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Newfoundland officially joined Canada at midnight, March 31st, 1949. The next day, April first, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police officially arrived in the country’s newest province. But the Mounties actually arrived in the province on March 21st, 1949. On that date, eight Mounties arrived by RCMP aircraft to form the first permanent troop in the newly created B Division.

The first eight included: #11392 Inspector Tony D.A. McKinnon, #12035 Sgt. Bernard Peck, #10544 Sgt. Theodore Bolstad, #12373 Cst. Alexander Gillespie, #11761 Cst. Alexander Ewing, #11686 Cst. Bernard Harvey, #12627 Cpl. Lawrence Gilchrist, and #12642 Cst. Archibald Watson.

The next day, #14510 Cst. Joseph A. Pinto arrived on the ferry driving the first RCMP police car to be used on the Island.

They had their work cut out for them. Their duties included: setting up the new ‘B’ Division Head Quarters on Kenna’s Hill, and begin preparations for the planned absorption of Newfoundland Rangers.

The RCMP took over the duties of the former Newfoundland Rangers and members of the Newfoundland Constabulary serving outside St. John’s.

The Force was given a policing contract for all of Newfoundland and Labrador except for the capital city.

For the first year, RCMP Members performed Federal duties.  Then on August first, 1950 all fifty-five Members of the Newfoundland Rangers and thirty-five Members of the Newfoundland Constabulary became Members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. It was the beginning of the RCMP’s contract policing history in this province.

Former Sergeant Major E.J. Delaney referred to them as the “Glorious 90” and hand wrote on the cover of their personal folder:” Never in the history of the Force have so many got away with so much without being caught.”

Several Members of the Newfoundland Customs Service and the Marine Division of the Newfoundland Customs Service were engaged in the RCMP as Special Constables on April 16, 1949.  Most were subsequently employed by Canada Customs.  A few remained in Force as Special Constables in Marine Division.

Eventually the growth in the establishment of the RCMP led to the force opening sub-division headquarters in Corner Brook and St. John’s in 1954. As the force continued to expand, sub-divisions were then added in Gander and Labrador.

The RCMP absorbed the Newfoundland Rangers and members of the Newfoundland Constabulary, but they were not the first Newfoundlanders to join the Force. That honour goes to Regimental No. 2178 Constable Ernest Peyton who joined the North West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the RCMP, in 1888. He was the son of a prominent family from Twillingate and was believed to be 21 at the time. Cst. Peyton served for only three months. He succumbed to a sudden illness on September 25, 1888. A plaque honouring Cst. Peyton is proudly displayed at the Twillingate Museum.

In 2002 the RCMP Mounted Police Foundation donated $6000 to build a seating area with a plaque that told the unbelievable story of The Hogan Trail on the Northern Peninsula.

On May 8th, 1943, Newfoundland Ranger John Hogan was stationed at Goose Bay Air Base, Labrador. He was going on leave and accepted a lift on a Royal Canadian Air Force Flight to Gander along with other R.C.A.F. personnel.

While in flight, the plane filled with smoke and lost altitude rapidly. Believing that the plane was on fire and about to crash. Ranger Hogan and another passenger Cpl. Butt, were told to bail out by parachute. The pilot did go on to eventually land the plane.

Ranger Hogan landed in thick woods with only a minor injury to his knee. The first night he made a tent from his parachute and a fire to dry out. The next day, he observed the lay of the land and determined a direction. He then left to walk to the coast, intending to follow it to a settlement. He was making good progress that morning when he spotted footprints in the snow and followed them. He caught up with Corporal Butt, a fellow passenger. Cpl. Butt had landed in water and with the low temperature that night, his feet were frozen. Butt needed help to walk and progress was painfully slow.

When the plane landed, full scale military searches were conducted by land and air. However, because of the smoke-filled plane, the pilot was uncertain where Hogan and Butt came down and the searches were concentrated to the Northwest of where they landed.

They were presumed dead. On May 16th, they came upon a dilapidated cabin and spent the night. The next day, they trudged on for three more days until they found another cabin on May 19th. By this time, Cpl. Butt was unable to walk, and they were forced to remain in this cabin. The melting snows of spring caused the rivers to flood and pond ice became unsafe for travel. This frustrated attempts by Hogan to continue on the coast to seek help for himself and Butt.

They were forced to remain in this small cabin until June 25th, 1943. By June, the nearby pond was finally free of ice. Around that time Hogan spotted a survey party crossing the pond by boat and flagged them down.

Butt and Hogan had no food or equipment when they bailed out from the plane. During the fifty-two-day ordeal, Ranger Hogan managed to keep Cpl. Butt and himself alive by trapping a few rabbits, gathering berries exposed when the snow melted and brewing tea from wild herbs.

