Roger Pocock Archive
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. Link to the finding aid in order to explore the collection. This collection is closely related to several other collections housed in Bruce Peel Special Collections or at University of Alberta, mostly notably the Sir Samuel Benfield Steele Family Archive and the Legion of Frontiersmen Collection. Related publications include:
- The Frontiersman's Pocket-Book, a training and survival manual first published by the Legion in 1909 and republished by Bruce Peel Special Collections in 2012. This limited edition facsimile is available in person in the Peel library for $40 (cash only, no dealers) or through University of Alberta Press or Indigo.
- Sam Steele's Forty Years in Canada: History or Fiction? a 2017 digital exhibition curated by Alison Rukavina.
- Sam Steele: A Biography (2018) by Rod Macleod—the paperback is available from University of Alberta Press and a limited edition hardcover is available only in person in the Peel library for $75 (cash only). Check out the CBC's review: "Feminist and Family Man: Book Shines New Light on Legendary Mountie Sam Steele" (13 Jan 2019).
Collection Formats: 19th Century, 20th Century, Books, Correspondence, Ephemera, Newspapers, Photographs -- click to see other collections with this format
Photograph of Roger Pocock in London, dated 1903 (3.1.2).
Scrapbook from Pocock’s time with the NWMP in Saskatchewan, 1886 (1.1.4).
Letter from Pocock to his mother, sent from Battleford, SK, dated September 1886 (1.1.4.38).
Diary for the years 1891-1894, which include clippings of Pocock’s published articles and stories, descriptions of his travels, and supplemental photographs (1.1.10).
Watercolour sketch by Pocock of a NWMP encampment, dated 1886 (1.3.1).