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Wednesday, October 25, 2006


Here's meself and the other Coyote half. She's
ticked 'cause I put up a picture from one of
her bad hair days, and won't be persuaded by
my saying she is beautiful anyway. :-) She's
got cap head hair.

This is from a trip back to the part of the
Douglas Lake Cattle Co. Ranch we worked, oh hell, back in the early 80s. This picture is taken near one of the pre-Douglas Lake ranches, Norfolk. Isolated but beautiful.

Worked me like a slave they did though-, for the rich man, Chunky Woodwards, of the old Woodward's Dept. Stores.

In case you're not familiar with Douglas Lake, It's between Merrit and Kamloops.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great picture bro, nice country too.

My grandfather and grandmother met when the two of them were working for an outfit called the Smith Ranch in South Western Saskatchewan. For a while (until the finance company took it away) Horseshoe Smith had what was billed as the biggest barn in the world. Grandpa was just off the boat from England and Grandma from Odessa Russia - long sad stories.Here's a link to a bad picture - http://scaa.usask.ca/gallery/mainstreet/images/041c.jpg

I 'll see if I can find more information if anyone's interested.

Larry Gambone said...

Hey, great couple! And what country! Thanks Coyote for sharing this fine moment with us, ciao, Larry

Anonymous said...

I may have overstated it a bit. Here's what the Saskatchewan Register of Heritage sites has to say about the Barn.
Biggest in N America - not the world.


http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:EufyFyLnDwAJ:cyr.gov.sk.ca/assets/pdf/heritage/122.pdf+Horseshoe+Smith+Barn&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=3

Anonymous said...

different ranch/ different time.

The Horseshoe Smith Ranch was at the forks of the S.Saskatchewan and the Red Deer Rivers. The barn was built around 1910, I think and had been torn down before 1920. There was enough lumber in it to build many of the homes in the area when they took it down.

All that's left today is the foundation.

Coyote said...

Enjoyed the story about your family G. My family arrived from Scotland, on my dad's side, and homesteaded in the Saskatchewan Sandhills country just north or Maple Creek. My mom's family also came out from Scotland and homesteaded in the country twixt Yellowgrass, and another wee town which name escapes me at the moment.

McTaggart, Sask., it was.

Indeed, my mom's family still works their original homestead lands, and then some. And a distant great(s_ uncle on my Dad's side, the Sandhills homestead.

Anonymous said...

What a lovely couple and what a beautiful place as well...all those green rolling hills. :-)

At first I was confusing this in my mind with the Gang Ranch...which we went through on a camping trip when we were first married...through a wee place called Dog Creek and then from there to Williams Lake..then off to Bella Coola on the coast. I loved the plateaus around Chilanko Forks, I think it was, and Puntzey Lake on the way to the coast...masses of wildflowers for miles and miles and blue, blue lakes.

BC Mary said...

If there's Feng Shui for the great outdoors, the Chilcotin is bliss central, thrilling just to be there.

My ex- spent 2 life-shaping years as a young cowboy on Andy Christensen's ranch at Anahim Lake. He rode in the Anahim Stampede and with the last overland cattle drive from Anahim to Quesnel. Lester Dorsey, Missus Dorsey, they matched those wide skies. I felt privileged to trot along later and meet these wonderful people. The stories ...

BC Mary said...

"Bad picture" you say, G? ... it's an astonishing photo of that 400 ft barn ... would like to know who built it and why in the world did they tear it down? With a roof like that, it must've been impervious to snow and wind. Or was it the foundation ... the way pioneers seemed not to understand about decent foundations.