Although Hoban was almost a human skeleton when he was found, he insisted on walking to civilization on his own. The chance rescue party had enough difficulty carrying he injured Cpl. Butt over that rugged terrain.

Ranger Hogan was later awarded the King’s Police and Fireman’s Medal for his dedication in remaining with and caring for the incapacitated Cpl. Butt for more than fifty days. Had Hogan been able to travel alone, it is possible he would have been able to reach the coast before the spring thaw.

Hogan was promoted to the rank of corporal and continued in the Newfoundland Rangers until 1950. At that time, he transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police with many of his fellow Rangers when the Force was disbanded following Confederation.

He served with distinction in the RCMP and retired in 1969 with the rank of Staff Sergeant.

He was then appointed Chief of the National Harbour Police at the port of St. John’s. He retired in 1977. Hogan died suddenly on April 19th, 1977 and was laid to rest in St. John’s.

Hogan was born in Carbonear in 1910 and attended Memorial University College. He taught school for nine years on the Northern Peninsula. His wife and daughter died tragically by drowning in 1938. His second daughter was killed in a motor vehicle accident. He left the classroom in search of a new life and joined the Newfoundland Rangers on February 10th, 1941. He remarried and had three children, Rosemary, Maureen and Kevin. Both of his daughters became teachers and his son became a psychiatrist who later served as Assistant Deputy Minister of Health and was also the medical director at the Janeway Children’s Hospital. His youngest granddaughter is a medical doctor and the 2004 Newfoundland Rhodes Scholar.

In describing S/Sgt. John Hogan, a member once said, “Hogan was a tough but fair man. Few would challenge him and those few who did, regretted the challenge.”

Following Confederation with Canada in 1949, the Newfoundland Ranger Force, formed in 1935 to police the rural areas of what is now the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, ceased to exist.

The last man to join the famous Newfoundland Rangers was Louis “Lou” Stuckless from Tizzard’s Harbour. After his education at Tizzard’s Harbour, he attended Memorial University College and became a schoolteacher. 

When S/Sgt. Frank Cheeseman, a former Newfoundland Ranger, retired on July 31, 1982, Lou Stuckless became, ‘The Lone Ranger.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police assumed responsibility for provincial policing in Newfoundland on August 1, 1950. At that time, forty-five members of the Newfoundland constabulary and all forty-six members of the Newfoundland Ranger force became members of the Force.

S/Sgt. Stuckless signed up with the Rangers in July 1949 and served for one year and eleven days then joined the RCMP and served for another thirty-four years.  Staff Sgt Louis Stuckless was N.C.O. in charge of Grand Falls Detachment when he retired in 1983.

Cyril Goodyear has worn an incredible number of hats in his lifetime. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, is one of the last surviving Newfoundland Rangers, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a lawyer, a judge, a chief judge and then deputy minister of a government department. On top of that he is an avid outdoors man and retired town mayor. At 93 years old he shows no sign of slowing down or aging. “I have five unpublished books I’m working on,” he tells me.

Goodyear was born and grew up in Deer Lake and continues to live there in his own home by himself with little assistance.

He left home at 17 to go to Canada and join the Royal Canadian Air Force. “I went from Port-aux-Basques to North Sydney and caught the train to Halifax. But I was too young to get into the RCAF, so I got a job in the dockyard, and went down to the recruiting station every few days for about a month, until they agreed to take me.”

Goodyear was sent to Toronto for training, but the war was ending so he never went overseas. “When Hitler knew I joined he shot himself,” he adds with a chuckle.

A chance meeting with famous Newfoundland Ranger Cpl. John Hogan, led to his next career. “He told me I should join the Newfoundland Rangers. So, I signed up.”

He proudly states, “My first posting was in Battle Harbour, in Southern Labrador, which was then a supply place and customs port. I used to clear the whalers from Scotland and Norway, who were going to the big whaling factory at Hawke’s Harbour, and the salmon boats from Canada and the United States.”

After Battle Harbour, he was sent to the northeast coast of Labrador, to Nain.

Goodyear recalls, “I spent my 20th and 21st birthdays there. The last boat went south the 15th of October, and you hardly saw anyone from the outside world between then and June or July of the next year depending on the ice conditions when the supply boat would come back.”

Thinking back on his childhood in Deer Lake brings back fond memories. “I was always outdoors. Deer Lake was a logging town, so I spent my holidays growing up in the lumber camps. My father was a camp foreman. So, I learned how to live in the woods.”

