Item - PE001678 - Letter describing a North West Police mutiny

Handwritten letter on single sheet of paper measuring 20cmx25cm. 3 pp. With paper envelope, 8cmx13.5cm.

Letter from Rev. Andrew Baird in Edmonton addressed to a Miss P.L. Cook of Toronto. Describes a mutiny that took place among the North West Police over promotions. Thanks her affectionately for a photograph she sent. Autograph letter signed.

Transcription:
My Dear Miss Cook,

I began a note acknowledging yours of last week before the last mail left but I did not get time to finish it before the mail closed and know although I have left it off till the last day before the mail goes out again, I cannot deny myself Mrs. Johanson [?] of writing a few words before your next letter comes.

I do not know why you think your photograph had a depressing effect on me. Was it because I spoke of home sickness in the last letter? Now I must tell you that home sickness, in this mild form in when it attacks me is not this morbid and dispiriting thing you suspect, but a tender and refining influence which I welcome rather than otherwise, because it shows me that the wild west with its cowboys and its broncos and and its gaudy spectators has not hardened me beyond this humanizing grown of our affection that I sometimes find myself looking upon as old fashioned. Your inscriptions banish it -- from a wrong diagnosis of the case. On the mantelpiece it is --. It is to be my inspiration.

Edmonton is all excitement over a mutiny in the Mounted Police force which has been going on for the last four or five days. Six new men were promoted to corporals over the heads of men of longer experience and the men rebelled. The commanding officer Major Griesbach is a man of small caliber and form in at first and then the men made other demands. Matters went on from bad to worse till today when by a man, the malcontents were divided and and 18 arrests were made. The town had to be ransacked for chains to make the shackles for them. 12 men were interviewed, the Major confessed that they were equally with those arrested and asked to be imprisoned too!!

The weather is beautiful. Every day for the past week has been warm and sunshiny a decided change from January.

Yours willfully,
Andrew Baird