WAXING POETIC IN KAMLOOPS
Cowboy culture remains a living legacy in the B.C. interior
Victoria Times-Colonist
main feature: 1,336 words
sidebar: 130 words
The fire crackles and snaps as ringlets of smoke rise into the chilly evening air. What seems like a million stars beam down from above, the milky way etched in bold relief against the black curtain of a moonless night. The South Thompson River gurgles softly in the background. Its steady whisper mutes the intermittent drone of sixteen-wheelers barreling along the Trans-Canada here in the geographical and metaphoric heart of the B.C. interior.
Clearing his throat and adjusting his black hat, cowboy poet Mike Puhallo recites a short, homespun poem titled “Sage and Pine.” Speaking with a musical lilt, he tells us that while “the urban crowd don’t like my prose,” he could care less. “I don’t need fame nor fortune,” he concludes, “just the smell of sage and pine.” There’s no sagebrush here on the cultivated grounds of the South Thompson Inn, but the aroma from the campfire and Puhallo’s wryly amusing tales of farmhands, vaqueros and gentlemen ranchers capture a sepia-toned culture that dates back nearly 200 years.
An author, part-time rancher and now a longlisted candidate to succeed Pauline Michel as Canada’s next poet laureate, Puhallo is the lively punctuation to a day spent exploring this touristically undervalued part of the country. A gaggle of media types have been squired about by Lee Morris, CEO of Kamloops Tourism. After seven years as Tourism Victoria’s head of sales and marketing, the UVic graduate relocated a year ago to a small hobby farm just outside town where she raises Hereford cattle with the assistance of her affectionate border collie Spur.
“Kamloops is a drive-through for most people,” says Morris, whose task is to convince more of the million or so drivers who pass through annually to take their foot off the accelerator and linger awhile. The city (pop. 85,000) has traditionally served as a gas-and-grub pitstop en route to the Okanagan and beyond. “I don't think this area is a hard sell at all. Something like a million people a year zip through here. We’ve got a sophisticated downtown with some real history to it. I found out recently that the old courthouse is a Rattenbury building. And the surrounding grasslands and cattle country is spectacular.”
After spending the morning at the B.C. Wildlife Park in the company of wolves, moose, bears and burrowing owls, Morris and her sidekick Spur escort us back us into town for a high noon encounter with the old west. At the train station, we’re met by a replica 19th-century stage coach manned by a mustachioed driver in cowboy duds. He takes us on a riverside route past the spot where the north and south branches of the Thompson merge. (Kamloops gets its name from a Shuswap word for “where the waters meet.”)
Suddenly the peace is shattered as shots ring out and we’re forced to a halt by a gang of bandits on horseback. One scowling bad guy, who tells us he’s the legendary outlaw Bill Miner (a.k.a. The Grey Fox), points his six-shooter at me, orders two of us out of the coach and barks out a command to dance. With popgun blasts spurring us on, I do a two-step before we all burst out laughing.
The thieves pull down their masks and introduce themselves – not mean hombres at all but a collection of local gents who like to entertain visitors by recreating a bit of Canadian history. Their hijinks are a highlight of trips aboard a refurbished 1912 locomotive operated by the Kamloops Heritage Railway. (Its busy summer schedule continues on an irregular basis in the fall and during the Christmas season).
Next stop is Jandana Ranch, a half-hour northeast of Kamloops near the mountain-fed Pinantan Lake. The drive takes us through hardcore cattle country. “The cowboy culture here is not a created or manufactured western feel, it’s the reality for working people,” explains Morris. “There aren’t a lot of guest or dude ranches in this area, but visitors can get out on horseback and experience the country first-hand.”
At Jandana, we're given a quick lesson in “natural horsemanship,” which requires riders to treat their mounts with both respect and a firm hand. Fraser Valley exiles Janice and Dave Jarvis purchased the ranch in 1992 to offer daily riding lessons and a variety of short and long-term residential retreats that match in-depth education with horseback daytrips exploring the rolling hillsides.
