The Ranch on the Cariboo

Nora D.S. Robins is liaison librarian in the University of Calgary
Library.

This is a story about small-scale ranching in the rugged Cariboo country
of British Columbia. Alan Fry was 12 years old when he embarked on his
journey to manhood. In the summer of 1943, he joined his father’s
haying crew because half a world away men were fighting a war and it was
mainly the children who gathered the harvest for the nation’s larder.
In no time at all, Alan fell head over heels in love with the world of
horses, cows, and cowboys. The tedium of school or city life was not for
him. He wanted nothing more than to earn his place in the round of jobs
that made up the running of the Milk Ranch.

Life in the Cariboo was hard. Alan’s parents divorced; there was the
constant struggle with nature; the isolation did little to equip Alan
for interaction with the outside world; and, worst of all, the ranch
failed and was sold. Still, for Alan, ranching was the only way to live,
so for the next nine years he worked as a cowboy.

Alan eventually joined the Department of Indian Affairs and worked as
the Indian agent in rural British Columbia before moving to Whitehorse
and writing seven books. This autobiography was first published in 1962.
It describes a lifestyle that most of us know only from film. Alan is to
be congratulated on his authentic and enjoyable account of the trials
and tribulations of cowboy life.