Come fall at the Bar U Ranch, a hand could ride miles of Alberta foothills before he found the cattle he was after. Some might be down in a creek bottom, out of the wind. Others might be feeding in the next draw. The work got louder when the herd came together.
Cows bawled for their calves while the hands rode among them, reading brands and sorting one outfit’s stock from another. The cook went out with the crew. When the last cattle were sorted, a hot meal waited at the wagon.
A cowboy from Montana would have known the work. Horses, cattle and hired hands crossed the border, and a man who could ride had a chance at wages on either side.
In British Columbia, some of the first herds went north to feed miners. Out on the Prairies, government leases gave a handful of outfits room to run cattle by the thousands. A ranch could have grass clear to the horizon and still lose cattle when snow and ice covered it.
The Herds That Followed the Gold
Gold brought prospectors into British Columbia in 1858. As the rush drew miners into the Cariboo, someone had to feed them. Drovers in the dry interior had a market if they could get their cattle there.
Over the decade beginning in 1858, drovers brought more than 22,000 head north from the border through the Okanagan Valley, according to the historic O’Keefe Ranch. The cattle walked to market. On a dry day, dust rose behind the herd, and a drover had to think about where he’d water the stock before dark.
In 1867, Cornelius O’Keefe and his partners brought a herd into the north Okanagan and saw a place to raise cattle. The valley gave them grass and water, and the mining trade gave them buyers. The ranch they established stood on the homeland of the syilx people.
The colonial government made land available to settlers there even though it had signed no treaty with the syilx (Syilx Okanagan). The grass and water that made the valley a good place to run cattle had sustained syilx communities long before the first herds came through.
Big Outfits on the Prairie
East of the Rockies, the industry grew under a different arrangement.
In the 1880s, investors leased large tracts of Crown land and built outfits like the Bar U, southwest of present-day Calgary. They raised cattle for markets in Canada and Britain. Farther east, outfits such as the 76 and the Turkey Track put cattle on the grasslands of what is now southern Saskatchewan.
In a dry stretch of prairie, a large range gave a herd room to spread out and find feed. It also meant the hands had more country to cover when it came time to bring the cattle in.
Those leases followed years of upheaval on the Plains. Commercial hunting had devastated the bison herds. In 1877, leaders of the Siksiká, Kainai, Piikani, Tsuut’ina and Nakoda negotiated Treaty 7 with the Canadian government at Blackfoot Crossing. The written treaty promised to supply cattle when a band applied for them.
The government saw the treaty as a way to obtain land for settlement and agriculture. First Nations’ oral accounts preserve different understandings of the agreement. The government acted on its own reading of the treaty, opening land to settlers and ranching companies.
A lease could tell an owner how much country he had. A hired hand got to know it a crossing and a draw at a time. He learned which creek crossing held a firm bottom and where cattle drifted when the wind came up. Come fall, he might spend days gathering animals that had been spreading out all summer.
Once they were sorted, sale cattle could go to market by rail. The train shortened the trip to the buyer. It took a crew on horseback to get the cattle to the train. At the Bar U, calves were moved to a separate camp for the winter. The roundup sent cattle in two directions, and some of the stock the riders gathered in the fall would still need tending when the snow came.
The Wares Build a Place of Their Own
John Ware came north with cattle in 1882. He had been enslaved in the American South and was already an experienced hand when he joined a drive bound for the ranch that became the Bar U. He worked for large outfits in Alberta and earned a name as a horseman.
The cattle business he entered was dominated by white ranchers and well-financed companies. Ware, nonetheless, went on to build a ranch of his own with his wife, Mildred Lewis Ware, and their family.
In 1902, the Wares moved to the Red Deer River country. They built a cabin by the river, and a flood carried it away. Ware salvaged what logs he could and rebuilt on higher ground. A good horseman could earn wages on somebody else’s spread. On the Wares’ own place, a flood meant starting over with whatever they could pull out of the wreckage.
The new cabin stood above a creek that now bears the family name.
The Winter That Changed the Range
On the open range, cattle had to find much of their own feed through winter. Wind could scrape snow off a rise and leave enough dry grass for a herd to graze. Cattle could paw through shallow snow. If it piled up or froze hard, they could stand right over the grass and go hungry.
By the time the winter of 1906–07 hit, farmers and smaller ranchers were already pressing for land held in large leases. The cold and snow killed cattle across the southern range and hastened a change already underway. The Bar U survived. For a crew on an outfit that lost much of its herd, spring could mean fewer cattle to work and fewer wages to go around.
If it piled up or froze hard, they could stand right over the grass and go hungry.
Elsewhere, homesteads and fences broke up the country where herds had once drifted. Winter feed and the ground needed to grow it took on more importance. The cowboy still had cattle to find and move, but the job increasingly took place within pasture lines. A fence could save miles in the saddle come roundup. It also meant there was wire to mend and another gate to check before a storm.
The Cowboy Rides Into Town
In 1912, American showman Guy Weadick and champion trick roper Flores LaDue helped put on the first Calgary Stampede. LaDue brought years of experience in Wild West shows. She could keep a loop spinning while she stepped through it, a trick known as the Texas Skip.
In Calgary, a crowd could watch a roper work a loop for show and see a bronc rider try to stay in the saddle.
One of the riders that year was Tom Three Persons, a Kainai cowboy. He drew Cyclone, a bronc with a long record of putting riders in the dirt, and rode him to a standstill. The ride won him the saddle bronc championship. The Stampede’s account puts the finish under the lights of cars around the infield.
Three Persons went on to raise Hereford cattle and Thoroughbred horses in southern Alberta. A crowd saw what he could do in the saddle that night. Back home he built a name as a stockman, too.
Nearly a century later, riders in British Columbia’s Chilcotin took a longer road to the rodeo. In 2009, Jimmy Lulua helped organize a horse-and-wagon ride from his Xeni Gwet’in community in the Nemiah Valley to the Williams Lake Stampede. Horses had long been part of life in the valley. Lulua worked with young people in the community, sharing skills he’d learned growing up there. At the Stampede, a ride might be over in seconds. On the way to Williams Lake, the horses had to go day after day.
The Work That Carries On
On a good day, cattle come through a gate without bunching. A hand spots a calf falling behind before the herd rounds a bend. He takes the long way to the next pasture because the short way crosses a slick bank. It takes time to learn which stretch of ground will hold a horse after rain, or where a cow with a new calf will go to get out of the wind.
A hand in the Okanagan might spend an afternoon bringing cattle down to water. In Saskatchewan, he might check a fence before drifting snow covered the bottom wire. And in the Alberta foothills, when the wind comes up and the count comes up one cow short, somebody still has to ride the next draw. —☆
The Story Behind the Story
My mom was born in Canada, and therefore I’m a citizen of both Canada and the United States. I was raised to take as much pride in my Canadian heritage as I do in my American heritage. So when I write about the West, my mind goes north of the border pretty naturally.
I’ve always had a deep respect for the people who work cattle in Canada. While I was writing this piece, I kept coming back to a detail about winter on the open range. A cow could stand right over the grass and go hungry because the snow had frozen too hard for her to paw through it. You can have miles of good grass and still spend a winter worrying about whether your cattle can get to it. That stayed with me.
Writing about Canadian cowboys felt personal for another reason. I’ve spent a lot of time telling stories about the American cowboy. It felt good to tell one from the other side of the border, in a part of the West that has always meant something to me.
