:

“Capt. Lund, late Strathcona’s Horse, has written a good story of police work in the lumber camps of the North-West.” – Times Literary Supplement

“Capt. Lund’s characters are thoroughly alive; his dialogue is particularly good; and he vitally suggests the atmosphere of Manitoba…  Adventure and excitement there are in plenty, and Capt. Lund has an ample fund of humour.” – Bookman

“IN THE SNOW is a most entertaining description of the life of a trapper in the frozen North-west of Canada by Mr. T. Lund, whose novels of the North-west and the ‘Mounties’ have earned for him a well-deserved reputation.” The Brisbane Courier

Like other former Mounted Police members who had turned to writing fiction based on their own personal careers, Lund set his stories in the northcountry where he had actually served [7] — in his case, along the northern reaches of the Saskatchewan River and in the Great Northwoods.

And like fellow Norwegian writers Sigrid Undset, Mikkjel Fønhus and the great Knut Hamsun, Trygve Lund loved and understood the Northlands and the effect that living there had on the human soul.

Lund brought a sure knowledge of the day-to-day life and duties of a Mountie to his adventure yarns (unlike many pulp writers who got everything from our police routines to our proud history so wrong).

And his love of the Canadian Northcountry, so much like his own Norway, was there in his writing:

“They paddled up lakes, rivers and creeks, which were always bordered by the silent, majestic pine and spruce forests, with a belt of birches, poplars and willows.  They forced the minor rapids and portaged around the bigger ones, but even the hard work involved in packing their outfit and canoe on their heads across those often miles long portages was a delight to Weston.

“He loved the camp at night and the aromatic smell of the camp fire.  He loved the calm, clear mornings when only the ripples made by rising fish disturbed the glassy surface of the water, and when only the weird melancholy cry of a loon would break the vast silence.  Then the sun would rise, and the western banks would be bathed in gold…”

Trygve Lund’s series character was Richard Weston, of the Portage Bend RNWMP detachment, who would appear as the central character in eight published novels:

WESTON OF THE  ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE

UP NORTH: A Tale From Northern Canada

THE MURDER OF DAVE BRANDON

ROBBERY AT PORTAGE BEND

THE VANISHED PROSPECTOR

BEYOND THE BARRENS

BLOOD IN THE SNOW

RED-COATED LAW

In his yarns of Richard Weston, Lund followed the life and adventures of one Mountie from young Constable to seasoned Inspector, in much the same way that C S Forester would later recount the life story of Horatio Hornblower.

The first three Weston novels, including WESTON OF THE  ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE, were collected in the eagerly sought-after THE LONE TRAIL OMNIBUS.  It was published in 1936 by T Werner Laurie of London, who had published all of the first five titles in hardcover.

The last three Richard Weston novels appeared complete in 1937 editions of the American pulp magazines Real Northwest Adventures and Complete Northwest Novel.

Other published books by T Lund are IN THE SNOW: A Romance of the Canadian Backwoods (a story about Northcountry trappers, their lives, loves and battles, in which Richard Weston of the Mounted makes an appearance) and STEELE BEY’S REVENGE, a mystery novel set in Egypt and England.

Lund’s last known address was back in Canada, in Hawkesbury, Ontario, in 1934.  Except for his 1937 magazine appearances, nothing is known of him since…

 

WILLIAM BYRON MOWERY   William Byron Mowery (1899-1957) was known as “The Zane Grey of the Canadian Northwest.”

A mentor, naturalist and novelist, Mowery was born in the village of Adelphia, a farming community of Ross County, in the forested Appalachian region of Ohio.  From earliest boyhood William was dissatisfied with what he called his “backwoods” existence.

In an article in a 1933 edition of the Auburn, New York, Citizen-Advertiser, introducing their upcoming serialization of a Mowery Northwesten novel, the paper wrote:

“William Byron Mowery, writer of stories about the woods and out-doors, was himself born in the ‘backwoods’ country but throughout his childhood wanted to escape from an environment he thought cruel and barbaric. He is the author of the Citizen-Advertiser‘s serial, FORBIDDEN VALLEY.” [8]

“At the age of 11,” the article continued, “he left his family’s migratory ‘chicken-wagon’ home and started out to see the world. For eighteen months he tramped about the country…

“After a winter’s trapping in the Athabasca north country of Canada, he roamed the United States for another two years and then entered high school at 18.

“His writing career started when he read a ‘North Woods’ story in which description and details were so inaccurate that Mowery determined he could do better himself. Editors seemed to agree and in three years he produced more than 400 published stories. He did not receive wide recognition as an author, however, until he began taking more time on stories and sharply curtailed his output.

“The Mowery family, headed by the man who once wanted only ‘Civilizing Influences,’ now spends the major portion of the year in out-door activities, exploring, mountain-climbing and camping.”

Mowery served in the Tank Corps during the last year of World War I.

Graduating Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree, he taught English and creative writing at the universities of Illinois, of New York and of Texas.

One of his students, Mary Higgins Clark, later described Professor Mowery as “an elfin-sized man who wore a tie so long that it gave the visual illusion of scraping the tops of his shoes.” [9]

Clark added that “His talents as a teacher, however, were huge and he set my feet firmly on the path that I had been seeking all my life.”

“Take a dramatic situation from real life, one that sticks in your mind,” Mowery would advise his students.  “Ask yourself two questions — ‘Suppose’ and ‘What if?’ and turn that situation into fiction.”  In 1953, Thomas Y Crowell published his PROFESSIONAL SHORT STORY WRITING: An Authoritative, Practical Guide to Basic Problems and Craftsmanship.

Besides the newspapers, Mowery’s 450 short stories and his serialized novels appeared in a number of popular magazines.  His first published work was “Be Sure He Is Green” in 10 Story Book, October, 1921.  He also appeared in Argosy All-Story Weekly, Adventure, Munsey’s Magazine, The Blue Book Magazine, Short Stories, North-West Stories, Redbook Magazine, The Country Gentleman, Complete Northwest Novel Magazine, Maclean’s Magazine, Liberty and The Saturday Evening Post.

It was his hardcover books that brought him his fame.

From 1929 to 1948, William Byron Mowery published fifteen novels and short story collections that, as a total work, may be the most literate and realistic of the Mountie genre.  His stories were set throughout the Canadian Northlands, from towns and villages to the wildest places.  And reflected the lives of the people who lived there.

Like Canadian wilderness writers from Charles G D Roberts, Grey Owl and Ernest Thompson Seton to Farley Mowat and Candace Savage, as well as fellow American James Oliver Curwood, Mowery’s novels were published throughout northern Europe.  Languages include German, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, French and Spanish.

Some of his best novels are:

CHALLENGE OF THE NORTH  Not to be confused with Jim Hendryx’s novel of the same title, this is a romantic adventure of a Mountie’s spunky granddaughter who sets out to return stolen money.

