Earlier I mentioned the sources of the cattle that made their way to British Columbia and the Canadian Prairies or the North West Territories as they where called at the time. Also mentioned earlier, was that during the first fifteen years the beef business was growing in British Columbia the NWT didn’t have cattle because the Prairies were full of Buffalo though in the north these herds were already diminishing rapidly.           Along the west coast of North America the cattle business had been building for more than two hundred years. Black Spanish cattle had been brought to California from both Mexico and by ship from Spain . North of there the heavier cattle or Shorthorns brought west from the mid-west and eastern States primarily during the 1840s and 50s where well established. These two west coast communities where relatively close to each other in relation...

Almost anyone will agree that Southern Alberta is the centre of the Canadian Cattle Industry. There is an argument that a couple of ranches west of the mountains are larger than any on the east slope. Those on that east slope can argue that Southern Alberta produces more cattle both for feeding and for market. One argument that can not be denied is that Western Canada ’s cattle business did not start off in the Southern Alberta area but in Southern BC .             In 1869 British Columbia had already spent ten years establishing herds of cattle and horses and farms producing pork, dairy products, oats, barley, wheat and many other items. The land east of the Rocky Mountains had little more than a few garden plots as far east as the Assiniboine and Red Rivers or Fort Gary . (You may know it now as Winnipeg .) The two year old country of Canada had just taken over that vast stretch of land which included the area the ...

The work I perform to pay the monthly bills has exploded. I’m sure it will help to pay those bills at the end of the month but it does tend to interfere with working on the new novel, writing posts for the blog and doing things around here such as putting the summer tools away and bringing out the winter things. It is also interfering with the work I need to do on earlier novels and their promotion. Strategic Book Publishing will be and has me supplying information for the changing of the web sites for “Partners” and “Homesteader”. They will become a single site with access to both novels on the one page. As we add more novels they will appear on the same site. In regard to that I have four ready to go. There is my first, the prequel to “Homesteader” which is titled, “The Great Liquor War” but is no longer available; four of the same characters as those found in “Homesteader”. “Jake’s Justice” which I particularly like since it includes a story, or more preci...

I’ve been working on a story that has a “crime baron” operating in New Westminster , BC in 1881. I’ve found the research interesting, due to the great changes that were taking place at the time. For instance, Vancouver did not come into existance until five years later and twenty years later was a thriving city and one of the more important ports on the Pacific coast. However, more about that in a later post. For now, I was just looking through some of the material I collected for “Jake’s Justice” and “Cattle Business” and thought I would post some of those items. “Cattle Business” takes place west of Edmonton in the early 1890s and has to do with some of the unlikely people who, despite their lack of a proper background, eventually became the developers of Canadian Agriculture. It also introduces an aboriginal policeman. According to a couple of sources I discovered the BC Provincial Police appointed “Special Constables” (a policeman’s responsibility, little training and n...

I've just recieved another review of "Homesteader" by Rick Follet that I'm very happy, nae, excited about and here it is: “Homesteader; Finding Sharon” by D. M. McGowan chronicles the experience of Henry ‘Hank’ James, a homesteader in British Columbia , Canada , in the late 1880’s. “Homesteader” offers a fascinating window into a brave and formative era in Canadian history. McGowan writes with a cinematographer’s eye and a playwright’s sense of dialect; the result is an easy-to-read, entertaining saga that is as determined and winning as the settlers it describes - plain spoken, honest and impossible to put down. In Henry James, McGowan has created a character readers want to cheer for. As ‘Hank’ weathers the schemes and manipulations of the portly (and aptly named) Portis Martin and struggles to keep his cattle alive against impossible odds through one of the worst winters in Canadian history, readers become personally acquainted with a colorful cast of supportin...

                 Almighty Voice , a Swampy Cree mentioned in my novel “Cattle Business” was born in Duck Lake , District of Saskatchewan , North West Territories in 1875. In the autumn of 1895 he married a young woman from a neighbouring reserve. During the preparations for that event he discovered a cow wandering on the prairie which he butchered to feed his guests.             Ownership of the cow is a question that can not be answered at the date of this writing. It has been said that it was loaned to the reserve for breeding purposes and was the property of the Canadian government. It has also been claimed as the property of a neighbouring ranch and had wandered onto the reserve. The one thing that is certain is that it did not belong to Almighty Voice, or as the white man had recorded his identity, Jean Baptiste. On October ...

I can't tell you how Alvin's doing. It's been a while since I seen him. You see, Alvin and I don't spend too much time together. Not like we used to. It goes back to that time we went up to Carter's to help them round up their cattle. Looking' back, I reckon I was a bit rough on him, but I thought he had a better sense of humor. There was about ten of us who volunteered to help out. Neighbors rode over on horseback, and some hauled their horses in from as far as fifty miles away. I don't have a truck or trailer, so I rode with Alvin, our mounts in his two-horse trailer. Most of us got there the night before, a Friday it was, so that we'd be ready t' get started early Saturday. 'Course, the early start was a bit rough on most of us since, once we got a place for our bedrolls, most of us spent the night over a few drinks, playing' cards and swapping yarns. But despite how tough a few felt that next morning we were all out there gathering...

4 A half-hour later she stopped to fit the saddle to her shorter legs. The steers showed no inclination to veer from the trail home. As she shortened the stirrup leathers she noticed her heart rate and breathing had begun to slow their frantic pace. "Now I'll have to listen to Mother go on and on about how I left her alone for a whole two days," she said to the horse as she pulled the lacing free. "Then she'll make Matt feel awful by telling him it's his fault that I was almost murdered over a few filthy animals." She finished on one stirrup and moved around to the other. "Then Matt won't ever want to leave the place again." She was finishing up before she continued. "Which might not be all bad, at least I wouldn't have to listen to Mother's drivel all by myself." She remounted and continued, liking the feel of what she was already coming to think of as her saddle. It was also a fine, smooth-gaited horse. ...

3 When she had the strips of bannock dough wrapped around sticks and propped over the fire, she began to slice slabs of meat from the venison haunch hanging from a limb on the edge of camp. As she was doing this, Squeak rose and went to the pack from which he drew another bottle of the dark, Hudson's Bay Trade Rum. Rolley continued to sip on his, but Squeak took the top quarter of his fresh bottle in one long drink. When the meal was finished roasting, Janet said nothing but took one of the bannock-wrapped sticks, another holding a slice of meat, and moved away from the fire. She hunkered down across the fire from Rolley and Squeak. "I take it we can all dig in?" Rolley said, carefully leaning his bottle against the log before rising and moving to the fire. Before he could get a portion of the meal for himself, Gabe took his portion and returned to where he had been standing, back from the fire and to Janet's right. Squeak refused to move even after Ro...

Chapter 2 Something pulled at Janet and she came awake with a start. A stiff, dead branch caught her hat as she moved, knocking it from her head. "Well Billy-be-damn if it ain't a woman," a strange, but at the same time familiar voice said. Janet looked up to see a scrawny little man with bulging eyes and a scraggly beard grinning toothlessly at her as he held up the spruce branches. Behind him she could see that a new day had arrived and, looking into her den stood a square, better-dressed but equally dirty man holding her rifle. It was their pulling the rifle from her arms that had awakened her. The second man turned his gaze off to the side and spit tobacco juice. "Better come have a look at this, Gabe." He turned back to smile at Janet as a third man rode his horse over and leaned down to look at her. This third man's clothes were also dirty, but it appeared he had both shaved and washed in the not too distant past. The second man ges...