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LONDON - Canadians will be able to peer into the soul of their own nation in its infancy when Sam Steele's vast personal collection of journals, love letters and documents is shipped home Sunday, according to a Canadian historian.

They may also gain more insights into the foibles as well as the courage and ingenuity of an iconic military leader, and Canada's most famous Mountie, according to the University of Alberta's Rod Macleod.

The barrel-chested, fearless Steele, who appeared in Forrest Gump-like fashion in the major nation-shaping events of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, inspired countless men to follow him into danger zones, and women to swoon, according to various biographies.

But he was also an occasional hard drinker and shared the racist views of his generation, Macleod said.

"Sam certainly had warts," Macleod, who has written two books on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and may write a biography on Steele, told Canwest News Service in an e-mail exchange.

The documents, acquired by the University of Alberta from Britain-based Steele family members, were symbolically handed to Canadians at a ceremony in London on Thursday by Prince Edward, whose great-grandfather, King George V, made Steele a knight in 1918.

"It's a fantastic collection," said Prince Edward, thanking Steele's British descendants. "I know they're going to a very, very good home."

Marianne Dudley, who was married to Steele's grandson and who owned the collection, said they were sold because "it was time." Dudley said she was relieved the buyer was a Canadian university. "We wanted them in Canada. They're going home, really."

"One of the reasons the papers are only now becoming public is that the family, particularly his son, Harwood, were very protective of his reputation. I think this will just make him a more human and interesting figure," Macleod said.

The collection could also reveal new insights into how the RCMP's predecessor, the North West Mounted Police, settled Western Canada without engaging in the genocidal 19th-century wars against Indians waged by the U.S. government.

Steele, born in Orillia, Ont., most likely in 1849, was one of the first of fewer than 300 Mounties recruited to settle the West, help Indian nations survive the disappearance of Buffalo herds and the incursion of white settlers, and police the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Steele and his colleagues were firm believers in winning over the "hearts and minds" of First Nations, rather than brutalizing and defeating them, much as Canada and other western countries acknowledge today they can't win the conflict in Afghanistan without winning the trust of the local population.

"Steele very much believed in a 'hearts and minds' approach," Macleod wrote.

"For the first 10 years in the West they were entirely without direct supervision from Ottawa. They developed their own policies and created a culture of law enforcement based on their ideas about what Canada represented (they would have said the Queen and the Empire) and on what worked on the ground."

Steele, he said, reflected the Canadian government's and public's view about how potential conflicts should be resolved.

"I think the papers will be really important in shedding light on the period when Canadians are starting to create their own identity. They know they aren't Americans and they aren't really Brits anymore either. Steele embodies a lot of what they aspired to be."

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