The First Black Royal Canadian Mounted Police Officer from New Brunswick; First Black Mountie to be posted to Nova Scotia

As a high school student in his native Saint John, NB, Hartley Gosline had an important goal: to join Canada’s famed Mounted Police. Despite its outstanding reputation at home and abroad, the RCMP, which dated back to 1874, was not a diverse organization in the 1960s. It would not recruit its first female cadets until 1973. With the assistance of a Mountie and the Royal Canadian Legion, the six foot one inch tall youth applied and was accepted for the rigorous training program at the depot at Regina, Saskatchewan. During training, Hartley was told by a drill sergeant “you’d better be white by 6 a.m. the next morning.” In 1969, as a constable, he became the first Black Mountie to be assigned to Nova Scotia, serving in the New Glasgow detachment. Duties there included highway patrol and general policing. He later reported that many citizens, not accustomed to seeing a Black Mountie, starred at him.  He went on to assignments in Dartmouth, Toronto, Jasper and Edmonton. For a time he worked with the RCMP Security Service Division (later absorbed by the Canadian Security & Intelligence Service). His Security Service work in Toronto in the 1970s was ‘classified.’ This policing trailblazer left the RCMP in 1978 but continued his interest in law enforcement, running a private investigation company, serving as an Alberta liquor control inspector and working as a fraud investigator for Human Resources Development Canada. In 2003 he received, in Edmonton, a nomination for the Canadian National Griot (Black Culture) Award. Other Black Mounties have described him as their role model. (Photo courtesy of Hartley Gosline)