Canadian Rangers

WESTWESTTHE WESTERN CANADA QUARTERLY • fall 2007

Canadian RangeRs | ReCoRd TRouT | did You Know? | wool aRTINSIDE:

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WEST . 5

CONTENTS

On the Cover Canada Post issued a stamp to honour fay Wray of Cardston, alberta more than 70 years after her biggest movie.

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THE WESTERN CANADA QUARTERLY • fall 2007

P u b l i s h e d f o r c l i e n t s o f W e s t e r n F i n a n c i a l G r o u p

Features

18 The People’s PainterRoland Gissing came from England to be a cowboy and wound up as one of western Canada’s greatest painters. Wendy Dudley reports on the surge of interest in his work.

24 The Canadian Rangers Judy Waytiuk tells us all about the mostly Inuit members of this little known Canadian armed forces unit who steadfastly patrol our arctic expanses. 30 Things you probably didn’t know about 12 famous

Western CanadiansJudy Waytiuk sorted through mounds of information and found some unusual facts about a dozen of our celebrities.

12 Western MoviesHollywood loves making movies up here and we return the favour with an endless supply of talent. Doug Nelson takes us through the history of our film industry.

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This and that from around the West: BC’s Mountain Man … Checker news from the U of a … The one man multimedia industry … He ain’t heavy, he’s my neighbour … Prehistoric Wool … Saskatchewan’s record trout … Ponteix’s wonderful old cathedral.

09 Roundup

Cinda Chavich walks us through the Basic Sauces, the secrets to great french cooking.

44 Cinda Chavich’s Simply Delicious

lots of stuff about the movies: our biggest stars, best wrangler and film festivals galore … glowing review of a TV movie about the heroic WWII Danes … this year’s winner of the Hudson Bay Quest dog race. Plus our editor takes leave of his senses yet again.

Nurse angela Morrison fills us in on the flu and how to avoid it. 47 Health Matters

48 Backgrounder

Some West readers applaud our editor’s stand on left-lane drivers; others are less enthusiastic.

08 Letters

34 The Powwow DancerChristalee froese visits Saskatchewan’s Carry The Kettle Band to meet Kevin Haywahe who performs all over the world. This fall, he’ll dance at a Roughriders’ game.

38 Accidental Sheep FarmersDonna MacNaughton visits a farm on the road to Dinosaur Provincial Park where the young Kuffner family is creating art from a small flock of sheep.

40 Helping JoannJoann Babineau needed just a little help dealing with the impact of a nerve disease. She got it from a great organization and two wonderful dogs. louise Schutte reports.

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6 . WEST . ISSUE 10 . fall 2007

Published by Western Financial Group,

1010 - 24th Street SE, High River, AB T1V 2A7

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PUBLISHER: Scott Tannas

GENERAL MANAGER: Bill Rogers

EDITOR: Mike McCormick

ASSIGNMENT EDITOR: Bruce Masterman

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Dena Degrofft

CONTRIBUTORS: Lola Augustine Brown, Canadian Rangers,

Robert Carignan, Cinda Chavich, Wendy Dudley, Frances

Litman Photography Inc., Christalee Froese, Glenbow

Museum, Darren Jaknisky, Mike Kerr, Miriam Koerner, Darren

Krause, Deborah Lawson, Donna MacNaughton, Julie

McLaughlin, James May, Luis Moriera, Angela Morrison,

Doug Nelson, Guy Parsons, Peter Reath Photograph

Galleries, Photos.com, Louise Schutte, Diane Selkirk,

trophytroutguide.com, Judy Waytiuk.

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WEST . 7

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EvEry now and thEn someone asks why Western Financial Group puts out a general-interest magazine about Western Canada. The question usually goes something like this, “I read West cover to cover and it doesn’t have anything to do with insurance, investments and banking. Why do you put it out?”

The answer’s pretty simple. West has nothing to do with insurance and banking, except for the ads, of course. But it has everything to do with the people of Western Canada, especially the westerners who are already WFG clients.

When we started West a couple of years ago, we thought the magazine fit very nicely with our company motto: “… because we live here.” We wanted to remind people that we’re committed to all the small towns between Lake of the Woods and Vancouver Island.

In the last year or so the magazine seems to have taken on a life of its own. We don’t pay much attention to

circulation numbers, but we’re pretty sure West reaches more people than any other Western Canadian magazine, and, I suspect, most magazines anywhere in Canada.

Our readers write to us with ideas for future articles, to comment on or add to something in a past article, or to agree or disagree with our editor about something he raved about on the back page. They also write to get paid subscriptions for their friends and family who aren’t WFG clients. Plus, we seem to have a very high pass along readership. It all has nothing to do with insurance or banking. And that’s great.

So the reason for West has evolved from “… because we live here” to because you live here, and that’s an even better reason than the one we started with.

