Canadian Cowboy Culture
We think of the cowboy culture, cattle horses and rodeo as our American Heritage but our neighbors to the North embrace it as well . I’m Susan Allen inviting you to stay tuned for Open Range. The 19th century gold rush in Canada resulted not only in a livestock boom but the relocation of many an American cowboy as miners would pay what often amounted to a fortune for beef, supplies and good horses. In fact, the first white man to settle in the Yakima Valley, Ben Snipes netted $12,000 as a teenager driving 102 head of cattle to Canada where meat starved miners paid as much as a hundred times the herd’s original price giving him his seed money to become a western land baron. Western Canada, British Columbia and Alberta developed strong cowboy cultures during the great era of Canadian ranching that ran from 1880’s through the early nineteen hundreds. I’ll ruffle some regional features regarding rodeo history but by 1912 the Calgary Stampede was considered the most important rodeo in the west, offering the biggest purse, $20,000 in gold. Started by four wealthy Calgary business men with a knack for marketing, they capitalized on the mystic of the western culture by featuring two thousand Indians in their first grand entry parade! The Calgary Stampede was also the first major rodeo to feature women as trick and bronc riders paving the way for women to compete in pro-rodeo and more than 120,000 people attended the first six day run. Today Canada’s strong ranching heritage is evidence in their contribution to country music, rodeo, and the both horse and beef industries.
