Parents of infant who died in wrong-way crash on Ontario's Hwy. 401 were in same vehicle
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau marked the 150th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Tuesday by acknowledging mistakes the force has made in the past, and expressing hope for change.
The RCMP has planned events Tuesday and throughout the year that the national police force says are meant to demonstrate pride, but also humility and efforts at reconciliation.
In a statement, the prime minister encouraged Canadians to take part in those events, calling the RCMP one of the most respected police organizations in the world.
But he also urged the RCMP to hold to its plans for improvement and change.
"As we mark this milestone anniversary, we acknowledge that while the errors of the past cannot be forgotten, they can be learned from," Trudeau said in the statement Tuesday.
"The RCMP will continue to support healing and reconciliation, as it continues to keep our communities safe now and into the future."
In a statement, the force says it plans to use the sesquicentennial to share the RCMP's efforts to create a more modern organization that engages in authentic reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples and ensures the safety of all Canadians.
It also highlights its strategic plan for 2023 to "address issues of trust," though the plan doesn't go into specifics.
Inquiries and commissions over the decades have made suggestions to reform the police service.
RCMP officers played major roles in Canada's history, attempting to maintain order during the Klondike Gold Rush and serving as Canada's main intelligence agency during the Cold War.
But it has also played darker roles in the past century-and-a-half, including repressing Indigenous uprisings and acting as "truant officers" to enforce attendance at residential schools.
Its mandate now sees Mounties take on national and rural policing to varying degrees across Canada -- a model that has garnered criticism for leaving remote communities underserved.
The RCMP's plan includes recruiting people of diverse backgrounds and addressing systemic racism, being more transparent about serious events and improving reconciliation efforts with Indigenous peoples.
Thundering horseback performances of the RCMP Musical Ride, barbecues and community events across the country are also on the agenda.
When Canada's founding leaders first conceived of a federal police service, history tells us it was merely an emergency measure, a contingency plan to enforce Canadian laws throughout what was then known as the North-West Territories.
The day Parliament voted the service into existence on May 23, 1873, is now recognized as the official founding of what would eventually become the RCMP.
But the first big case, months later, truly kick-started the force's long and sometimes painful history.
In spring 1873, a famine had pushed a group of Nakoda to venture south of their traditional territory toward Cyprus Hills, in modern-day southern Saskatchewan.
They were camped not far from some whisky traders when they encountered a group of American wolf hunters whose horse had been stolen.
"When the hunters encountered the innocent Nakoda, accusations led to conflict, events escalated catastrophically out of control, and the hunters brutally killed the Nakoda," the government's online account of the Cypress Hills Massacre reads.
Some 20 men, women and children were killed.
In Canada's earliest days, the first provinces to band together under Confederation were each responsible for their own policing and the only national officers were mainly responsible for guarding Parliament Hill.
That caused a minor problem when the North-West Territories was brought into the fold in 1870. The territories included what is now known as Yukon, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and much of the prairies.
The territories didn't have their own police service, so Parliament passed a law to create the North-West Mounted Police three years later.
It wasn't until August, though, when news of the massacre reached Ottawa, that an Order-in-Council was actually signed to establish the service.
A year later, 300 recruits marched west to secure the frontier.
The RCMP and Canadian government agree the Cypress Hills Massacre spurred the creation of the federal police service, and though arrests were made, the perpetrators were never brought to justice under Canada's burgeoning legal system.
The service's role continued to evolve until the modern form of the RCMP was established in 1920, and the Mounties have long since become an iconic symbol of Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 23, 2023.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit has released new details about a wrong-way collision in Whitby on Monday night that claimed the lives of four people.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
A spike in impaired driving-related collisions has caused Ontario’s provincial police to begin enforcing mandatory alcohol screening (MAS) at all traffic stops in the Greater Toronto Area -- a move one civil rights group says is ‘not acceptable.’
William Nylander scored twice and Joseph Woll made 22 saves as the Toronto Maple Leafs downed the Boston Bruins 2-1 on Thursday to force Game 7 in their first-round series.
Jurors in the hush money trial of Donald Trump heard a recording Thursday of him discussing with his then-lawyer and personal fixer a plan to purchase the silence of a Playboy model who has said she had an affair with the former president.
Staff at a small southern Alberta office supply store were shocked to find someone had broken into the business last week, but they were even more confused when they discovered the culprit was a bear.
A federal judge on Thursday sentenced a scuba dive boat captain to four years in custody and three years supervised release for criminal negligence after 34 people died in a fire aboard the vessel.
Fake text message and email campaigns trying to get money and information out of unsuspecting Canadian taxpayers have started circulating, just months after the federal government rebranded the carbon tax rebate the Canada Carbon Rebate.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.
The lawyer for a residential school survivor leading a proposed class-action defamation lawsuit against the Catholic Church over residential schools says the court action is a last resort.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.