These words were written by an American senator from California about his experience in the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898. In the Canadian north of the 1890's, government meant public order. The first resident servants of the Dominion Government were an Inspector and twenty men of the North-West Mounted Police who were assigned to the Yukon in 1894 to “represent all the different departments of government in the district” (Canada, Department of Interior 1907, p 15).

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That sentence referred, in fact, to the impending transfer of the Arctic islands to Canada in 1879, but it could have applied, just as aptly, to the whole of northern Canada. The first part of it was largely correct; the second part is still a matter for conjecture, debate and experiment.Most of the Canadian Government's sporadic forays into the north from 1880 onwards were motivated by the reaction of politicians and officials aliens in the Arctic. There was nothing else in the north for a government to be concerned about. The fur trade was important to the Hudson's Bay Company, and it was to become important to many of the Eskimos, but had lost its pre-eminence in a nation where trans-continental railways and millions of immigrants were the priorities of the day. The great age of Arctic exploration was ending: a North West Passage was irrelevant in a world that was planning a Panama Canal. The whalers too would depart from northern waters, and the missionaries and the Hudson Bay factors would left to themselves.

The various types of lighting required on road vehicles and their use are discussed. Suggestions are made on how the requirements may be met, bearing in mind the lighting equipment normally fitted on existing vehicles and the current relevant regulations. Particular consideration is given to those problems of vehicle lighting and signalling which could be dealt with by legislation. Special requirements for cycles and vehicles whose shapes make normal lighting requirements difficult to comply with are not dealt with nor are the requirements for fog lights.