The Bar U and Canadian Ranching History (review)

The Bar U and Canadian Ranching History is a thorough investigation of one of western Canada's biggest and best-known livestock operations. Professor Evans began studying the Bar U when he joined the Parks Canada preservation project in 1991, and over the years he collected an immense amount of information about the ranch, from its inception in the early 1880s until its sale in 1950. His research is exhaustive. The endnotes for the ten chapters are a compendium of virtually all the primary and secondary sources available on the subject in Canada and the United States. They also reflect numerous interviews with descendants and acquaintances of prominent figures in the story and with persons who are authoritative in the industry.

What makes The Bar U compelling is the author's obvious love of his subject. Evans paints his picture with some charm, and his admiration for everyone who was active in the long development of the West resonates throughout. The greatest hero is George Lane, the American who came north to work as the foreman on the Bar U in 1884 and became a partner and finally the sole owner. Lane, Evans tells us, 'had the capacity to see opportunities and then the drive and determination to exploit them.' He was morally sound too, 'not motivated by a desire for personal wealth but rather by his vision of how things ought to unfold.... He was a booster of western Canada in the best sense of the phrase. He had a gift for charismatic leadership coupled with an uncanny touch for the practical.'

Unfortunately, it is precisely Evans's admiration for western ranchers that mars this study as a work of history. From beginning to end he shows his central figures in the best possible light. Thus, for instance, he sees no need to mention that Sir Hugh Allan, who initially financed the Bar U, had risen to the height of the eastern business elite in part by regularly greasing the palms of powerful politicians. He also notes that the early cattlemen provided much-needed beef for Native bands but fails to acknowledge that they commonly supplied that market with 'any rough cattle' from their herds that were too poor to sell elsewhere.

To make his main characters appear as competent as possible, Evans underrates the obstacles they faced. For instance, he argues that the 1886/87 winter was only a slight setback for the ranchers in the western foothills. Surely he knows that A.E. Cross of the A7 claimed it was 'the most severe [winter] known in the country. ... we lost from 25 to 50 per cent of our cattle principally our breeding stock. The calf branding for the next and a few following years was very small, so we were greatly crippled.' Duncan McEachran of the nearby Walrond Ranch reported the next spring that his calf crop was 'far short even of what I anticipated making every allowance for winter and spring losses.... [Almost] every other ... [ranch] is in the same position many even worse off. I fear our losses ... in cows and heifers ... [are] probably 18 per cent.' The Walrond count books, which Evans misquotes, show a drop in calf numbers in 1887 by almost exactly what McEachran estimated. I might add that the books show a drop between 1885 and 1887 of over twice that percentage. This forced the company to reduce the value of each shareholder's stock by almost 40 per cent.

The 1906/7 winter is also defamed. Substantial evidence to the contrary, Evans arbitrarily reduces George Lane's losses to 3000 head. He also tells us that in the summer of 1907 the Walrond Ranch's cattle herd was still large enough to bring in $250,000. The contract in the Walrond papers shows that it sold its stock for a down payment of $2500 and a promise of $26 per head, calves thrown in, after the fall roundup. In the end the company raised only enough...