Introduction

This study focuses on the ranching industry in western prairie Canada from the early 1870 s until just before World War I.Western prairie Canada refers to the region that stretches from the Bow River near Calgary on the northern extremity to the American border on the south and from the foothills of the Rockies on the western side, to the Cypress Hills and Wood Mountain districts on the east.Before 1905 , of course, this entire region was part of the North-West Territories.The Cypress Hills and Wood Mountains were in southwestern Assiniboia, but the rest was in southern Alberta.The ranching industry was serviced principally by the four urban centres of Calgary, Fort Macleod, Lethbridge, and Maple Creek.My main purpose is to offer serious resistance to views about the ranching frontier that have gained currency amongst academics and been disseminated to the general reading public.Essentially there are two views of concern.The first is that the frontier environment itself made a comparatively minor impact on the society that participated in the ranching industry.This argument did not originate from, but it has, at least inadvertently, been bolstered in recent years by two major ranching authorities.1 First, it is implied in L.G. Thomas's seminal work Rancher's Legacy .Thomas depicts the families in the High River area as British and eastern members of polite society who looked after their lands with minimal physical effort and spent their leisure hours attending polo matches, grand European balls, and turf club gatherings. 2 Substantial support for his depiction has come from the prodigious research of David Breen.In The Canadian Prairie West and the Ranching Frontier, 1874 -1924 , Breen concentrates on the great ranches that were established on the very large twenty-one year leases provided by the Conservative government in 1881 .He tells his readers that "a majority of those who came to the southwest corner of the Canadian prairie … were collectively very different from the American ranch community."They were also "distinct from the larger western farm population with whom they are usually included."These "uniquely Canadian" 3 people were not "frontiersmen" but "representatives of the metropolitan culture of the East and

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