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Updated: May 7, 2025
Colonel Herchmer, who had been Commissioner from 1886, was an able and conscientious officer. He had gone over to the Boer War in command of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, but had to come back on sick leave, when he retired also from the Commissionership.
The standing of the Force was to be maintained, and so the statement once made by Commissioner Lawrence Herchmer became a classic: "I want to see the Mounted Police Force to be the hardest to get into and the easiest to get out of in the world." There is a fine human picture in another clause of Superintendent A. W. Jarvis' report already mentioned.
But," added the Commissioner, rolling up the map, "I called you in principally to say that I wish you to have every available man and gun ready for a march at a day's notice. Further, I wish you to wire Superintendent Herchmer at Calgary to send at the earliest possible moment twenty-five men at least, fully equipped. We shall need every man we can spare from every post in the West to send North."
Meantime he is scouting the country round about, preventing Indians from reinforcing the enemy in any large numbers. "Next, to the west is Battleford, which holds the central position and is the storm-center of the rebellion at present. This line shows the march of Colonel Otter with Superintendent Herchmer from Swift Current to that point.
With his usual social insight, Herchmer indicates that the Mormon settlement in southern Alberta, with its possible polygamy, will be the better of some oversight in the interests of British law. This latter was a wise decision, and led at least to the practical abandonment of a doctrine that had brought much odium upon that sect.
That man was Superintendent A. Bowen Perry, who succeeded Colonel Lawrence Herchmer in August, 1900, but who, from the time of the big gold stampede into the Yukon, had largely the direction of things there, and had taken over the command personally at Dawson City when Steele left there in the fall of 1899.
Steele told Superintendent Herchmer, when he came back to Calgary, that he was sure Riel was going to make serious trouble, and that he had runners like this half-breed in other places amongst the Indians, and the sooner the Government knew it the better.
These officers kept their eyes on everything. It is in keeping with what was said above as to deserters that Macdonnell reports a desertion and adds, "As this constable was the possessor of an exceedingly bad defaulter's sheet, the Force sustains no loss." Let the Force be made easy for undesirables to leave, as Herchmer said some years before.
He had not been a fortnight in the country when suggestions began to be made to him from various quarters as to the membership of the Executive Council. That body, for the nonce, consisted of only three persons, namely, Peter Robinson, Commissioner of Crown Lands; George Herchmer Markland, Inspector-General; and Joseph Wells, Bursar of King's College.
No doubt Herchmer and his thousand men preached the gospel of good farming with effect, for not many years passed before the flagrant mistakes he pointed out were remedied, to the great benefit of the country which has become in large measure the granary of the Empire.
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