HEART OF THE NORTH

PHANTOM CANOE

THE BLACK AUTOMATIC (reprinted as a Popular Library paperback and retitled OUTLAW BREED)

VENGEANCE TRAIL

THE GIRL FROM GOD’S MERCIE

PARADISE TRAIL

and RESURRECTION RIVER.

Mowery’s THE LONG ARM OF THE MOUNTED (1948, Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill Company, New York, Toronto) collected four of his Mountie stories: “Mannikin Talk,” “A Relic of the Vikings,” “The Mystery of the Ghost Gold” and “Shepherd of the Storm.”

Thomas Bouregy & Co published a new collection of Mowery’s stories in 1953, SAGAS OF THE MOUNTED POLICE, with an introduction by the author.  SAGAS brought together some of the best short Northwesterns ever written, including the first two stories from THE LONG ARM as well as “The Scout,” “Corporal Nat,” “The Long Shadow,” “The Constable of Lone Sioux,” “St Gabriel Zsbyski,” and “A Lamb and Some Slaughtering.”  Mowery called “Lamb” a “rollicking story…based on a yarn told to me by its actual participant at a reunion of NWMP veterans in Calgary years ago.”

The Notes about the Author on the back of the dust jacket for SAGAS, by the way, say that Mowery taught at McGill University, Montreal.  They also say that Mowery “shot a bear when he was eight years old but says that he couldn’t read or write until he was around fourteen.”

A second edition of SAGAS, this time in paperback, appeared in 1962 from Airmont Books of New York and Ryerson Press of Toronto, under the title TALES OF THE MOUNTED POLICE. [10]

 

HARWOOD STEELE  Harwood Elmes Robert Steele (1897-1978) may have been in the best position of any would-be writer to tell the story of the Mounties.  He was the only son of the greatest Mountie of them all: Sam Steele. [11]

Harwood grew up in a household hearing all the adventures and tribulations of being a Mounted Policeman in turbulent times.

He got the inside scoop of Sam Steele’s life and character, as well as hearing the stories of police vets and serving members who “took time out for a chat about old days or for a rest from a tough patrol,” and later wrote it down in fictional form.

Harwood’s own life was almost as adventurous. After growing up in Fort Macleod, Alberta and in rural Ontario, he joined the Canadian Army at age 17.  He rose from Captain to the rank of Major in the 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars during the First World War.  Harwood was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in battle.

His non-fiction dramatic account THE CANADIANS IN FRANCE 1915-1918 became an essential military history of the Canadian involvement in WWI.  Reflecting some of his own experiences during the Great War, he described our soldiers’ part in the deadly battles from the Somme and Ypres to Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele and Mons in taut, immediate prose: “The grey, heavy-winged dawn at last came slowly over the far-flung Canadian line and found a gaunt, haggard little handful of men still making an incredible stand in the path of enormous forces of the Kaiser’s best…”

After working as a journalist and as a press representative for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Harwood was part of the historic Canadian Government Sovereignty Expedition into the High Arctic in 1925.

Harwood began seriously writing Mountie fiction in the early 1920’s.

His first major sale was “Rufus the Outlaw,” published in the February 7, 1924 edition of The Popular Magazine (shown left), which printed five more of his narratives to 1926, including one of his best: the novelette “To Effect an Arrest.”

During that time and through the 30’s, he also published in Ace-High Magazine, Argosy, The Canadian Magazine, The Danger Trail, Golden Fleece, Short Stories, Prize Story Magazine, Top-Notch Magazine and War Stories.

During the 1950’s he published a number of articles in the English World Wide Magazine, as by Lieutenant-Colonel Harwood Steele (after serving in the British Army during WWII, chiefly in Burma, he had retired at that rank).

He would later collect his stories in book form.  One of those books, for instance the Ryerson Press edition of TO EFFECT AN ARREST: Adventures of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, collected stories like “Horse de Combat,” “Storm Child,” “Snow-Blind,” “Rufus The Outlaw,” “The Boundary Line,” “Old-Timers Played Straight,” “The Prestige of the Scarlet,” “The Force Can’t Fail,” “The Ace of Huskies” and others, all of them appearing first in popular American magazines.  See Book Review

Harwood’s technique was to take actual police cases and characters and fictionalize them, “to present fact in the form of romantic fiction.”

Two books, SPIRIT-OF-IRON (MANITOU-PEWABIC): An Authentic Novel of the North-West Mounted Police and THE MARCHING CALL, were based on the life of his father.

SPIRIT-OF-IRON blended many incidents in his father’s life into the fictional story of Hector Adair (“wild to serve the Queen”).  Catching all the action from the Mounties’ Great March West in 1874 to the fervid Klondike Gold Rush of 1898.  THE MARCHING CALL used the novelistic forms of dialogue, narrative and structure to tell Sam Steele’s life story.  The book started with Sam helping recruit members for the newly-created North-West Mounted Police.  And ended with the battles of the Northwest Rebellion and the driving of the railway’s Last Spike at Craigellachie in ’85.

Harwood’s 1950 novel GHOSTS RETURNING dealt with the early days of the first North-West Mounted Police detachment at Fort MacLeod.

Based on “an almost forgotten official report of the U. S. government” about the forbidden Indian Ghost Dancers, and personal accounts told to Harwood over the years by retired Mounties and Blood Indians such as Chief Joe Bull Shields, GHOSTS RETURNING is the rousing story of the pursuit of a murderer and kidnapper into the Land of the Long Knives.

Sergeant “Scarlet” Grier, Constable John Mayne and (“ex-war chief and medicine man of the Bloods”) Mounted Police scout Calf Shirt lead the chase…

Other novels and collections appeared between 1923 and 1961:

I SHALL ARISE  — “We’ve had to sacrifice our dreams, our life-work.”  The story of a war vet, Chris Maynard, who returns hopefully home from the battlefields of Flanders.  Only to find his fiancée married, friends cold, his job gone.  After contemplating suicide at the base of a War Memorial, Chris begins the long, hard trail that will take him back to love and life.

THE NINTH CIRCLE — Struggling to find his place in life, the son of the esteemed and prominent Sir Edwin Kirkwaller hopes that joining the Mounted Police under the name of Fate Westwood and being stationed in the bleak Arctic will redeem him.

TO EFFECT AN ARREST And Other Stories of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Jarrolds Publishers Ltd 0f London, with a slightly different Table of Contents from the Ryerson Press edition)

THE RED SERGE: Stories of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

THE RED SERGE contained 16 stories, all based on true cases, including dramatizations of the vigorous training of young recruits (“The Red Serge of Courage”), early exploits of the Police Service dogs (“Pal” and “A Dog Won’t Lie”) and Yukon Gold Rush incidents (“The Race For Molly Scott”).

And the arduous three-week journey of Constable Albert Pedley through snowstorm, freezing wind and wolf-haunted forest to get a madman to safety (“Lunatic Patrol”)…

He was as tough as his own huskies.  A fact he’d taught most of the North through years of doings like those concerned with the murder of Siwash Pratt.  But the greeting words of Constable Tavistock foreshadowed his having to take a man described as “gone crazy” five hundred dog-sled miles to hospital, in the year’s worst travel season — though he was tired and strung up after a long, hard trip, sick of “lunatic patrols,” longing for the settlement’s Christmas party.