Dave Jarvis shows me how to clamber aboard a mature thoroughbred named Albert, who I’m told "acts like a teenager – mildly rebellious and with a steel will of his own." Sensing my nerves, Albert shoots sideways glances at me, his liquid eyes brown and bottomless. Beautiful eyes, I think, but a little shifty. I picture myself tossed to the ground with the same effortless power with which his cornhusk tail is dispatching flies from his warm, smooth flank.
Here in the mountains, the afternoon has tuned cold and blustery. Thunder clouds are rumbling in the southwest. Rain squalls slant down in the distance. Jarvis is a long, lean, weathered man in jeans, classic brown leather rancher's coat and a hat that fits snuggly enough that you know it rarely leaves his head. We listen closely to his plain-spoken instructions, then circle around the ring, the horses trudging with an air of quiet resignation.
Once I’ve developed some confidence, Albert patiently allows me to practice my new skills. With a gentle tug on the reigns and the pressure of a foot on his right flank, we do a 360 worthy of the Sundance Kid (though to be honest I feel more like Steve Martin in Three Amigos!, a grin plastered across my face, a silly campfire song in my heart).
After 20 minutes or so, the rain starts to spit down. The wind kicks up a notch, shifting from penetrating to punishing. At this point Albert takes charge, ambling over to a corner of the corral and into the leafy shelter of a grove of trees. As our instructor laughs long and loud, every other horse and rider follows suit. And there we all sit, dry and happy, as the rain falls harder still.
With the sky clearing and the sun beginning its descent in the west, we return to Kamloops and our evening of song and stories with Mike Puhallo. Tonight he’s representing the B.C. Cowboy Heritage Society, which annually produces the Kamloops Cowboy Festival in the second weekend of March. (A sizeable contingent of Victoria-area residents, many of them retired farmers and cattle ranchers themselves, routinely turn out for the event).
Puhallo, who takes his inspiration from one-time Kamloops banker-turned-poet Robert Service, begins his fireside tales with a capsule history lesson, noting with a puff of pride that the B.C. interior has a 60-year headstart on Alberta as a draw for cattlemen and cowboys. Fur traders first arrived in Kamloops in 1811, and the Hudson’s Bay Company began importing cattle north from California a decade later. By 1850 there were nearly 4,600 head roaming the grasslands and fattening themselves up to feed the appetites of miners and a soon-to-be explosive wave of Gold Rush dreamers.
Life was tough back then, Puhallo explains, but the Canadian frontier was hardly the wild west. “The American stereotypes don’t really apply up here. The archetypal Canadian cowboy was liable to be an Indian or Métis working for a Scotsman or Englishman. Sure there were American drovers and cattlemen like the Harper Brothers, but contrary to legend they were level-headed businessmen from Virginia, not outlaws on the run.”
Tending the fire with a stick, Puhallo cracks warmly humourous jokes, recites some more of his rustic poetry and puts all of us at ease in what amounts to a definitive example of western hospitality. Here under the big dipper, the sound of a lonesome coyote echoing in our imaginations, the cowboy dream is clearly alive and well in the new millennium
IF YOU GO …
Check out Kamloop’s official website (www.tourismkamloops.com) for accommodations, activities, travel planning and special events. The B.C. Cowboy Heritage Society (www.bcchs.com) maintains a calendar listing of cowboy concerts, festivals and touring dates, including updates on the 11th annual Kamloops Cowboy Festival (March 8-11, 2007). Full details on Jandana Ranch (www.jandanaranch.com) and the Kamloops Heritage Railway (www.kamrail.com) are also available on-line. Mike Puhallo’s poetry, including a weekly “meadow muffin,” is posted at www.twilightranch.com.
Air Canada Jazz offers daily flights from Vancouver, though Tourism Kamloops’ Lee Morris clocks the drive from Tsawwassen at just four hours. This fall she figures islanders familiar with the relatively puny salmon run at Goldstream may want to investigate the return of what could be as many as five million sockeye salmon to the Thompson and its tributaries.
