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'Calf Roping' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo
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While the American legends of the wild west are constantly being created and embellished, we usually forget the fact that the last Open Range Country - the very last reign of the Cowboy Era happened in Saskatchewan and Alberta in the Cypress Hills country of our Southwest.
Wallace Stegner, the Pulitzer Prize winning author documented the history of this region in his book 'Wolf Willow'. As a boy in the year 1914, young Wallace rode from the town of Gull Lake to the town of East End on a Stagecoach, sitting with a cowpuncher named Buck Murphy. Half anesthetized by Buck s whiskey breath and fascinated with his six-shooter, Wallace s fascination for cowboys was born. Later, hanging around the cowboys of the T-Down-Bar ranch and local rodeo champs like Reno Dodds, known as Slivers, Wallace knew his future:
I would grow up to be about five feet six and weigh about a hundred and thirty pounds. I would be bowlegged and taciturn, with deep creases in my cheeks and a hide like stained leather. I would be the quietest and most dangerous man around, best rider, best shot, the one who couldn t be buffaloed. Men twice my size, beginning some brag or other, would catch my cold eye and begin to wilt, and when I had stared them into impotence I would turn my back contemptuous, hook onto my pony in one bowlegged arc and ride off. |
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'Team Roping' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo
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'Bull Riding' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo
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'Steer Wrestling' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo
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'Bronc Busting' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo in Southern Saskatchewan.
Celebrating its 115th year in 2005 - the Wood Mountain Rodeo is the oldest continuously running rodeo in Canada. Metis families from the Red River first settled the area in the 1870's. The North West Mounted Police established a post at Wood Mountain in 1874 and by the 1890's - several retiring policemen had started ranches in the area. The Wood Mountain Rodeo is held at the Wood Mountain Regional Park - site of the original NWMP post.
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'Barrel Racing' at the Wood Mountain Rodeo
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"The Cowboy has been an integral part of Western Canadian life for over a century. He came with the great herds in the 1880's, worked for outfits like the Bar U and Cochrane and contributed much to the history, romance and culture of the West.
The most enduring and positive depiction of the cowboy through the years has come through rodeo. While the big-time shows in Calgary and Edmonton are dominated by American cowboys, the dozens of rodeos in smaller centres are purely Canadian events. Here, local cowboys from ranching communities as far north as Peace River and Prince Albert display their skills as calf ropers, bull doggers, bronc busters and bull riders. The chuckwagon race is seen as a Canadian invention and there is pride in the fact that Canadian Rodeo stock is in demand throughout the continent.
Ranching remains an important part of prairie life and despite the inroads of farming, it has flourished and prospered. The cowboy may have exchanged his horse for a four wheel drive but his goals are the same-to look after the cattle and horses under his care. His riding ability and skill with a rope are equally at home on the ranch or at the rodeo grounds. Second and third generation ranching families are proud of their skills as riders, ropers and wagon drivers. And like their counterparts of the golden age, they possess those same qualities of hardiness, independence and determination so identified with western life.
Another positive representation has come through COUNTRY MUSIC. Canada has taken a leading role in fostering cowboy ballads and promoting a concept that is universal and positive. From Wilf Carter of the 1930's to Ian Tyson of the 1990's, Canadian singers have helped keep alive a romantic and sometimes soulful picture of the Canadian Cowboy."
from 'The Golden Age of the Canadian Cowboy' by Hugh A. Dempsey |
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