So he groaned, yet merely asked, “Violent?”

Cover art of GHOSTS RETURNING and THE RED SERGE was by Arthur Steven, Ryerson Press Art Director.

Besides THE CANADIANS IN FRANCE, Harwood wrote two other non-fiction histories: THE LONG RIDE: A Short History of the 17th Duke of York’s Royal Canadian Hussars and POLICING THE ARCTIC: The Story of the Conquest of the Arctic by the Royal Canadian (formerly North-West) Mounted Police.  He also co-authored the Guide Book of the 1939 Royal Tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in Canada and Newfoundland.

In 1914, T Fisher Unwin of London had published his first book, CLEARED FOR ACTION, a collection of patriotic Military poems urging preparation for the expected war with Germany.  In 1973, Harwood self-published his last book, LAYS ON THE LONG, LONG TRAIL: Selected Poems and Drawings, a collection of “poems and sketches for Canada from the fur trade to the military.”  Some of his Pioneer Songs from the book “were set to music by my friend, the late Bill Sharples, and used by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.”

Unlike many pulp writers — but like ex-Mounties such as Ian Anderson and Trygve Lund — Harwood wrote realistically and with understanding and sympathy for the First Nations and Métis People.

In his Foreword to SPIRIT-OF-IRON, Harwood Steele laid down his philosophy for all of his Mountie fiction: “to present the Force as it was and is and not as portrayed by well-meaning but ignorant writers of the ‘red love, two-gun’ variety.  And it is my hope that, through this book, the reader may obtain a clearer conception of the marvelous devotion to duty.  As well as the high idealism and the splendid efficiency which have made the Mounted Police famous than any to be derived from these inaccurate romances.”

Harwood Steel’s honest and realistic portrayal of working Mounties, returned combat veterans and struggling First Nations men and women may never had attracted a Hollywood deal.  But it left a legacy of true Canadian history, ideals and valour.

 

SAMUEL ALEXANDER WHITE  Son of Canadian naturalist James White, Samuel was born in the community of Edmonton (later renamed Snelgrove), Ontario, in September of 1884.

After graduating the Brampton Model School for Teachers, Samuel taught for five years.   But he rose above that to find his creative muse.  During that time he began to publish song lyrics, poems and short stories (some under the name Kismet and S A White-Kismet) in a number of papers and magazines.  These included The Toronto Mail & Empire, The Toronto Globe, Saturday Night, Outing Magazine, Toronto Star Weekly.  And later the popular American pulps Adventure Magazine and North-West Stories.

As S. A. White, he published his first novel in 1910; THE STAMPEDER, a story of prospectors and dog-mushers and the Klondike Gold Rush.  He followed it two years later with THE WILDCATTERS: A Tale of Cobalt.

In 1913, White published his first novel to get good reviews and sales, EMPERY: A Story of Love and Battle in Rupert’s Land.  It was published first by Musson Book Co. of Toronto; and was reprinted a year later as LAW OF THE NORTH by Outing Publishing Co. of New York.

“The priest noticed the pistol’s muzzle thrust deeper into the gunpowder.” EMPERY

EMPERY introduced a common theme and setting in White’s work: the Hudson Bay country, the Fur Brigades, wild voyageurs boldly paddling the whitest of rivers (“Vive le Nor’westaire!”), greedy fur company factors — and spirited women.

In 1914, he began to sell his stories to Adventure and other popular pulp magazines.

With these sweeping, thrilling, detailed adventure stories of the savage Northcountry, editors were soon calling White “the Jack London of Canada.”

As well as Northwesterns, he started writing short stories and novels in his second major theme: the Sea Story.

He impressed his readership with tales like “The Ocean-Borne” (Adventure, June, 1916).  “The Bank’s Fleet” (Sea Stories, April, 1927).  And “Gold of the North” (Pirate Stories, July, 1935).  Hardcover books in the nautical genre included THE FOAMING FORESHORE and GRAY GULL WINGS WESTWARD.

Some of White’s Sea Stories, THE WONDER STRANDS is just one, were set in the Canadian North, combining both of his favourite genres.

He would continue to publish short works and complete novels in magazines, including Hunting and Fishing in Canada, Family Herald, Maclean’s Magazine, North-West Stories, Complete Northwest Magazine, Sea Stories, Western Action and Wild West Magazine.  And even radio dramas such as “Palmolive on the Prairies.”

Like a number of popular writers of his time, White did his best work in short form for newspapers and magazines.

Among his best magazine short stories were “The Bear Trap,” “Bison Bait,” “The Cache Thief,” “Covenant of Salt and Bread,” “Frozen Trail Stampede,” “Glacier Gold, “Half-Wolf.”  And “His Majesty’s Mail,” “The Hunt-Pack,” “The Long Traverse,” “Lords of the Lakeland,” “Men of the Midnight Sun,” “North of Sixty-Two,” “Old John Goes Scouting,” “Proof” (a memorable sled-dog yarn), “Ransom of the Snows,” “Toll of the North,” “Triple Cross Trail.”

And the novella “The Spoilsman” from Adventure magazine, January, 1916 (left).

Samuel Alexander White released MAN SCENT in 1935, a collection of gripping interconnected animal stories appearing originally in the Northern Messenger.  “The new steel of the Canadian Pacific Railway had arrived in the Algoma country, and its contractors were making war on the wilderness…”  My fave of his books.  See Book Review

White’s New York literary agent was Otis Adelbert Kline, who represented a number of popular writers of the day, including H G Wells, Frank Belknap Long and Robert E Howard.  Kline was also an accomplished adventure author in his own right.  At Otis Kline’s suggestion, Samuel began to concentrate more on the “stories that readers really want from Canada.”

Mountie Fiction of Samuel Alexander White

With NIGHTHAWK OF THE NORTHWEST (Phoenix Press, New York, 1938 and W Foulsham & Co, London, 1944), Samuel began his third major theme: the North-West Mounted Police.

Samuel Alexander White had long published stories that featured Mounted Police characters.

Such as “His Majesty’s Mail” in the December, 1910 issue of People’s Ideal Fiction Magazine.  And “The Cannons of the Mounted,” printed in the Spring 1937 edition of Frontier Stories.

But it wasn’t until the end of the 1930’s and through the 40’s that he concentrated almost exclusively on Mountie fiction.  Beginning with a Classic…

NIGHTHAWK OF THE NORTHWEST tells the story of Alec Nash, a Winnipeg settlement buffalo hunter who befriends Sergeant Hume of the newly created North-West Mounted Police.  When the Hunt is over, Nash joins the Mounties as a Scout.  See Book Review

Along with EMPERY, NIGHTHAWK OF THE NORTHWEST is one of White’s most popular titles.

More Mountie novels followed:

MORGAN OF THE MOUNTED  Sergeant Morgan’s job was to protect the Canadian Border surveyors following the disputed Stone Fort Trail.  When the survey party is fired on, Morgan realizes this was going to be a perilous patrol.