All the best,

Scott TannasPresident and CEO

P.S. If you know anyone who would enjoy a subscription to West, you’ll find a subscription form at www.westernfinancialgroup.net/

west_magazine/index.shtml. As always, if you have any questions or comments, we’ll be glad to hear from you.


LOTS Of LETTERS ABOUT DRIVING IN THE LEfT LANE. THREE Of THE MOST PRINTABLE ONES ARE BELOw BUT LET’S START wITH A LETTER ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.

Thank you for a wonderful and enjoyable magazine. Every article is worth reading. I read cover to cover and passed them on to our local library.

It is extremely gratifying to read articles of Canadian History not centred around Eastern and Central Canada, which seemed to be staples of our education system while I was in school, or the “changing” of history by omission, e.g. Spanish exploration of the West Coast of Canada.

I have a suggestion for an article. The BC Provincial Police (BCPP). It had more than a 90 year life span in British Columbia but is less than a footnote in our education system. When I happen to mention the BCPP to anyone under 60, eyes glaze over.

My father was a member for 7 or 8 years before the RCMP took over their operations.

Presently a gentleman is gathering artifacts and putting together a display in our Sooke Museum. He’d be a great source of information, should you decide on writing an article.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Yours truly,Tom RedheadSooke, BC Dear Mr. Redhead,What a great idea. Thanks. Look for an article on all the Provincial Police Forces in Western Canada’s past. It’ll be some time next year. Ed.

The “lefties” who hog the passing lane I find frustrating. Unfortunately, in Alberta many of the signs on the highways say “Slower traffic keep right”. This leaves it up to the drivers to decide if they are “slower traffic”. A more appropriate sign would be “Keep right except when overtaking”.

You also quoted your findings from Britain. If my memory serves me, a driver hogging the right lane in Britain can be ticketed for disrupting the flow of traffic and a driver who passes on the left can be ticketed, too. This simple arrangement reduces accidents and should be used in Canada.

Do not get me started on pedestrians exerting their “right of way” crossing the street. Wherever that culture developed I do not know. I am deeply saddened every time I hear of a young driver colliding with a pedestrian crossing the street. Pedestrians will walk out on the street without looking and expect all traffic to stop for them. I have seen it happen many times. Jim Simpson, via email I’m a retired schoolteacher and I used driving manuals as classroom textbooks for many years — basically to stress highway safety, even with kids who are far too young to be driving yet. They will drive someday.

As roads get more and more crowded, the driving manuals never change. They are hopelessly outdated. I’ve been driving safely for 56 years, and somebody has to speak up (about) bigger driving safety issues than leaving left lanes vacant for law-breakers.

The right lane is so bunched

up, with four or five times too many cars and no space between cars, that the only safe place left to drive IS the left lane. It can be used. It’s there. It’s paved. It’s not as bumpy as the right lane because trucks don’t wear ruts in it. The left lane has space between cars and the right lane doesn’t. Of course this only applies in areas with too many lanes and too little population.

My personal rule goes like this. A car pulls in front, leaving me without my “safety gap”. I slow down and drop back. Immediately another car pulls in front of me, much too close. The third time that happens, I move into the left lane. I refuse to let inexperi-enced, thoughtless, dangerous drivers box me in like that. When I am in the left lane, I carefully keep an eye on my rearview mirror. If some idiot is coming at me 30 km or 40 km over the speed limit, I pop back into that dangerous right lane until he has gone on. Other drivers going merely 10 or 15 km over the speed limit will wait behind me at the speed limit for a while. When maybe four cars are behind me, I pop into the right lane just long enough to let them go by me. Then I’m back in the left lane with space in front of me again. It works. It’s much safer than driving in the overcrowded right lane.

We need to get real about today’s world and actual driving conditions. As one who drives long distances frequently, I would estimate that your tirades against those who “camp” in the left lane apply to less than 5% of our highways in BC.

I do like other aspects of your magazine. I was especially appreciative of

the long article plus the backgrounder page about the Danes and their bravery in saving Jews from the Nazis in WW II. I am mailing those pages to a friend in Denmark who lived through that era. Thank you.Mirelle, via email THANK YOU!!!! I was beginning to think I was the only driver who realized that the left lane is for passing. Every morning on my way to work I get stuck behind people doing 60 in an 80 zone, one in the right lane and one in the left lane, side by side. This makes it dangerous.

One more problem with drivers is merging. When you merge you should be going as fast as the traffic you are merging into so that you can make a minor speed adjustment and just pull ahead of or behind someone. But no one gets this; they just creep up the merging lane at 30 kmph and then the other people slow way down to let them in and ruin the whole flow of traffic.

