The Law and the Lawless: Frontier Justice on the Canadian Prairies 1896-1935

At the end of the nineteenth century, Canada’s prairies were still sparsely populated. Crimes such as horse theft, random murders, and prison escapes were the order of the day, and the North West Mounted Police continued to rely on their horses, their contacts, and their wits to apprehend the culprits. By the mid-1930s, a sea change in technology and police science had changed the game. Major advances in transportation, communications, and sleuthing techniques made crime-solving a new art—b...