THE CODE OF THE NORTHWEST  (Appearing originally as RENEGADES OF THE BARRENS in Complete Northwest Magazine, July, 1939.)  Corporal Conroy of the Mounted is sent to protect a gold shipment on a Mackenzie River boat.  The outlawed Hazard Brothers wanted the gold.  First they had to figure out how to kill a Mountie.

NORTH OF THE BORDER  Constable Victor Carter had joined the Force for action.  Instead he’s assigned to establish a customs post on the US/Canadian border.  He’s less than pleased when one of his first duties is to count a herd of sheep — hundreds of ’em.  Then he meets Lilith Wadsworth, the sheep rancher’s pretty daughter.  Samuel’s working title for this book had been NORTHWEST SHEPHERD.

NORTHWEST LAW  A ranching country “Western Thriller” set north of Montana.  Constable Milton Blade must solve a train robbery while winning the hand of cattle rancher’s daughter Muriel Marlow.

NORTHWEST WAGONS  Word of the Seventh Cavalry’s fall at Little Bighorn spread like a mile-wide grassfire across the prairie.  Sitting Bull was leading five thousand Sioux north to find refuge in Canada.

An outlaw named Wheel Bradley was kidnapping borderland prospectors for gold nugget ransoms.  And a desperado who called himself Dakota Rod was smuggling dangerous contraband into Canada in a rumoured wagon train.

It was up to Constable Stewart Fuller of the Mounted Police to prevent disaster.

The next three books form White’s “Riel Rebellion Trilogy.”

CALLED NORTHWEST  April 2, 1885.  A band of Cree warriors attacked and looted the Frog Lake settlement, killing nine settlers, two of them priests.  The North-West Rebellion had begun, led by the Messianic Louis Riel.  The novel is told from the viewpoint of Keith Culver, an American scout who joins the NWMP.  Culver, who had once saved the life of Buffalo Bill, was a renowned prairie hunter and guide.  Now he would need all his skills — he was leading a Mounted Police patrol into a showdown in the Qu’Appelle Valley.

In NORTHWEST PATROL Kansan Bob Armstrong is guiding a survey party planning the Transcontinental Railway route, when the Rebellion explodes.  Like a lot of Traditional Westerns of the time, Samuel’s Northwesterns were an alternate history.  Often set in fictional locations.  With an imaginary cast of characters.  PATROL was an exception, with people such as Sam Steele of the Mounted and Louis Riel playing their parts.

In NORTHWEST CROSSING, a company of 100 Mounties is formed to make the 300 mile journey south to join the fight against the rebels.  The trip through Northwoods and whitewater rivers would be an arduous and dangerous one.  Hudson’s Bay Company clerk Ray Cole offers to guide them all the way to Prince Albert.

“The story of how the trader-guide faced revolt and heard the bullet-wind of death‌ whine past his ears adds another rousing chapter to Mr White’s annals of the great Northwest country.” Wright & Brown Co, London, England, reprint edition, 1955.

After the death of Otis Kline in October, 1946, White began to find it difficult to sell his adventure stories in the fast-changing post-War market.

All those glorious pulp magazines were disappearing, replaced by paperback books.  Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer was the hot new cultural hero: tough, street-wise, cynical, violent, at times a sadistic killer.  With Hitler and Hiroshima still in the rear view mirror, tales of green wilderness, eternal love, Christian ideals, traditional rural values, chivalry, honour and a sense of duty no longer suited the times.  At least in “Men’s Fiction.”

This, of course, applied to the Northwestern Genre as a whole.  Mountie Fiction especially, with its founding traditional Christian values, was suddenly passé.

Samuel’s last two published novels in his lifetime were NORTHWEST RAIDERS (1945, a Mountie novel) and FLAMING FURLANDS (1948, a Fur Country yarn).

Although, as with other Canadian wilderness writers, White’s Northwestern novels continued to find a receptive readership in Australia, Great Britain and northern Europe.  Over there, Samuel’s most popular titles were reprinted through the Fifties and into the Sixties.

Samuel Alexander White died in Toronto, on October 3, 1956.  He was survived by Vennie, his beloved wife for 44 years, as well as their two daughters and two sons.

He left a number of novels that had been serialized in magazines — such as CANOEMEN OF THE CRIMSON STAR in Adventure — but never printed in book form.  And unfinished novels, including THE JOSEPH VOYAGEURS and TRACKERS OF TRAMPLING LAKE.  And the manuscript of an unpublished autobiography with the intriguing title CANADIAN SAGALAND: Wild Editors I Have Met — By Letter, Telephone, Telegraph, Cable, Word-Of-Mouth, and Hand-Shake.

 

GREATEST WRITERS OF MOUNTIE FICTION Top 10 Writers Canadian Mounted Police.

 

Celebrating the RCMP’s 150th Anniversary 

 

A NOTE: This article, of course, deals with authors who wrote about the historic North-West Mounted Police, at least in part.  The Mythic Age of our Mounties, if you will.

The many great authors of our modern day RCMP would take another article.  Louis Charles Douthwaite, Walter W Liggett, Laurie York Erskine, Hulbert Footner, Jack O’Brien, Charles Stoddard, William Brockie (C V Tench), Alisa Craig, L R Wright, Don Easton, Roy Innes, Mike Martin, Michael Slade, John C Smith, Richard W Stevens, Lyle Nicholson…  There are more.

 

And then there are the Boys Books, written for a juvenile readership and usually about an adventurous boy with the Mounties.  With the exception of SERGEANT SILK, THE PRAIRIE SCOUT, I wasn’t given many in this category.  And had little interest in them in later years.  Although I have fond memories of SERGEANT SILK, probably because I read it at the right time.  It still sits yellowing on my shelves.  Published in 1929, it’s author was Scotsman Robert Leighton (1858-1934).

Other writers of Boys Books included Harold Bindloss, Otwell Binns, Joe Holliday (Dale of the Mounted Series), J Paul Loomis, James A Rennie, Milton Richards (Dick Kent Series), John Gabriel Rowe and Leroy W Snell.

 

FIRST-HAND FACT-FILLED FUN FOOTNOTES:

[1] God’s Country and the Woman.  The 1937 Warner Brothers release shown on Turner Classic was a lesser remake of the classic silent movie version 0f 1916, made by Vitagraph Studios.  Although the Vitagraph offering was the first feature film appearance by Canadian stage actress and script writer Nell Shipman (as “the Woman”), she was such a hit in Hollywood that Samuel Goldwyn offered her a seven year contract.  The independent Nell turned down Goldwyn and set out to make her own Canadian movies.  An act that would lead to both triumph and downfall.  (See Nell Shipman)

 

[2] Other writers contributed great Northwestern fiction, often featuring the Mounties…

The pulps saw the success of a number of writers who wrote, even specialized in, Northwesterns.  Among them were Robert Ormond Case, Harry Sinclair, George Marsh, H H Matteson, Jack Bechdolt, Leslie McFarlane, A De Herries Smith, Frank Richardson Pierce, Frederick Nebel and Dex Volney.  (Not all wrote about Mounted Police.  See Wolf Whelps & Lead Dogs: Tribute to Wilderness Writer George Marsh)

Science fiction writer Sewell Peaslee Wright occasionally dipped his paddle into the Mountie fiction genre with tales like “Pards of the Snow Frontier.”

