New Year Greetings for 2017 from North of the Medicine Line!

[RattlesnakeJack]

Best Wishes for 2017 to all my Pards, sent to you from North of the Medicine Line!

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Yes, it is 2017 afterall.

I have a copy of COWBOYS, GENTLEMEN & CATTLE THIEVES, 2000, Warren M. Elofson.  Page 56, and the jacket, have a similar photo of the 1886 round-up crew in the Porcupine Hills. Southern Alberta, and parts of BC, were definately part of the Wild West during the 1880s.

[RattlesnakeJack]

... and well beyond, Sir Charles!  The above postcard image is attributed to 1912, and i have seen very similar views from as late as the 1920s.  Scenes like this seem to have bee photographed quite frequently, perhaps because the subject was at least moderately interesting, while the static nature of the group lent itself well to getting a nice group shot with the bulky and slow cameras of the day ....

The image below is a cell-phone snapshot, through glass, of a gorgeous framed "one-off" print from the Medicine Hat Museum and Archives which I bought years ago from a fund-raising auction of various such historical photos (the promise at the time, to encourage high bids, was that each image would never again be reproduced for public sale). The quality of this snapshot does not capture the quality and detail of the original, which depicts a roundup crew in 1898 near Maple Creek, about 60 miles east of Medicine Hat, back when both communities were within the District of Assiniboia.  (When the Provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were created in 1905 from the four southernmost Districts of the North West Territory, the provincial boundary came between them.) 

Interestingly, the identity of each of the men in this photograph is known, and most of the families are still ranching in the same area ...

[PJ Hardtack]

The historic Cowboys sure don't look like te guys we shoot with in CAS, do they?

However, my neighbours sure do! Including the ladies.

[RattlesnakeJack]

For an interesting study of Canadian cowboys, I heartily recommend this book -

[Gabriel Law]

Nice to see a post by you Grant...haven't heard from you for a time.

Best of the New Year to you too!!