These two policemen are members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police who opened two posts in the Arctic in the summer of 1903. They are standing in front of their sod headquarters on Herschel Island. The man on the right is Frances Fitzgerald, a veteran of fifteen years in the North. A few years after this photo was taken he froze to death on a mid-winter patrol through the Yukon interior. Police were sent to Herschel to protect the Inuit from unscrupulous white traders and to make sure that everyone knew the island belonged to Canada.
Courtesy: The Mariner's Museum, Newport News, Virginia