Even American pulp writer Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage, wrote a series of Northwestern pulp stories featuring Constable Andy Frost and the Silver Corporal.

Although best known for his books STAY AWAY, JOE (made into a movie starring Elvis Presley) and TIMBERJACK (also a movie, with Sterling Hayden), his Spur Award winning THE SILVER MOUNTAIN and his COW COUNTRY COOK BOOK, American Dan Cushman also wrote inspired popular Northwesterns, even Mountie fiction.

Such as “The Great Hunger” and “Death to the Red-Coat Tyrant” in Forties editions of North-West Romances.  These two yarns and four others were collected in Cushman’s VOYAGEURS OF THE MIDNIGHT SUN AND OTHER STORIES, with a Foreword by John Jakes.

The Canadian Contingent…

Under the pseudonym Luke Allan, Canadian writer William Lacey Amy (1877-1962) wrote a series of novels about Blue Pete, a Métis and former cattle rustler who served as an undercover agent for the Mounties in Alberta and Saskatchewan.  Blue Pete first appeared in a short story in the January, 1911 edition of The Canadian Magazine, entitled “The Sentimental Half-Breed”.  Like a passel of pulp fiction writers and Hollywood screenwriters of his time, Amy referred to First Nation people as “Injuns” and Métis as “Half-breeds” out of ignorance as much as malice.

And although they published works in other categories, a number of Canadian authors wrote occasional but popular Mountie fiction:

• While best known for his serious books like THE FIGHTING MEN OF CANADA and his darkly comic MR GUMBLE SITS UP, Canadian professor of literature Douglas Leader Durkin also wrote some well-crafted Mountie fiction such as “Haunted Valley” (Action Stories, Dec, 1924) and “Scarlet and Gold” (Flynn’s, Jan, 1925).
• Canadian George S Surrey’s Mountie novel is AN OUTLAW OF THE PLAINS.  His other Northwestern titles, published in the 1920’s and 30’s, include A SHACK IN THE COULEE, A SERVANT OF THE COMPANY, A DOG OF THE WILDS and THE GOLDEN MOUNTAIN.
• Yorkshireman Louis Charles Douthwaite came to Canada to look for gold.  After serving in the Canadian Army in WWI, he turned to writing.  Douthwaite contributed three novels to the Sexton Blake mystery series out of London.  And wrote fiction based on his own adventures in Canada.  Popular story collections included CORPORAL OF THE MOUNTED, THE MAN FROM OUTSIDE and WARDEN OF THE WILDS.
• Alberta-born Harold F Cruickshank wrote well-received Mountie yarns, but also published stories in many other genres, especially the WWI “Flying Aces” type of aerial warrior yarns.
• Another popular Canadian writer was New Brunswick-born H A Cody, an Anglican priest whose early Northwestern novels matched Ralph Connor’s in popularity and sales.  His classic Mountie novel was THE LONG PATROL: A Tale of the Mounted Police.

 

And Many Magazines Printed Great Mountie Fiction…

American publisher Fiction House’s North-West Stories, which specialized in Northern Canadian and Alaskan tales of adventure, first appeared on the magazine stands in May, 1925.

Soon, each issue of North-West Stories was eagerly awaited by thousands of fans.  A typical issue was the December 1929 edition, which included yarns like “The Trail to Caribou” by Frederick Nebel, “Boot Hill’s Pilgrims” by W C Tuttle, “Dogs of Doom” by A DeHerries Smith, “Bullets for Breakfast” by Tom J Hopkins, “White Ghost Trail,” a serial by Jack Bechdolt, “Rangers Rule” by J Frank Davis, “Dynamite Dangerous” by Cole Richards, “Trail Tales of the North: Sign of the Killer” a short memoir by C A Freeman and “Sled Dogs for All” an article by W Dustin White.

Other magazines were soon created to cash in on the “Northwestern craze.”

An example of Real Northwest Adventures is the Table of Contents of the March, 1937 issue, which contained the stories “Red Water” by Frank Richardson Pierce, “The Wolf Trail” by Victor Rousseau, “Roaring Bill” by William Byron Mowery, “White Magic” by Samuel Taylor and “The Runt” by Cliff Campbell.

And the April, 1937 issue of Complete Northwest Novel Magazine, presenting the full-length novel RED-COATED LAW by T Lund and the short stories “Lost Catch” by William Byron Mowery, “In Spring Thaws” by Will F Jenkins and “The Private God” as by Murray Leinster (Will Jenkins).

Popular fiction magazines from Adventure and Argosy to Short Stories and Western Story Magazine frequently featured Canadian-set Mountie fiction and Northern stories.

Other pulp mags printing Mountie fiction included Ace-High Magazine, Action Stories, The Frontier, Posse Magazine, Thrilling Adventures, Western Trails, even Railroad Stories.

With yarns from pulpsters Victor Rousseau, Talmage Powell, Will Ermine, Murray Leinster, Roger Daniels and Hugh B Cave.

 

Women Writers of Northwesterns, especially Mountie Fiction

While women made up half the loyal readership of the Northwestern genre — especially of the romances of James Oliver Curwood and Samuel Alexander White — few women published in the genre.

But there were some wonderful Northwestern stories by women.  And one magnificent classic…

With her husband Benedict, Nancy Freedman wrote the Literary Guild selection MRS MIKE, a fictionalized first-person account based on the real life of Katherine Mary O’Fallon, a Boston city woman sent to the fresh, balsamic air of the Canadian Northwoods to recover from pleurisy.

There, she met and married Sgt Michael Flannigan of the RNWMP, living with him in his northern outpost.

The First Nations people around them were soon calling her “Mrs Mike.”  She made friends with many of the natives  — including a tragic girl named Oh-Be-Joyful.  Two sequels are THE SEARCH FOR JOYFUL and KATHY LITTLE BIRD.

American writer Ethel Smith Dorrance published her first short story, “The Lucky Thirteenth,” in the August, 1910 issue of Ainslee’s Magazine.  Among her most beloved books with readers were the three Mountie novels she coauthored with her husband James French Dorrance: BACK OF BEYOND, CODE OF THE YUKON and GET YOUR MAN: A Canadian Mounted Mystery.

Born in New Orleans, Edith Ogden Harrison published seventeen books in her lifetime. From children’s books (PRINCE SILVERWINGS And Other Fairy Tales) to travel and romantic adventure novels.  Her two popular Mountie novels were THE LADY OF THE SNOWS (1912) and THE SCARLET RIDERS (1930).

Canadian writer Muriel Denison found success with her novels about Susannah Winston.

