STANLEY McLAUGHLIN had been a Mountie for a year when the portrait above left was photographed. In April 1900, after three years of farm work, Stanley had joined the North West Mounted Police. And two or three years later he got his woman ─ a German wife, Catherine, portrayed above right. Eight years his junior, her maiden name was Katrina Yeske.

Stanley had come come to Canada in April 1897 with his younger brother Sidney, who was the first to join the Mounted Police. He did so in February 1898, having added a year to his true age of 17. Sidney got away with it by claiming that he had been born in India. He was stationed at Fort Macleod, Alberta, 600 miles from Stanley, who was at Regina, Assiniboia.

Both were given leaves of absence to fight in the South African War with the 2nd Battalion, Canadian Mounted Rifles, in which their elder brother Percy also enlisted. A month after arriving in February 1900, the battalion took part in the expedition to suppress a rebellion by Boers in the western Cape Colony. It later joined the march to Pretoria.

Hat badge that the McLaughlin Mounties wore with their scarlet serge jackets
Hat badge worn by the Canadian Mounted Rifles

Of course, Army records got the two S. McLaughlins mixed up, but it is clear that Stanley earned the Queen's Medal with the same four clasps as his elder brother. In recognition of the distinguished service of the McLaughlins and their 215 fellow Mounted Police in the Boer War, King Edward VII granted the force the title "Royal" in 1904. The name changed to Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.

Having served his allotted year in the Army, Stanley went back to the Mounted Police until 1903, when he visited his father in London. He returned to Canada with Catherine, to take up ranching in Maple Creek.

The couple waited two years before having their first child, Eva Catherine. Then at two-yearly intervals came three sons, Percy, Frederick Donough, and Charles Edwin (he was baptised Emanuel Karl and mistakenly listed as Muriel in the 1911 Canadian Census; the name was later changed, probably because it was not good to have a German name in World War I).

Stanley became the postmaster of the now vanished Coleridge Village, Assiniboia. He died in 1962 at Rosehaven Care Centre in Camrose, Alberta. His grandson, R. J. Murray McLaughlin, was in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police until 1979; he then served a further 18 years with the Canadian Government in Vancouver before retiring.

Eva Catherine married Lionel Chell. They lived in Fort Macleod where her grandson Cameron Chell was born in 1969. He quit school in Grade 10 to start a computer business. At age 32 he was Canada's eighth wealthiest multi-millionaire, worth $200,000,000.

© 2006 G. Harry McLaughlin.
Reproduction or transmission, in whole or in part, for other than personal use is prohibited without advance permission from Dr. G. H. McLaughlin.