Cowboy culture remains a living legacy in the B.C. interior
Victoria Times-Colonist
main feature: 1,336 words
sidebar: 130 words
The fire crackles and snaps as ringlets of smoke rise into the chilly evening air. What seems like a million stars beam down from above, the milky way etched in bold relief against the black curtain of a moonless night. The South Thompson River gurgles softly in the background. Its steady whisper mutes the intermittent drone of sixteen-wheelers barreling along the Trans-Canada here in the geographical and metaphoric heart of the B.C. interior.
Clearing his throat and adjusting his black hat, cowboy poet Mike Puhallo recites a short, homespun poem titled “Sage and Pine.” Speaking with a musical lilt, he tells us that while “the urban crowd don’t like my prose,” he could care less. “I don’t need fame nor fortune,” he concludes, “just the smell of sage and pine.” There’s no sagebrush here on the cultivated grounds of the South Thompson Inn, but the aroma from the campfire and Puhallo’s wryly amusing tales of farmhands, vaqueros and gentlemen ranchers capture a sepia-toned culture that dates back nearly 200 years.
An author, part-time rancher and now a longlisted candidate to succeed Pauline Michel as Canada’s next poet laureate, Puhallo is the lively punctuation to a day spent exploring this touristically undervalued part of the country. A gaggle of media types have been squired about by Lee Morris, CEO of Kamloops Tourism. After seven years as Tourism Victoria’s head of sales and marketing, the UVic graduate relocated a year ago to a small hobby farm just outside town where she raises Hereford cattle with the assistance of her affectionate border collie Spur.
“Kamloops is a drive-through for most people,” says Morris, whose task is to convince more of the million or so drivers who pass through annually to take their foot off the accelerator and linger awhile. The city (pop. 85,000) has traditionally served as a gas-and-grub pitstop en route to the Okanagan and beyond. “I don't think this area is a hard sell at all. Something like a million people a year zip through here. We’ve got a sophisticated downtown with some real history to it. I found out recently that the old courthouse is a Rattenbury building. And the surrounding grasslands and cattle country is spectacular.”
After spending the morning at the B.C. Wildlife Park in the company of wolves, moose, bears and burrowing owls, Morris and her sidekick Spur escort us back us into town for a high noon encounter with the old west. At the train station, we’re met by a replica 19th-century stage coach manned by a mustachioed driver in cowboy duds. He takes us on a riverside route past the spot where the north and south branches of the Thompson merge. (Kamloops gets its name from a Shuswap word for “where the waters meet.”)
Suddenly the peace is shattered as shots ring out and we’re forced to a halt by a gang of bandits on horseback. One scowling bad guy, who tells us he’s the legendary outlaw Bill Miner (a.k.a. The Grey Fox), points his six-shooter at me, orders two of us out of the coach and barks out a command to dance. With popgun blasts spurring us on, I do a two-step before we all burst out laughing.
The thieves pull down their masks and introduce themselves – not mean hombres at all but a collection of local gents who like to entertain visitors by recreating a bit of Canadian history. Their hijinks are a highlight of trips aboard a refurbished 1912 locomotive operated by the Kamloops Heritage Railway. (Its busy summer schedule continues on an irregular basis in the fall and during the Christmas season).
Next stop is Jandana Ranch, a half-hour northeast of Kamloops near the mountain-fed Pinantan Lake. The drive takes us through hardcore cattle country. “The cowboy culture here is not a created or manufactured western feel, it’s the reality for working people,” explains Morris. “There aren’t a lot of guest or dude ranches in this area, but visitors can get out on horseback and experience the country first-hand.”
At Jandana, we're given a quick lesson in “natural horsemanship,” which requires riders to treat their mounts with both respect and a firm hand. Fraser Valley exiles Janice and Dave Jarvis purchased the ranch in 1992 to offer daily riding lessons and a variety of short and long-term residential retreats that match in-depth education with horseback daytrips exploring the rolling hillsides.
