Greg Marquis - The Vigilant Eye: Policing Canada from 1867 to 9/11

The Vigilant Eye

Policing Canada

from 1867 to 9/11

Greg Marquis

Fernwood Publishing

Halifax & Winnipeg

Copyright 2016 Greg Marquis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Editing: Marianne Ward

Cover design: John van der Woude

Printed and bound in Canada

Published by Fernwood Publishing

32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0

and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3G 0X3

www.fernwoodpublishing.ca

Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Manitoba Department of Culture, Heritage and Tourism under the Manitoba Publishers Marketing Assistance Program and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program. We are pleased to work in partnership with the Province of Nova Scotia to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Marquis, Greg, author

The vigilant eye : policing Canada from 1867 to 9/11 / Greg Marquis.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-55266-820-7 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55266-860-3 (epub).-

ISBN 978-1-55266-861-0 (kindle)

1. Police--Canada--History. I. Title.

HV8157.M3785 2016 363.20971 C2015-908390-7

C2015-908391-5

Contents

This is dedicated to Joe.

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank his wife Donna for her support and understanding and to acknowledge the support of his colleagues at the University of New Brunswick Saint John and the assistance of the staff at the Hans W. Klohn Commons at UNB Saint John. Finally, he acknowledges the influence of his future colleague Dr. Peter Toner who in 1977 sent him to a local archives to conduct research on Victorian crime and policing for an undergraduate social history seminar. Thanks to editor Marianne Ward and the staff at Fernwood.

Introduction

This book adopts the symbol of the vigilant eye as a metaphor for the adoption and evolution of the new police in Canada. Policing, which emerged as a crucial expression of state authority, has never been uncontested, particularly in the last third of the twentieth century. For many centuries and in many cultures, the eye has served as an important symbol with both positive and negative meanings. In Greek mythology, the giant Argus who guarded the heifer Io had one hundred eyes. In ancient Egypt the all-seeing eye was associated with the sky god Horus. The Eye of Providence was a familiar image in Christian culture that was adopted into Freemasonry and the Great Seal of the United States. In the nineteenth century, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, commonly viewed as Americas premiere crime fighting organization, used the image of the vigilant eye with the motto we never sleep.

In recent years the all-seeing eye has become a metaphor for the surveillance society. A number of writers have suggested that the real power of the police as an institution in modern society is not their ability to arrest and charge citizens with criminal offences but in their creation and control of information (Ericson and Haggerty 2008). The potential or real use of force by police on behalf of the state is an ongoing source of concern. But the real threat to civil liberties might not be heavily armed tactical squads. In recent decades traditional aggressive tactics against political radicals, for example, have been replaced by subtler methods that may be even greater threats to democracy (Johnson 2003). On the security and intelligence side, intrusive anti-terror legislation, such as Bill C-51 passed in 2015, and, on the regular law enforcement side, intelligence-led policing, appear to justify these fears.

The role of police in democratic societies tends to be taken for granted until there is a crisis or controversy such as the use of deadly force, violent suppression of a peaceful demonstration or revelations of intrusive surveillance of citizens. Surveys suggest that public confidence in Canadian police, by the standard of other democracies, is high, surpassing that of the United States, Great Britain and France (Expert Panel 2014: 66). Yet few citizens actually come in contact with the police or call on their services. This physical isolation is the product of both social and economic changes in the second half of the twentieth century and a deliberate police strategy. In Canada the extreme example is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, whose traditional military-style recruit training stressed isolation from society and an inward looking esprit de corps. The police themselves supposedly maintain a blue wall or code of silence that is rarely broken, even in published memoirs (Stroud 1984). Because most Canadians base their knowledge of policing and other criminal justice services on media and popular culture, they have little understanding of what police actually do. Most of the time of uniformed officers, the bulk of any police service, is not spent on controlling crime, but it can be argued the police by their very existence fulfil a number of important roles (Brodeur 2010: 353).

Police services in Canada have enjoyed relative legitimacy since their inception in the nineteenth century, but historical and criminological research reveals that police attitudes and practices have been contested. That policing abuses rarely reach the status of a national problem is largely explained by the decentralized nature of law enforcement in Canada and, according to some critics, the complicity of political elites and the media. For decades the dominant narrative in Canada was that its justice system, including its police, was tough but fair. Some historians and political scientists argue that the police have enjoyed relative popularity in Canada because the dominant political culture has tended to pay homage to state authority. Both conservative and left nationalists have celebrated Canadas predilection for peace, order and good government. We are one of the few nations where a police organization, an institution that is feared in most nations, emerged as a key national symbol, at least for English Canadians. The national and international reputation of the North West Mounted Police ( nwmp ), which in 1920 was reorganized as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police ( rcmp ), was the product of the conjuncture of skilful public relations, popular culture and an element of objective reality. As Walden (1982) has argued, the Mounted Police was a symbol of order for Canadians, and even in the wake of revelations of rcmp dirty tricks and illegal activities in the 1970s, the force enjoyed considerable public support. Yet both the historical record and contemporary evidence suggests that the Mounties are not infallible and that public opinion can change (British Columbia Civil Liberties Association 2011: 145). In 2012, for example, a national poll suggested that confidence in the rcmp had fallen to a historic low, and attitudes toward the municipal police were almost as negative. At this time many Canadians, reflecting a conservative common sense antipathy toward the justice system as soft on crime, ranked the courts even lower. Most criticism was directed not at the rcmp rank and file so much as the forces leadership and a number of specific scandals, such as a controversial serial killer investigation in British Columbia and allegations that management had failed to protect female officers from harassment (ONeil 2012).