Captain Deane

This was compiled with notes + quotes from RCMPgraves.com, Biographi.ca,

Richard Deane was born in Ootacamund, India in 1848 and into a family with a long and distinguished military tradition. At the time of Deane’s birth, his father was a chaplain for the East India Company. Although the family moved to England about 1851, the spell of India and empire on them remained strong.

He was an adequate student in academic subjects but excelled in sports, especially cricket. In 1866, at age 18, he joined the Royal Marines as a second lieutenant. In 1881, after having seen action in Ghana, he by then he had a wife and five children. If he remained merely a captain, he faced mandatory retirement in less than a decade on what he considered an inadequate pension. He therefore arranged early retirement and moved his family to Canada in 1882. He was appointed an inspector in North-West Mounted Police as of 1 July 1883 by Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald.

Soon after his arrival at the new police headquarters in Regina, which by all accounts was in a state of chaos, he proved himself a capable leader of the “unruly, armed mob” under his command, and was promoted to the senior rank of superintendent. In 1884, one of the prisoners he happened to be in charge of was the notrious Louis Riel. Riel was a Métis spokesman, regarded as the founder of Manitoba, teacher, and leader of the North-West rebellions. Louis Riel is one of the most controversial figures in Canadian history. To the Métis he is a hero, an eloquent spokesman for their aspirations. He led two rebellions against the government of Canada post confederation, and was hung for high treason in 1884. Evidently Riel appreciated Deane, who granted him permission to write in the commissioner’s office, and even dedicated a poem to his jailer.

In 1888 Deane was given command of the relatively new Lethbridge (Alta) division. He arrived at his new post on his 40th birthday and for the next 26 years he was the commanding officer of one or another of the mounted police divisions on the southern Canadian plains. From 1906 to 1914, following a change of minister in Ottawa, he held the choice posting of Calgary, where the house that was built for him was the best at any mounted police barracks; the house now known as Deane House.

With his drooping moustache, tall and lean frame, pale complexion, cold eyes, and acerbic tongue, R. Burton Deane was a strong, vaguely threatening presence. As a mounted policeman for 31 years, he participated in the transformation of the southern Canadian prairies from the open plains of 1883 to the populated farming country of 1914. It was well known that Deane spoke his piece forcefully, and that he was a torment to many of his superiors and also to many politicians. The range of Deane’s competence and interest extended well beyond policing. He was an accomplished magician, he was an avid gardener, a skilled actor, a collector of recipes, and a dabbler in business schemes.

Deane had five children, two of whom predeceased his first wife, who died in 1906. He remarried in 1908, just days before his 60th birthday so that his bride would be eligible for a widow’s pension. It was not to be, for she fell ill and, although attended by Deane’s son Reginald Burton, a physician, she died in 1914.

Deane buried her, left Calgary on 30 September that year, and retired to England. In 1916 his book Mounted police life in Canada: a record of thirty-one years’ service, was published. He continued his writings but in 1917 married for a third time and thereafter evidently slipped into a tranquil retirement in Somerset, living on his pension and tending his beloved roses. He died in 1930 in Italy, where he had apparently gone for his health.

His notable book entitled Mounted Police In Canada, was originally published in 1916.