They Stand on Guard

The Canadian Rangers were in the news not so long ago, during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual summer pilgrimage to the Arctic to reassert Canada’s territorial claims as global warming widens the Northwest Passage. “It was an honour to patrol with the Rangers,” he said, “as they work to defend our territory from potential threats and emergencies and keep our North strong, secure and free.”

That one statement summarizes the enigma that is the Canadian Rangers. Precisely how do they do that? And what are the threats and emergencies they face? Military historian P. Whitney Lackenbauer, tracing the history of the Rangers, indicates that this has been a source of debate almost since their inception.

Many of us think of the Far North as the Rangers’ bailiwick. But Lackenbauer rightly reminds us that the Rangers also operate in the northern reaches of most of the provinces, south as well as north of 60, and along all three of Canada’s coastlines. They were...