Wilderness Main Challenge in Policing the North
11/16/97
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Headline: Wilderness Main Challenge in Policing the North
Source: Reuters
Date: 11/16/97
Author: Gilbert Le Gras
Copyright: Reuters Limited 1997
CHURCHILL, Manitoba (Reuters) - Every summer Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Cpl. Helmut Neufeld makes a somber journey across the Churchill River from
this tiny port town.
"We maintain the gravesite of Dr. Walter Flood of the Northwest Mounted
Police (the RCMP's predecessor). He died in 1901 or 1902 on a dog sled
patrol when a two-day snow storm blew in across the Hudson Bay," Neufeld
said.
The annual pilgrimage underscores the nature and history of frontier
policing in Canada's north. The Northwest Mounted Police were created to
tame Canada's Wild West and that rugged pioneering spirit lives on.
Neufeld craddled a pump-action shotgun at windswept Cape Merry, one of many
departure points hereabout for polar bears setting out to hunt seals, and
pointed across the mouth of the Churchill River to the burial site.
Next to the grave of Flood, an assistant surgeon with the mounted police,
is a 265-year-old stone fortress built by the Hudson Bay Company to protect
their stocks of fur pelts from marauding French traders. "When we boat
across we see beluga whales in the mouth of the river in the summer,"
Neufeld said. "They come here to give birth."
The whales are forgiving of this intrusion into their territory but that's
the exception here.
'LIKE POLICING IN A PENITENTIARY'
"That's one of the unique things about policing up here. We have seven or
eight open files on missing people, presumed drowned," Neufeld said.
The crime rate in Churchill is low. Almost all offenses stem from alcohol
or drug use and the Mounties always get their man.
"It's like policing in a penitentiary. You can't go anywhere else," Neufeld
said of this isolated region, where the terrain is so harsh there are no
roads. Only trains and planes can supply this most remote of towns.
Churchill, home to 1,200 people and about an equal number of polar bears,
is perched at the edge of the tree line on the bedrock tundra coast of
Hudson Bay some 1,000 miles (1,600 km) north of Winnipeg.
This far north, the wilderness is Public Enemy No. 1, and Neufeld and his
three constables are the law.
POLAR BEARS 'DO WHAT THEY WANT, WHEN THEY WANT'
Rounding up wayward polar bears is a big part of Neufeld's job in a
territory that covers more than 38,610 square miles (100,000 sq km) of
wilderness. Churchill sits on the western edge of the Hudson Bay coast,
directly in the path of a polar bear migratory route.
"Polar bears have no known predator so they have no fear and they'll do
what they want, when they want," the 22-year veteran RCMP officer said.
"You don't have to read a bear his rights or get him legal aid. You just
drug the bear and cart him off," he said.
Rescuing tourists is another part of Neufeld's job description.
In August, three American novice canoeists had to be rescued from the Seal
River, 80 miles (125 km) northwest of Churchill, after they missed their
flight at the edge of Hudson Bay by 10 days.
Local caribou hunters can get lost as easily as tourists in this vast
expanse of bedrock and weather-beaten boreal forests.
"I'm anticipating a busy season of search and rescue. We've had a lot of
water on the tundra and an early snowfall, so I think a lot of caribou
hunters might get stranded in the slush," Neufeld said.