Legendary Horsemen

That's the title of a fabulous "coffee table" book a friend lent (no, it's not "loaned") us.  It depicts the way The West was and I offer a few photos of paintings here.  One thing I want to talk about is Cochrane, the town I most visit because my grandchildren are there. 

Named after Irish immigrant Senator Matthew Cochrane, this town is pretty much what you would call a "small town".  It has even regulated store fronts on main street, stipulating that all buildings adhere to a "western" motif.  No strip mall need apply.  Anyway, in late 1881, Matthew Cochrane had amassed 399 square miles and had begun to collect cattle.  At its peak, the Cochrane organization ran more that 13,000 cattle and had the biggest sheep herd in Western Canada on land holdings of 334,500 acres.  There remain many ranches in and around Cochrane.  Son-in-law gives his time to one during branding season, where he has to wrestle calves. 

This book contains many beautiful paintings of the early West, when natives were proud.  Today, sadly, and thanks in part to the mess the federal government made of things, on-and-off-reserve natives are pretty much a disgrace and a far cry from their glorious past.  And while they always have a hand out and blame everything on "Ottawa", they themselves have made a complete mess of their own peoples.  Today, the only natives I see in Cochrane are down-and-out ones. 

But, here are a few depictions of the splendid past:

The sixth picture is of the late Prince of Wales, Edward, an expert horseman who fell in love with Alberta.  Having first visited in 1919, he eventually bought a ranch just outside Calgary, the Bar U and owned it until 1961, when he sold it with a sad heart.  What a history the Wild West has!