Thank you for your breakthrough article and a please keep up the great work. The magazine is awesome!!!Matthew StephensonPeace River, AB

Dear Mirelle and Messrs. Simpson and Stephenson,Thanks for sending such well written and well thought out responses. The topic fascinates us. Mostly we just want everyone to be safe on the roads and getting out of the way of speeding lunatics is a big help. A few readers wondered why we don’t focus on the lunatics. Have you ever talked to a lunatic? Ed.

LETTERS to the EDITOR

WEST . 9

Yet another world record for SASKATCHEWAN

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KING Me! For somE rEason, the University of Alberta’s computer science department has developed the world’s first unbeatable checkers-playing program. It’s called Chinook and it wears a checkered shirt, overalls and smokes a pipe. If you want more info, find it here: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/. W

saskatchEwan continuEs its Fishy ways. world rEcord Fishy ways.

Just two years after Father Mariusz Zajac caught a world record 18.3 lb. walleye in Tobin Lake, Saskatoon angler Adam Konrad landed a world record rainbow trout. This past June, Konrad, 26, was fishing from the shore of Lake Diefenbaker in southern Saskatchewan one evening with his identical twin brother, Sean, when he hooked the 43.6 pound rainbow with an orange Mepps spoon on six-pound test line. The monster was 38 ½” long and 34” around. It took Konrad 20 minutes to land it. The

previous world record rainbow, 42.3 pounds, was caught in Alaska in 1970.

The Konrad twins, who call themselves The Fishing Geeks, have a reputation for catching big trout in Lake Diefenbaker. They’ve netted several provincial record rainbows, including the last provincial record of 34.5 pounds.

Although called a lake, Diefenbaker is actually a 430 sq. km. (about 106,000 acres) reservoir on the South Saskatchewan River. The reservoir is used for power production, flood control, irrigation, industrial water supply and recreation, including, of course, fishing.W

Softer than caShmere, lighter and much, much warmer with less lanolin than sheep’s wool, rare and incredibly expensive at up to $1,600 a pound.

Qiviut (ki-vee-ute) is the soft underhair of the muskox, an animal genetically closer to sheep and goats than to cattle. The creatures are prehistoric; they knew the Wooly Mammoth during the last Ice Age, although, considering where they live, they probably didn’t even notice the Ice Age ending 10,000 years ago.

About 75,000 muskoxen (two thirds of the world’s population) live in Aulavik National Park on Banks Island in the NWT. Inuit from Sachs Harbour, a town of about 125 people on the southwest coast of Banks, harvest qiviut when the animals shed it in the spring. There are a few domesticated muskoxen and their owners just pull the qiviut off. Alaskan natives harvest qiviut, too.

You can buy the wool at a number of stores up north. It’s expensive but if you’re interested try Whitehorse’s www.folknits.com. They call it qiviuq, with a q, which is close enough, although Qiviuq is the name of a legendary immortal hero of the Inuit. W

QIVIUT: The world’s most luxurious wool

A male muskox is about five feet high and weighs somewhere between 600 and 700 pounds. Cows are smaller. The bulls and cows both have horns so we don’t know which one this is.

That’s Adam on the left, no, wait, maybe it’s Sean. The fish is Adam’s world record rainbow.

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ROUNDUP


ROUNDUP

BC’S PREMIER Mountain Man

in may oF 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tensing Norgay became the first people to climb Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. It was a big deal at the time but after a while it seemed

that every Tom, Dick and Harry was sauntering up Everest. So the next big deal became climbing the tallest peak on each of the world’s 7 continents. In 1985, Dick Bass, an American businessman, became the first climber to do it. Since then more than 100 people (about 5 a year) have scaled the “Seven Summits.” Now what?

Well, now it seems to be all about who can climb all seven in the shortest

possible time. And last November, Daniel Griffith, a 55-year-old mountain guide from Invermere, BC set the record of 187 days, 110 days quicker than the old record.

Seven months later, Ian McKeever, an Irishman, did it even faster: 156 days. West salutes them all and we are especially proud of our Daniel Griffith. It is an awe-inspiring feat.The Seven Summits are: Everest

IRON MEN of the Tin Man8 yEars ago, Jeffrey Barrett of Calgary, then 6, came to Vulcan (AB) with his family to watch his brothers and sisters compete in the Tin Man Triathlon. He wanted to get out there and swim, bike and run himself but he suffers from a disease of the joints

called Arthrogryposis. Then along came 14-year-old Brendan Wade, a Vulcan native, who figured out a way for Jeff to get into the game. Brendan would tow or push Jeff and they’d compete together. It took a few adjustments and some new equipment but they did it

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MICHAEL LOSIER OF VICTORIA wrote a huge bestsellerit’s callEd law oF attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t. So far it’s been translated into 20 languages with 8 more scheduled. He’s been on Oprah

PONTEIX CathedrallittlE PontEix, Saskatchewan (pop. 560) has a huge church, Notre-Dame d’Auvergne. The town itself, about 70 km southeast of Swift Current, was named Notre-Dame d’Auvergne in 1908 by Father A. Royer who’d come from the Auvergne region of France. Later the name changed to Ponteix, his home town in Auvergne.

