1. Sam Steele was an officer of the North-West Mounted Police, head of the Yukon detachment during the Klondike Gold Rush, and commanding officer of Strathcona's Horse during the Boer War.
27 Facts About Sam Steele
1. 2.
Sam Steele received his education at the family home, Purbrook, and then at the Royal Military College of Canada.
3.
Sam Steele participated in the Red River Expedition in 1870 to fight the Red River Rebellion of Louis Riel.
4.
Sam Steele had long been fascinated by the West, devouring the works of James Fenimore Cooper in his youth.
5.
Sam Steele was especially interested in the First Nations, and spent his time in the West learning from them and the Metis.
6.
In 1873, Sam Steele was the third officer sworn into the newly formed North-West Mounted Police, entering as a staff constable.
7.
Sam Steele was one of the officers to lead the new recruits of the NWMP on the 1874 March West, when he returned to Fort Garry, present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba.
8.
In 1878, Sam Steele was given his own command at Fort Qu'Appelle, North-West Territories.
9.
Sam Steele was present at the Battle of Frenchman's Butte, where Big Bear's warriors defeated the Canadian forces under General Thomas Bland Strange.
10.
Sam Steele's Scouts performed well, which led to his promotion to superintendent after the rebellion.
11.
Sam Steele established an NWMP station in the town of Galbraiths Ferry, which was later named to Fort Steele in British Columbia, after Steele solved a murder in the town.
12.
Sam Steele then moved on to Fort Macleod, District of Alberta, in 1888.
13.
Sam Steele's men built Fort Sam Steele on the Kootenay River, and he resolved the situation through patient diplomacy with Chief Isadore.
14.
The division returned to Fort Macleod in the summer of 1888, and Sam Steele commanded that post, the largest outside NWMP headquarters in Regina, for the next decade.
15.
Sam Steele was noted for his hard line with the hundreds of unruly and independent-minded prospectors, many of them American.
16.
Always a soldier, in early 1900, Sam Steele leapt at the offer of Canadian Pacific Railway tycoon Donald Smith, Baron Strathcona, to be the first commanding officer of Smith's privately-raised cavalry unit, Strathcona's Horse, with the appointment as lieutenant-colonel from 7 March 1900.
17.
Sam Steele apparently disliked greatly what he was ordered to do by the British, which included burning towns, farms and homesteads, killing livestock of the Boer families and moving the populace to concentration camps.
18.
Sam Steele was appointed a Member of the Royal Victorian Order, a personal gift from the King.
19.
Sam Steele was promoted to honorary lieutenant colonel in March 1901.
20.
Sam Steele requested active military duty upon the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914.
21.
Sam Steele was initially rejected for command on the grounds of age.
22.
Matters were complicated when Canadian Minister of Defence Sam Hughes insisted that Steele be made commander of all Canadian troops in Europe, a slight problem, as there were two brigadier-generals who each believed the Canadian command was his.
23.
Sam Steele kept his British command until his retirement on 15 July 1918.
24.
Sam Steele died during the 1918 flu pandemic just after his 71st birthday.
25.
Sam Steele was interred at the Cathedral of St John Cemetery in Winnipeg.
26.
Sam Steele Narrows at Loon Lake was the site of the battle of Loon Lake, the last battle in the North West Rebellion.
27.
Sam Steele's papers, believed by historians to contain a wealth of heretofore untold stories that would "re-write Canadian history" had been held by British descendants of Sam Steele, and were returned via a $1.8 million purchase by the University of Alberta.