Born Jessie Muriel Goggin in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1886, Muriel grew up in the Canadian Northwest, loving the land and its history.  She travelled east to attend the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.

She met playwright Merrill Denison at that city’s Hart House — they married in 1926.  Using the pen name Frances Newton, Muriel sold articles to a number of popular magazines including This Week, McCall’s and Reader’s Digest.

Muriel Denison’s novel SUSANNAH: A Little Girl With The Mounties was released in 1936.  When Susannah’s parents leave for India, they send the mischievous, impetuous and endearing 9 year old girl to Regina to live with her uncle Dennis, a Canadian Mountie.

In the novel, she travels with her uncle’s troop to England to represent Canada at Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Back in Canada her friend Sgt Colebrook is shot by Indian Outlaw Almighty Voice.

The novel was made into a 20th Century Fox movie starring Shirley Temple.  And the book was reissued under the film’s title, SUSANNAH OF THE MOUNTIES.

Sequels include SUSANNAH OF THE YUKON (in which she experiences the Klondike Gold Rush) and SUSANNAH RIDES AGAIN.  Muriel’s final work was her WWII-era novel HAPPY TRAMP: The Story of a Little Girl and Her Old English Sheep Dog.

In late 1937, with sales slipping slightly because of the increased competition on the stands, North-West Stories was renamed North-West Romances, ensuring its place as one of the most popular and longest in-print pulps of them all.

The issue shown here is the second under the new title.  Cover art was by Norman Saunders.  Born in “the northernmost wilderness of Minnesota,” his mother was part Iroquois.  Saunders was known for his authentic depictions of the Northcountry — and of strong female characters.  His cover illustrates “The Golden Girl of Whispering Valley” by Jack Bechdolt.

While North-West Romances continued to publish men’s action yarns, more stories featuring women, romance and undying love were printed.  Writers like Eli Colter (May Eliza Frost), Helen Castle and Donna M Newhart appeared.

North-West Romances was one of the last great pulps, publishing its final issue in Spring, 1953.

Today, most Mountie fiction novels fall into the thriving Romance genre.

WHERE WILD ROSES BLOOM: Heart of A Mountie by Angela K. Couch and AT THE MOUNTAIN’S EDGE by Genevieve Graham, are just two examples.

Popular book series are THE MOUNTIES by Kathryn Fox.  THE CANADIAN MOUNTIES, THE KLONDIKE GOLD RUSH and THE MOUNTIE BRIDES by Kate Bridges.  And the successful RNWMP: MAIL ORDER MOUNTIES series by writers Kirsten Osbourne, Kay P Dawson, Amelia C Adams and Cassie Hayes.

A personal fave of mine is Kathryn Fox’s THE SECOND VOW.

It’s the well-written (and well-researched) story of Constable Braden Flynn, who is part of the Mounted Police detail escorting Sitting Bull’s people into Canada after Little Bighorn.  With the war chief is his interpreter and beautiful niece Dancing Bird.

“Why do you want to court Dancing Bird?  He says she is his niece, but she would make a poor wife.”

“Ask him why he thinks she would make a poor wife.”

“He says,” Standing Elk said, “that she is disobedient and never does as she is told.”

 

American Western Writers Head North – Louis L’Amour & Others

In the genre’s heyday, even writers of traditional American Westerns saddled up and rode North of the Border.  Zane Grey, of course, created King of the Royal Mounted.

And William MacLeod Raine, Charles Alden Seltzer, Max Brand, Les Savage Jr, Luke Short, Tom W Blackburn and — later — three of my all-time fave Western writers, Will Henry, Louis L’Amour and Giles A Lutz, all headed north.

“They lived in a furious land!”  In 1967, Giles A Lutz released THE MAGNIFICENT FAILURE, the story of Métis Janvier Ouellette, who joins with Louis Riel in his revolt against the Canadian government and the North-West Mounted.

Under the pen name Wade Everett, Ballantine Westerns published Giles A Lutz’s THE WHISKEY TRADERS in paperback in 1968.  THE WHISKEY TRADERS tells the story of “half-breed” Brent Bargen.  Conscripted by a US Federal Marshal, Brent is sent as an undercover agent north into the lawless Canadian Northwest Territories to infiltrate the notorious whiskey traders, outlaws and deserters at Fort Whoop-Up.  During the story, the newly-formed North-West Mounted Police arrive.  Major James Macleod plays a featured role.  Brent, who had lived a lifetime of being ashamed of his native blood, is surprised at the even-handed and honourable way the Red-coated policemen treat the Native Peoples.

While Ian Anderson may have been the last writer to contribute major works to the North-West Mountie genre, a number of present day authors have helped keep the flame flickering.

Terrance Dicks, best known as a writer and script editor on the BBC series Doctor Who, published the first volume of his North-West Mounted Police trilogy in 1976 — THE MOUNTIES: THE GREAT MARCH WEST.

The novel was a fictional retelling of the arrival of the Mounties in the Northwest Territories and their raid on the outlawed whiskey traders of Fort Whoop-Up.

The other two titles were MASSACRE IN THE HILLS and WARDRUMS OF THE BLACKFOOT.

In 1991, Berkley Books of New York published the first of three novels of the Brothers in Blood series, Mountie fiction as by Daniel St James (Ed Gorman).

Alberta-born Janette Oke has included Mounted Police in her Christian novels of the Frontier.  WHEN CALLS THE HEART is her modern masterwork.  See Top Christian Writer Janette Oke.

Another Christian writer is Alan Morris, whose Guardians of the North Series was published between 1996 and ’99.

And Tim Champlin, bless him, has appeared with short stories like “Color At Forty-Mile” in Jon Tuska’s STORIES OF THE FAR NORTH, Bison Books, 1998 (which also included yarns by Max Brand, James Oliver Curwood and James B Hendryx with a Black John & Cpl Downey yarn.  Among others).

And “Maintien Le Droit” — Mountie fiction published in Tuska’s ODYSSEY OF THE NORTH: North-Western Stories, Five Star, 2003.

Champlin’s full-length novel BY FLARE OF NORTHERN LIGHTS, a Klondike Gold Rush adventure in the Jack London tradition, was published by Thorndike Press in 2001.

Most recently, a new title is BARCLAY OF THE MOUNTED: From the Memoirs of Major-General Sir Henry Barclay VC DSO MC (Retired).  Mountie fiction written by Stephen Gaspar.  See Book Review.

 

[3] Creation of the Canadian Mounted Police

A Brief History Note:  “Shortly after Prime Minister John A MacDonald led the Confederation of our new Dominion of Canada in 1867, he was made aware that Rupert’s Land (an area as big as Europe, soon to be renamed the Canadian North-West Territories) was falling into a state of chaos…”

A Smallpox pandemic was sweeping through the First Nation’s bands in the undefended western territories.  Outlaws and whiskey traders were establishing their own fortified hideouts such as the nefarious Fort Whoop-Up.  And then came the Cyprus Hills Massacre.

