Blazing the Old Cattle Trail

Michael Payne is head of the Research and Publications Program at the
Historic Sites and Archives Service, Alberta Community Development, and
the co-author of A Narrative History of Fort Dunvegan.

Several years ago Fifth House began republishing a number of books on
Western Canadian history that shared two characteristics. They were, in
some fashion, classic studies, much cited and often read, but they were
also long out of print and available only through libraries or
antiquarian book dealers. This particular title fits both series
requirements admirably. It was first published in 1962 and has been out
of print for decades, but it is still an excellent testament to Grant
MacEwan’s gift for writing entertaining and accessible popular
history.

The book builds on MacEwan’s background as a professor of animal
husbandry, as well as his keen interest in the history of Western
Canada. He observes that “a lot of important history was made on the
trails over which cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock were driven
in pioneer and more recent years.” This is clearly true. Cattle
ranching was one of the first big multinational enterprises in Western
Canada after the decline of the fur trade, and even smaller-scale
homestead agriculture relied on livestock of various types.

This meant that there were always ready markets for livestock among
would-be ranchers and farmers, not to mention hungry miners, Mounties,
railway crews, and other early residents of Northern and Western Canada.
As the book makes clear, eager buyers encouraged entrepreneurial
initiatives ranging from the eminently practical to the faintly absurd
or desperate, such as George Jones’s pig drive to Gleichen or Marion
Eppard’s epic relocation of a sheep herd from Saskatchewan to the
Okanagan in the 1930s. Throughout the book, you get the sense that
trailing livestock was what serious gamblers did before video lottery
terminals were invented.

Like most high-risk, high-reward enterprises, moving livestock hundreds
of kilometres to new markets offers some great stories, and MacEwan
makes the best of them. The book may not fully satisfy serious scholars
of ranching or homestead history, but it will give most readers a new
appreciation of the complexities entailed in populating Western Canada,
not just with people, but with introduced species ranging from horses to
pigs.