anada was opened to European occupation not by a pioneering spirit fighting against all odds to push open a wild and dangerous frontier, as in the United States, but by a systematic effort to bring the vastness of the Canadian landscape under police control. The RCMP, along with agents of colonial economic interests such as the Hudson's Bay Company, expanded the scope of colonial control and occupation of Canada in a systematic and orderly way, not so much by conquest as by coordination. That is, Canada was opened to European occupation and control almost as a bureaucratic exercise in extending the rule of law. Where the American frontier was a lawless and wild place, later brought under control by centralizing government bodies, the Canadian frontier never quite existed. Instead, Canada was colonized by law rather than by force.