Dave Jarvis shows me how to clamber aboard a mature thoroughbred named Albert, who I’m told "acts like a teenager – mildly rebellious and with a steel will of his own." Sensing my nerves, Albert shoots sideways glances at me, his liquid eyes brown and bottomless. Beautiful eyes, I think, but a little shifty. I picture myself tossed to the ground with the same effortless power with which his cornhusk tail is dispatching flies from his warm, smooth flank.
Here in the mountains, the afternoon has tuned cold and blustery. Thunder clouds are rumbling in the southwest. Rain squalls slant down in the distance. Jarvis is a long, lean, weathered man in jeans, classic brown leather rancher's coat and a hat that fits snuggly enough that you know it rarely leaves his head. We listen closely to his plain-spoken instructions, then circle around the ring, the horses trudging with an air of quiet resignation.
Once I’ve developed some confidence, Albert patiently allows me to practice my new skills. With a gentle tug on the reigns and the pressure of a foot on his right flank, we do a 360 worthy of the Sundance Kid (though to be honest I feel more like Steve Martin in Three Amigos!, a grin plastered across my face, a silly campfire song in my heart).
After 20 minutes or so, the rain starts to spit down. The wind kicks up a notch, shifting from penetrating to punishing. At this point Albert takes charge, ambling over to a corner of the corral and into the leafy shelter of a grove of trees. As our instructor laughs long and loud, every other horse and rider follows suit. And there we all sit, dry and happy, as the rain falls harder still.
With the sky clearing and the sun beginning its descent in the west, we return to Kamloops and our evening of song and stories with Mike Puhallo. Tonight he’s representing the B.C. Cowboy Heritage Society, which annually produces the Kamloops Cowboy Festival in the second weekend of March. (A sizeable contingent of Victoria-area residents, many of them retired farmers and cattle ranchers themselves, routinely turn out for the event).
Puhallo, who takes his inspiration from one-time Kamloops banker-turned-poet Robert Service, begins his fireside tales with a capsule history lesson, noting with a puff of pride that the B.C. interior has a 60-year headstart on Alberta as a draw for cattlemen and cowboys. Fur traders first arrived in Kamloops in 1811, and the Hudson’s Bay Company began importing cattle north from California a decade later. By 1850 there were nearly 4,600 head roaming the grasslands and fattening themselves up to feed the appetites of miners and a soon-to-be explosive wave of Gold Rush dreamers.
Life was tough back then, Puhallo explains, but the Canadian frontier was hardly the wild west. “The American stereotypes don’t really apply up here. The archetypal Canadian cowboy was liable to be an Indian or Métis working for a Scotsman or Englishman. Sure there were American drovers and cattlemen like the Harper Brothers, but contrary to legend they were level-headed businessmen from Virginia, not outlaws on the run.”
Tending the fire with a stick, Puhallo cracks warmly humourous jokes, recites some more of his rustic poetry and puts all of us at ease in what amounts to a definitive example of western hospitality. Here under the big dipper, the sound of a lonesome coyote echoing in our imaginations, the cowboy dream is clearly alive and well in the new millennium
IF YOU GO …
Check out Kamloop’s official website (www.tourismkamloops.com) for accommodations, activities, travel planning and special events. The B.C. Cowboy Heritage Society (www.bcchs.com) maintains a calendar listing of cowboy concerts, festivals and touring dates, including updates on the 11th annual Kamloops Cowboy Festival (March 8-11, 2007). Full details on Jandana Ranch (www.jandanaranch.com) and the Kamloops Heritage Railway (www.kamrail.com) are also available on-line. Mike Puhallo’s poetry, including a weekly “meadow muffin,” is posted at www.twilightranch.com.
Air Canada Jazz offers daily flights from Vancouver, though Tourism Kamloops’ Lee Morris clocks the drive from Tsawwassen at just four hours. This fall she figures islanders familiar with the relatively puny salmon run at Goldstream may want to investigate the return of what could be as many as five million sockeye salmon to the Thompson and its tributaries.