He is an avid outdoorsman, “I remember being 10 years old and I would go off and camp by myself and go fishing. So, Labrador was a great fit for me. In Nain, I used to travel all the way up to Hebron and down to Hopedale by dog team and small boat.” He would travel over the sea ice and when storms would come up, he would crawl into whatever he could find for shelter. “It maybe a snow hole, or if there was time, I’d build an igloo, or if I was lucky, I might find some old shack. Or I’d try to find a place in the woods, where I could stick up a winter tent.”

One memory stays in his mind. “One time I was on my way back from Hebron, I came down over the Kiglapait Mountains. My dog team driver and I were snowbound there for three days. Finally, we got down to where there was a family, Sarah and Boas Obed’s family. We didn’t have any food, so Sarah did bannock on the stove, and there was nothing else in the house to eat. The next morning, we left, and we had about 50 miles to go to Nain, when I got there, I sent food back to them.”

Mr. Goodyear worked in many careers throughout his life and he says, “The best group of people I have ever worked with were the rangers. I learned more doing that job than anywhere else. That career was the one that had the greatest influence on my life.”

The one person he talks about the most is his beloved wife, Shirley. He recalls a life of them doing everything together from camping to canoeing. “As a Ranger and as a Mountie, I would be away from home a lot, so she had to be pretty independent.” He remembers when people would come to their home with their problems. There would be everything from wanting help to fill out forms, to annoying neighbours, to needing help dealing with out of control teenagers. “When I came home, Shirley would have all the problems solved.”

Goodyear and his wife were married for 42 years. “We loved out life,” he smiles remembering their time together.

When the Rangers were absorbed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police during Confederation, Cyril Goodyear changed uniforms and became a Canadian Mountie.

Always one to make the best of a situation, he recalls being posted in Glovertown. “I had a 45-foot police boat and it had a good motor. I would patrol all of Bonavista Bay by myself. I did that for two years. I know every rock in the bay because I struck every damn one of them,” he laughs.

In 1951, he transferred to Halifax. He became an investigator in the Major Crimes Unit.

One thing becomes evident when you are talking to Cyril Goodyear, he has a wicket sense of humour. He chuckles when and says, “I think I was promoted because the RCMP had the impression I was a fantastic investigator. But really, I knew everybody, I would talk to everybody, I would dock at their wharves, and I had so many connections my success rate at solving cases was very high. It’s not like I was a genius—I was just a friendly person.”

He says his policing technics were simple. “Sometimes people would come up to me and say, ‘How are you making out with such and such a case?’ I’d say, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ and they’d tell me who to go talk to about it. It was a simple as that.”

Goodyear stayed in Major Crimes until he retired in 1965. Upon retirement, he was appointed to the provincial court in Newfoundland as a magistrate. Then he was named to the court, he took a leave of absence and went to Dalhousie University to get his law degree. He graduated in 1977 then spent several years in court in Labrador and was eventually transferred to the Royal Commission on Labrador; subsequent to that he became head of the provincial court.

He became great friends with John Ottenheimer who was Justice Minister at the time. Together they helped revamp the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary by leasing new cars for them to drive and expanding their territory to Churchill Falls, Labrador and Corner Brook, Newfoundland. “At that time, they drove what was referred to a as ‘a rainbow fleet,’ cars of every colour. He says, “Their police cars weren’t fit to drive. We knew they needed funding and resources for them to be effective as a police force and we did our best to give them what they needed.”

His knowledge of the land in this province led him on another career and he became Deputy Minister of Rural, Agricultural and Northern Affairs. He was also the Registrar of the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador.

He retired from justice in 1989, but not being one to sit idle, he ran and was elected mayor of Deer Lake from 1997 to 2001. During his spare time, he has published five books and has another five written.

One of his books tells the story of his life in the Newfoundland Rangers.

“In the Rangers, we had to keep an official daily diary. I kept a personal diary, as well. They became one of my books, a memoir called, Sometimes I Forget.” He put all his diaries and photos in a museum in Deer Lake, so the memory of the Newfoundland Rangers would live on. “All I have left now is my memories.”

He takes the royalties from his books and donates them to the Newfoundland Ranger Scholarship fund at Memorial University. He has also left $50,000 in his will to the fund to ensure the scholarship lives on.

Throughout his 93 years, he has dedicated most of his life to supporting the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and justice on many levels.

Today he is a widower and his two sons live out of province. He spends his days writing and it is hard to believe this vibrant, brilliant man at 93 years old is still an enthusiastic outdoorsman.

As one of only 204 men to have belonged to the Newfoundland Ranger Force, and only one of four still living. Cyril Goodyear is a part of the history of Newfoundland and Labrador and a proud part of the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s history in this province.