Introduction: Birth of a Police Force

This map, from 1851, shows the wilderness that was North America

Look at all that space on this map. Why would this country need a police force?

For the longest time, it didn't have a police force. Explorers from France and Britain landed on the East Coast.

They were looking for a route to the “riches of the Orient.” Instead they found a continent populated by Indigenous peoples and filled with forests and animals, including lots of black flies and mosquitoes.

These explorers didn't find gold but they claimed the land they found instead as a colony for their own countries. Then they sailed back to Europe.

Trading furs for goods at a Hudson's Bay Company trading post.

They did come back though, with colonists who built homes and towns along the coast and the St. Lawrence River. It was a hard life with lots of hard work, little food and outbreaks of disease. Those who survived the went on to establish cities like Quebec City, Montreal and Ottawa.