Prime Minister MacDonald responded by announcing the creation of “an armed, self-reliant mounted company to be sent West to establish Law and Justice.”

On May 23, 1873, the North-West Field Force Act was supported in Parliament by all parties as an Emergency Measure.  MacDonald announced that the Field Force would be called the Canadian Mounted Rifles.  When the Act was formally activated by Order-in-Council on August 30, 1873, it was under a new name…

The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP).  At the turn of the Century, renamed the Royal North-West Mounted Police (RNWMP).  Today called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Why MacDonald’s last-minute name change?  See…

“Canadian Mounted Police — Fort Whoop-Up, Five Thousand Outlaws and the Great March West.”  Go to Canadian Mounties: Creation & Early History of the Royal Mounted Police

From their beginning, fictional stories have been told of our Mounties.

Englishman John Mackie, who had served as a Mounted Policeman from 1888 to 1893, published popular romances from 1894 to 1913.  Such as THE RISING OF THE RED MAN, SINNERS TWAIN: A Romance of the Great Lone Land, CANADIAN JACK, HIDDEN IN CANADIAN WILDS and THE LAW BRINGERS.

Another ex-member was Welshman and Minister’s son Roger Pocock, who had served as a Constable in the Force during the 1885 North-West Rebellion.  He published early stories based on his experiences, his best being THE CHEERFUL BLACKGUARD (1896), a tale told with barracks humour.  His autobiographies are THE FRONTIERSMAN and CHORUS TO ADVENTURE.

Pocock drew some official fire when he criticized the government for its treatment of the First Nations people.  When he settled in England in 1905, Pocock formed the patriotic Legion of Frontiersmen, which proudly survives even today.

It was Roger Pocock who convinced his reluctant friend Sam Steele to begin writing his own memoir.  That book was published to much acclaim in 1915 as FORTY YEARS IN CANADA: Reminiscences of the Great North-West by Col S B Steele, CB, MVO, Royal North-West Mounted Police.

Canadian-born writer of historic novels Gilbert Parker, who in the first decades of the 20th Century battled with writers like Edna Ferber, Mary Roberts Rinehart and Booth Tarkington for top spot on the New York Times best seller lists, published early literary Mountie fiction.  His short story “The Patrol of the Cypress Hills” was collected in his PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE: Tales of the Far North, in 1894.  Editor Dick Harrison has called Gilbert’s story “The Error of the Day” (appearing in NORTHERN LIGHTS, 1909), “the first attempt in literature to create a Mountie hero of any psychological complexity.”

Robert W Service’s ballad Clancy of the Mounted Police (“In the little Crimson Manual it’s written plain and clear, that who would wear the scarlet coat shall say good-bye to fear; shall be a guardian of the right, a sleuth-hound of the trail— In the little Crimson Manual there’s no such word as ‘fail’—”) appeared in 1909.

Then came the man who called himself Ralph Connor — and Mountie fiction as a genre was established.

[4] When the bear spared Curwood’s life, the avid outdoorsman gave up hunting forever, except with a camera.

And that harrowing bear encounter in the wilderness of British Columbia inspired his 1916 novel THE GRIZZLY KING.

In his Preface to THE GRIZZLY KING, James Oliver Curwood wrote: “It is with something like a confession that I offer this second of my nature books to the public.  A confession, and a hope.  The confession of one who for years hunted and killed before he learned that the wild offered a more thrilling sport than slaughter.  And the hope that what I have written may make others feel and understand that the greatest thrill of the hunt is not in killing, but in letting live…”

THE GRIZZLY KING was made into the Jean-Jacques Annaud movie L’Ours (The Bear), released in France in 1988.  Annaud had already achieved international fame with his productions Quest For Fire and The Name of the Rose.  The Bear won four Feature Film awards, including the 1990 Genesis Award.

In 1989, Newmarket Press released a new edition of “this long-lost American classic” THE GRIZZLY KING.  Retitled THE BEAR: A Novel, this edition starts with an Introduction by Jean-Jacques Annaud, who explains that Curwood’s story “is not only an adventure of two bears and the men who hunt them, but also a beautifully moving drama about a full range of emotions — that we are used to thinking of as human, but that are, in fact, universal.”

Newmarket also reprinted the other two titles of Curwood’s Nature Trilogy: KAZAN (retitled KAZAN: Father of Baree) and BAREE, SON OF KAZAN (retitled BAREE: The Story of a Wolf-Dog).

[5] Most sources reference “The Squeeze,” appearing in the March 20, 1926, issue of Adventure, as Ryerson Johnson’s first published short story.  But recent researchers list the 1923 Detective Tales appearance.

[6] Library and Archives Canada: central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.redirect?app=pffww&id=538618&lang=eng

[7] “Like other former Mounted Police members who had turned to writing fiction based on their own personal careers, Lund set his stories where he had actually served…”  Such as Ralph S Kendall (1878-1941), a retired Sergeant in the RNWMP, who set his novels in the Calgary area, where he had been posted.

After serving in the Boer War, Englishman Kendall came to Canada and joined the RNWMP (Reg #4351).  In 1910, he left the Force to join the Calgary City Police Force Mounted Unit until 1924.

Kendell only published two stories, both Mountie fiction: the novels BENTON OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED and THE LUCK OF THE MOUNTED.  See Book Review

BENTON rose to #3 on the Canadian best seller lists, telling the story of Sergeant Ellis Benton and his battle with killers in Alberta’s cattle country.  Both novels reflected the powerful, transformative effect that serving in the Boer War had left on the men who returned to Canada — including the many songs they had learned.  Kendell dedicated his books to “My Old Comrades.”

Along with Samuel Alexander White’s LAW OF THE NORTH (EMPERY), Kendall’s two “Mounted” novels were collected in the NORTHERN TRAILS OMNIBUS: Three Complete Novels of Adventure in the Northwest, Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1920.

[8] The Citizen-Advertiser, Auburn, New York, November 11, 1933.  “William Byron Mowery’s FORBIDDEN VALLEY is a story of the Canadian forests, packed with action, drama and a full-sized helping of romance. The first installment will appear in The Citizen-Advertiser Monday, November 13.”

[9] KITCHEN PRIVILEGES: A Memoir by Mary Higgins Clark, Pg 85, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2002.  In an interview with Publishers Weekly about this book and her writing Clark said, “I always avoided pages of description.  Minimal description helps people to visualize.  My first professor, William Byron Mowery, once defined a character in a short story: ‘He had a stoic face.’  Everyone filled in the rest.”

[10] To read more about William Byron Mowery’s first-rate Mounted Police collections and to see all three covers, go to “Stephen J Voorhies – An Artist of the American People – and Places” and “Carl Kidwell – Artist and Writer – His Illustrations and Stories”

[11] Sam Steele!  As every red-blooded Canadian knows, Samuel Benfield Steele is one of our true-life mythic heroes, perhaps our greatest.

