Sir,—Gerry McAlister (HI 31.2, March/April 2023, Letters), regarding the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and the RIC, states that: ‘The role of the RIC acting on behalf of the colonial government was no different to that of the RCMP’. There may be parallels but there are also significant differences. When the RIC existed the RCMP would likely not have had any indigenous Canadian officers, whereas the RIC had many Catholic Irish officers. A closer Canadian parallel with Irish policing would be that of the Toronto Police Service (TPS), which to this day sports a dress uniform very much the same as that of the old RUC uniform. Interestingly, when former Catholic Irish RIC officers arrived in Toronto, they did not enlist in the old Toronto Police because of inherent racism within the force directed at Irish Catholics. At the turn of the twentieth century, when many American police forces recruited large numbers of Irish Catholic officers, Toronto was the opposite. As a former member of Toronto Police Service, the term used to define itself was ‘paramilitary’. The RCMP may be closer to a more regimental structure. It is a federal police service, which does not have a close Irish equivalent.—Yours etc.,
ADRIAN GIBBS
Cork