In September 1901 the North-West Mounted Police learned that a group of American miners, calling themselves the Order of the Midnight Sun, were planning to take over the Yukon. The Conspiracy, as the plot to overthrow the Mounted Police and establish an independent republic in the Alaska boundary region was known, appealed to Americans in the region. The location of the Alaska boundary was not set when the Klondike Gold Rush (1897-1899) brought thousands of miners and traders into the Yukon, northern British Columbia, and Alaska. The Canadian government’s efforts to maintain order and protect its interests in the Alaska boundary dispute angered American miners and businessmen and led them to support the Order. After the Conspiracy was discovered, the Mounted Police and the Canadian government launched a full scale investigation and response. To fully investigate the Conspiracy during the Alaska boundary dispute, the Mounted Police, a domestic force, had to operate in Canada and the United States and cooperate with American authorities in Skagway. The Dominion Police were also involved in the investigation and they too had to work with American authorities in Seattle and San Francisco. But the Mounted Police did not view the Conspiracy as a serious threat. Their experience in the north had shown that such threats rarely amounted to anything. The Canadian government, however, responded differently. Canadian officials in Ottawa feared that the Conspiracy would cost Canada in the Alaska boundary negotiations and they took steps to ensure that the Mounted Police could defend the region and prevent further unrest. This thesis examines the Mounted Police and Canadian government responses to the Conspiracy and the reasons for these different responses, within the context of the Alaska boundary dispute.

Despite what the title suggests, Saskatchewan had a booming sex trade in its early years. The area attracted hundreds of women sex workers before Saskatchewan had even become a province in 1905. They were drawn to the area by the demands of bachelors who dominated Canada's prairie west. According to Saskatchewan's moral reformers, however, the sex trade was a hindrance to the province's Christian potential. They called for its abolishment and headed white slavery campaigns that characterized prostitution as a form of slavery. Their approach stood in contrast with law enforcement's stance on the trade. The police took a tolerant approach, allowing its operation as long as sex workers and their clients remained circumspect. Law enforcement's approach reflected their own propensity to use the services of sex workers as well as community attitudes toward the trade. Some communities were more welcoming of sex workers, while others demanded that police suppress the trade. Saskatchewan's newspapers also reflected differing attitudes toward the trade. While Regina's Leader purveyed a no tolerance view of the sex trade, Saskatoon's Phoenix and Star held more tolerant views. Saskatchewan's newspapers reveal that as the province's population increased and notions of moral reform gained popularity, police were challenged to take a less tolerant approach. However, reformers' efforts to end the sex trade dwindled with the onset of the First World War and attitudes toward sex workers shifted drastically as responsibility for venereal disease was placed largely on women who sold sex. Using government and police records, moral reform and public health documents, and media sources such as newspapers, as well as intersectional analysis of gender, race, class, and ethnicity, this examination of Saskatchewan’s sex trade investigates the histories and social responses to the buying and selling of sex, revealing the complex and, at times, contradictory place of sex workers and the sex trade in Saskatchewan’s early history.