The Golden Age of the Canadian Cowboy: An Illustrated History

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

Move over Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Bleary Eyed Bill, the
Pigeon-Toed Kid, and Two-Gun Cohen are fixin’ to claim their piece of
the cow pasture. For more than three decades Canada had real cowboys and
cowgirls rooting and tooting their way across the wide open range. Most
were “Canadian” in name only; Americans and Mexicans brought the
cowboy way of life to the Canadian prairies. British immigrants, many of
them from well-connected middle-class families, helped fill in the
ranks. Blacks, Métis, and even some female cowpunchers also carved
their own special niches in Canadian history.

Alberta-born historian and museum curator Hugh Dempsey has written more
than a dozen books about the Canadian west. He dates the golden age of
the Canadian cowboy from 1880, when virtually the last wild bison
disappeared from the grasslands, to 1912, when the first Calgary
Stampede was held to celebrate a way of life that had already passed.

Dempsey’s knowledge of his subject is com-prehensive. He draws on
Canadian, American, and British sources to present an honest, unromantic
portrait of range life. “If a man can’t stand monotony,” Dempsey
quotes one English newspaper as saying, “he had better not try
ranching.” Dempsey also repeatedly notes the plight of the Natives,
who by 1880 were reduced from bison hunting to scavenging dead or
diseased cattle for survival.

Dempsey’s prose is enjoyable for both its clarity and its wealth of
detail. Many well-chosen photographs accompany the text. Endnotes and a
bibliography complete this fine volume. This book will likely stand for
many years as one of the best on the Canadian cowboy.