His very name resonated strength and heroic character.  Sam would be the basis of many stalwart fictional Mounties, both riders of the wide prairies and later guardians of the Klondike Gold Fields.  Samuel White’s Sergeant Hume of NIGHTHAWK OF THE NORTHWEST, whose “scarlet coat bulged with the barrel chest and mighty shoulders,” was one.  Even James Curwood used Sam’s last name in his novel STEELE OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED.

As a Sergeant-Major, Sam Steele was one of the 275 original members of the North-West Mounted Police Force, riding with them on their arduous 1000 mile Great March westward to establish the Queen’s Law in a lawless land the size of Europe.  His Regimental Number was 2.  Each of those 275 few good men would forever have the honour of calling himself an “Original.”

During his quarter century as a Mountie, Sam trained new horses and acted as a riding instructor, arrested whiskey traders in their fortified posts, fought outlaws who hid like rats on the Canadian side of the Medicine Line, met with Sitting Bull when the Sioux sought refuge in “The Land of the Grandmother” after Little Bighorn, tracked down cattle rustlers who raided the ranches that had grown with the Mounties’ arrival, patrolled the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, led the building of Fort Steele in the Rocky Mountains, and during the bloody Northwest Rebellion, he formed Steele’s Scouts —  a cavalry unit of Mounties and volunteer Texas cowboys from local ranches.

He had reached the rank of Superintendent when he led the Yukon Detachment north during the frenzied Klondike Gold Rush in 1897.  He kept Law and Order in Dawson City and along the rich goldcreeks, earning the epithet “Lion of the Yukon.”

Sam took leave from the NWMP to take command of Lord Strathcona’s Horse, a Canadian mounted unit formed to fight in the Boer War, and stayed after the war to form the South African Constabulary, essentially a mounted police force.  After serving as a Major-General with the 2nd Canadian Division during World War I, he was knighted by King George V for his “years of heroic service to Crown and Country.”

Sam Steele lived a Life, eh?

 

A CONCLUSION OF SORTS — A Ready Response to Readers’ Requests:

Since first putting this article online, I’ve been asked “Who do you recommend…” and “What are the best…”

All I can list are a few of my favourite Northwesterns — those books I love to pick up and reread passages from.  You might want to start with one of these…

Ian Anderson – SERGEANT O’REILLY

Benedict & Nancy Freedman – MRS MIKE

Ralph S Kendall – BENTON OF THE ROYAL MOUNTED

T Lund – WESTON OF THE ROYAL NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE

Harwood Steele – GHOSTS RETURNING

Now this next one’s a surprise title.  A lot of the old pulp writers got Canada, our history, our mythology and our Mounted Police routines wrong.  Just plain out wrong!  And that’s continued with those more modern paperback action-packed Western series  — as soon as our gun-totin’ hero crosses north of the border, he leaves the real world behind.  Basic research doesn’t apply.  The author doesn’t give a damn.

But a good read that not only gets our Mounted Police history right but is a great old-fashioned frontier adventure (well, a bit steamier) is LONGARM AND THE MOUNTIES (Longarm #16) written by Lou Cameron under the house name Tabor Evans.

Deputy U. S. Marshal Custis Long, known as Longarm, heads north in pursuit of an owlhoot who calls himself Canada Jack.

Longarm expects he’ll have to outfight this Jack’s gang of killers and outsmart Sgt William Foster of the NWMP to get his man back to American justice.  Along the way, he meets Flora MacTavish, who is riding her own vengeance trail.

Lou Cameron created the Longarm Series, wrote a bunch of them himself, and brought in some top-notch Western writers to contribute the others, including William C. Knott, Chet Cunningham, Frank Roderus, Gary McCarthy, James Reasoner and Peter Brandvold.  (My fave newer Western Series — though looks like Ol’ Custis retired in 2015.  Jove Books has reprinted some old titles in paperback.)

Part of LONGARM AND THE MOUNTIES’s charm is, as James Reasoner has said, Lou Cameron’s distinctive voice: “it reminds me of the dialogue in the TV series DEADWOOD, without all the cussin’.” – Rough Edges – JamesReasonerBlogspot.ca.  Classic Mountie fiction at its most entertaining.

And there are a number of Northwesterns that don’t feature Mounties as central characters, often falling into the Animal Stories category, but are just downright faves:

James Oliver Curwood – THE GRIZZLY KING

Jack London – THE CALL OF THE WILD

Samuel Alexander White – MAN SCENT  See A Northern Canada Book Review – MAN SCENT by Samuel Alexander White

And…

Ralph Connor – POSTSCRIPT TO ADVENTURE.  Although his enduring Adventure Trilogy created many of the tropes of the Northwestern genre — including the Mythic Mountie character — Connor’s personal Memoir is his most riveting book.

Connor based his best novels on his own ventures from Glengarry County of Colonial Ontario to the Canadian Far West to the bloody battlefields of France.  He worked side-by-side with the pioneer families, the Native peoples and the soldiers (in war and struggling to find their way when back home).  To them he gave unfailing love, understanding and strength.  He was given honours by the First Nations not for what he wrote about them but for the way he gave of himself when among them.

Certainly, it was the much beloved author and fierce Highlander Padre himself who was the “True Northman Strong and Free.”  POSTSCRIPT TO ADVENTURE should be on every proud Canadian’s bookshelf.

So there’s my Top Ten Books, mon ami!

Are you thinking that my Top 10 books don’t completely match my Top 10 writers?  That’s because not all of them did their best work in full-length books.

Some authors did their best work in short form: short stories and novelettes.

Like Ridgwell Cullum’s “Black Wolf.”  Ryerson Johnson’s “The Dangerous Dan McGrew.”  William Byron Mowery’s “The Constable of Lone Sioux.”

And Jim Hendryx’s “Routine Patrol,” as well as a wagonload of great yarns spread across his many Halfaday Creek books.

(Cover of Sept 10, 1936 Short Stories shows Black John and Cpl. Downey in “Whiskers” — a Halfaday Creek Story.)

I’ve mentioned a number of Mountie fiction anthologies and Northwestern short story collections throughout this write-up.  They’re all worth looking into.  Especially BEST MOUNTED POLICE STORIES, edited by Dick Harrison; SCARLET RIDERS: Pulp Fiction Tales of the Mounties, edited by Don Hutchison; and THE NORTHERNERS, edited by Bill Pronzini & Martin H Greenberg.

“Live Free, Mon Ami!” – Brian Alan Burhoe

 

GREATEST WRITERS OF MOUNTIE FICTION Top 10 Writers Canadian Mounted Police.

Updated Canada Day, July 1, 2023.  Celebrating the RCMP 150th Anniversary.  And Mountie fiction.

WRITERS OF THE SCARLET SERGE

Bio, Biography, Canadian wilderness writers, Chief Joe Bull Shields, Ghosts Returning, Harwood Steele, Ian Anderson, James B Hendryx, James Oliver Curwood.  Mountie fiction.  Nell Shipman, NWMP, pulp fiction Mounties, top 10 writers, list of writers, Western writer.  Finally, William Byron Mowery, William Byron Mowery Biography.

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