Never Shoot a Stampede Queen: A Rookie Reporter in the Cariboo.

David W. Leonard is Project Historian—Northern Alberta, Historic Sites
and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development, the author of
Delayed Frontier: The Peace River Country to 1909, and the co-author of
The Lure of the Peace River Country: A Fost

Since establishing himself as a Vancouver-based journalist in the early 1980s, Mark Leiren-Young has explored a variety of genres and written in a variety of formats, including documentaries, dramas, screenplays, and short stories. It was not until a short while ago, however, that he attempted his first novel. In Never Shoot A Stampede Queen, his natural quick wit caught up with his reflections about Williams Lake, British Columbia, in the mid-1980s, and the result was an extremely humorous off-the-cuff memoir, a Leacock Medal for Humour in 1909, and praises from the likes of Peter C. Newman and Will Ferguson.

Williams Lake in the Cariboo was the Leiren-Young’s first posting as a journalist outside the lower mainland of B.C. The district’s history told many stories about the miners and cowboys who had come to the area in the early 1900s. By the 1980s, the community was hardly a study in rural stability. Since the occupation of the journalist was to seek out stories, it was natural that Leiren-Young would encounter his share of the bizarre. Since so many locals saw peculiar designs behind his inquisitiveness, it was not long before he himself became one of the curiosities of the district. He was assigned a number of criminal cases heard in the local court, and once sat near a potential suicide bomber. In time, “the cops wanted to shoot me, my bosses thought I was a Bolshevik, and a local lawyer warned me that some people I was writing about might try to test the strength of my skull with a steel pipe,” he writes, “what more could any young reported hope for from his first real job?”

The book has been on the BC Bestseller list for over 16 weeks.