Bruce Peel Special Collections

Adventurer, soldier, author, and journalist Henry Roger Ashwell Pocock (1865-1941) was born in England and came to Canada with his father in 1882. Two years later, in 1884, he enlisted with the North-West Mounted Police. An avid diarist, scrapbooker, and letter writer, Pocock’s personal papers provide a first-hand account of life as a NWMP officer, including important historical events such as the North-West Resistance. After being discharged from the NWMP due to amputated frostbitten toes, he explored Western Canada and the Pacific North-West, as well as more distant destinations, working as a correspondent for a variety of magazines and newspapers. In 1905, Pocock founded the Legion of Frontiersmen, a voluntary paramilitary group that is still operating today. His adventures and occupations are well documented in his scrapbooks, which provide a snapshot of a wide range of people, places, and events in Western Canada in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The Roger Pocock Archive, acquired in 2008 by Bruce Peel Special Collections, consists of over 300 items (most of which are dated 1881-1931), including scrapbooks, diaries, correspondence, published works, photographs, and postcards. In 2012, the Peel library published a limited edition facsimile of The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book (1909), a training and survival manual, which can be purchased in person in the Peel library for $40 (cash only, no dealers) or through University of Alberta Press.

Getting started: Most student researchers will want to employ a series of keyword searches in the University of Alberta Library catalogue in order to find relevant print and digital materials in all U of A library locations and collections, including the Peel library. To identify archival materials in this collection that might be of interest, use the collection’s finding aid. For more information about research in the Peel library, see Finding and Requesting Peel Library Materials.

Further resources: This collection is closely related to several other U of A collections, mostly notably the Sir Samuel Benfield Steele Family Archive and the Legion of Frontiersmen Collection. Key resources include Peel’s digital exhibition, Sam Steele's Forty Years in Canada: History or Fiction? (2017), curated by Alison Rukavina, and Sam Steele: A Biography (2018) by Rod Macleod. Professor Macleod’s biography was reviewed by the CBC: "Feminist and Family Man: Book Shines New Light on Legendary Mountie Sam Steele" (13 January 2019).

Collection Formats: 19th Century, 20th Century, Books, Correspondence, Ephemera, Newspapers, Photographs -- click to see other collections with this format