Rocking P Ranch and the Second Cattle Frontier in Western Canada by Clay Chattaway and Warren Elofson

Abstract

CHATTAWAY, Clay, and Warren ELOFSON – Rocking P Ranch and the Second Cattle Frontier in Western Canada. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2019. Pp. 254. There are “very few really bountiful primary materials with which to chart rural family history,” Clay Chattaway and Warren Elofson rightly declare on page 1 of this book, the product of a particularly bountiful collection. The Macleay family papers—detailed business records, diaries, letters, timelines and, especially, the Rocking P Gazette, an illustrated newsletter produced for the Rocking P Ranch from 1923-1925—chart the history of the Rocking P Ranch of southern Alberta. Chattaway and Elofson particularly lean on the remarkable Gazette, edited and mostly written and illustrated by owner Rod and Laura Macleay’s daughters Dorothy and Maxine. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that provides a fascinating glimpse into a particular time and place, the world of southern Alberta ranch country before the Second World War. The book is divided into two sections. The first tells the story of the Macleay family and the founding and development of their ranch. Rod, a native of Quebec’s Eastern Townships, came west in 1901 with 329 head of cattle in order to make his fortune in western Canada. In its first attempt to turn the arid grasslands of southern Alberta into meat and cash, the Canadian government had previously ceded large areas to big cattle companies, who, following the practice on the US southern plains, turned animals loose to graze. Then came the “killing winter of 1906/7.” On November 15, 1906, “rain that had been falling for two weeks suddenly turned to snow and the temperature plummeted. … Some three feet of snow fell in a few hours. Then the temperature climbed above freezing for a few hours and quickly dropped again, forming a layer of hard crust under the fresh snow…” (p. 34). Cattle, left alone on the high plains and unable to reach the grass, died of starvation and cold. Rod Macleay and other family operators, however, who held cattle behind fences and stored hay and other feed for them, survived with their herds largely intact. The killing winter meant the end of the large companies and the start of the family era. Family operators understood, Chattaway and Elofson argue, that they needed to work within the limits of the environment. They practiced not just ranching but also mixed farming, by which they fed their livestock and themselves. They solved the problem of overgrazing. Laura, later with her daughters, fed the ranch by buying food and growing it and also by being a deft hand with a .22 rifle. Laura and Rod were also savvy businesspeople, and the ranch grew. When they bought the Bar S Ranch in 1919 it was news as far away as Manitoba, and Dorothy and Maxine’s Gazette served a large community of family and hired hands across several sites. The claim that the mixed family farm was a superior vehicle for organizing an economically and environmentally sustainable form of ranching is fascinating, and it would have been interesting to hear more. What exactly is it about the family farm model that allowed it to work sustainably? The authors argue that the presence of the owner was crucial—Rod Macleay had a hand in every aspect of the ranch’s operation. But why exactly large corporations could not pen and manage livestock and family operations could is not drawn out in any detail. Nor is it directly explained how the family ranches solved the problem of overgrazing; rather, Macleay is praised for drawing on the ranch’s own resources and using up “substandard grain” as feed (p. 43). It would also have been good to hear more about the Rocking P Ranch as a family farm. Many of the arguments made here about the operation of the ranch parallel recent arguments made by other historians. R. W. Sandwell argues that, up to the Second World War, Canadian rural households typically relied on a combination of off-farm work, the growing of food for the household, and the production and sale of a cash crop. This describes the Rocking P Ranch, but it was also a highly capitalized...