Policing the Plains
1927 film by Arthur D. Kean
Policing the Plains is a 1927 Canadian silent historical docudrama film directed by Arthur D. Kean and based on the book of the same name by Roderick G. MacBeth. It depicted the first fifty years of the Royal North-West Mounted Police.
Kean purchased the films rights to MacBeth's book two years after a separate company's unsuccessful attempt at adapting it. He originally planned for a six-reel film at a cost of $40,000, but it grew to eight-reels and $125,000 over the course of its filming over three years and five months. Kean filmed on location in western Canada and utilized the celebration of Macleod's 50th-anniversary.
The film's release date was delayed from the 1924 British Empire Exhibition to the 1927 Canadian National Exhibition before being shown once at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. The full film has since been lost since 1937, and one reel is believed to have been destroyed in a 1967 National Film Board of Canada vault fire.
Plot
The film depicted episodes from the first fifty years of the RNWMP's existence, including: the Cypress Hills Massacre; the force's creation and March West; the force's relations with Indigenous peoples on the prairies; the founding of Fort Macleod; the pursuit of whisky traders and horse thieves; the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway; the Canadian sojourn of Sitting Bull and his followers; the Klondike Gold Rush; and modern police methods used in the 1920s.
Cast
The cast members were almost all non-professionals; many were recruited more for their ability to ride and handle horses convincingly than for any noteworthy acting ability. In addition, members of the Blood First Nation appeared in several crowd, camp, and action scenes, wearing traditional dress and riding their own horses.
“Policing the Plains” enters the record as 1927 film by Arthur D. Kean. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Policing, Plains and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59729088. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1927, 1924, 1937 and 1967.
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This entry incorporates text from “Policing the Plains” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.