The original Ponteix church burned down in 1923. The current massive brick and cement church opened in 1929. It’s an architectural marvel, built without wood or internal pillars. The twin towers are 40 metres high. Robert Carignan, a church member, says it means “… a whole lot of dedication … pride… courage and

… stubbornness (by) our ancestors … and we are proud of that.” Notre Dame’s 15th Century hand carved wood pieta, the largest pieta in North America, was the only thing that survived the 1923 fire and many people believe that was a miracle. For more information, call the town of Ponteix at (306) 625-3222.

and they’ve been doing a version of it every year since. The biggest change is that Jeff now wheels himself though the 2.5 km. race part. Brendan’s now 21 and a third year student at the University of Lethbridge and Jeff, 14, is in Junior High. They’ll be back next year. W

in Nepal, McKinley (aka Denali) in Alaska, Elbrus in Russia, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Aconcagua in Argentina, Vinson (Vinson Massif ) in Antarctica and Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia. (Apparently mountain climbers think of Australia − a continent − as part of Oceania, not a continent. Carstensz is more than twice as high as Australia’s tallest mountain - Kosciuszko, near Canberra.) W

four times and in People. Michael has become a one-man international multimedia industry … online, on the phone, on tapes, CDs and DVDs and at seminars in person. According to his publisher, Losier shows us “…

how to harness the power of positive thinking … three-step formula, tips, tools, and exercises … improving relationships, increasing wealth, and discovering their true desires.” All in 142 pages. Wow. W

Daniel Griffith of Invermere, BC

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BC’S PREMIER Mountain Man

IRON MEN of the Tin Man

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byDOUG NELSON

WEST . 13

SINCE THIS IS AN ARTICLE ABOUT wESTERN CANADA AND THE MOVIES, yOU’D THINk IT MIGHT BE A GOOD IDEA TO START wITH ANECDOTES ABOUT CLINT EASTwOOD, BRAD PITT, ROy ROGERS, MARILyN MONROE, ROBERT MITCHUM OR EVEN HOOT GIBSON.

We’ll get to them in a minute, because right now my most vivid movie image is of a scene in Kevin Costner’s Open Range, shot in Alberta. I’m in it, working as a double for an actor playing one of a quartet of outlaws. The other doubles are Buck Hamilton, Rick Martini, and Joe Reding. We’re all on horseback waiting for the cameras to roll.

Behind us the sun slowly sinks toward the Rockies as the film crew, a quarter mile down the hill, prepares for the day’s final shot. I’m not wearing my glasses so at that distance the crew of about 100 people appears as a blur in a sea of grass.

“K.C. (Kevin Costner) wants us to ride faster this time,” says Buck, “and even closer to the camera.”

The 1st Assistant Director calls ‘Action’ and we spur down the hill. No sensible horse will race right at a huge black hooded movie camera, so we decided to keep the nearest horse - mine - close by having the other riders crowd me over. But we can’t be too tight. Any damage to a half million dollar camera, and I’ll be immediately kicked off the set.

As we close on the camera, my eyes focus and I see we’re on a collision course. “We’re too close!” I call. But Joe thinks I’d said “Closer” and jams his horse tighter against mine. I crowd my larger horse against his and we thunder past, my boot barely missing the camera.

A loud roar erupts from the crew. As we slow and turn our horses, we see them applauding and high fiving each other.

Costner reviews the footage quickly and he is ecstatic. It’s a fantastic shot.

I’m just happy I didn’t kick the camera. I need the job.

MOVIE JOBS ARE A VERY BIG DEAL IN THE WEST’S ECONOMY

In 2006, in British Columbia alone, film, television and documentary productions funneled over 1.2 billion dollars into the economy, up a little over 500% from 211 million back in 1992. Movies pump lots of dollars into the Prairie Provinces, too. 165 million spent in Alberta in 2005, 57 million in Saskatchewan and over 100 million in Manitoba.

The benefits to Canadian actors, extras, doubles, crew, caterers, hotels, restaurants, and taxis are impressive. Spinoff and multiplier effects are harder

ILLUSTRATION by GUy PARSONS

to quantify, but they can be dramatic. For instance, a visit to Drumheller’s Royal Tyrrell Museum by Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt generated over 150 media stories. The next day there were 76,984 hits on the Museum’s website.

THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY

As early as 1897 pioneer Canadian movie maker James Freer was shooting scenes of Manitoba farm life. The attraction of this new medium was not lost on the powers that be. The CPR had built a railway across the prairies to connect British Columbia to the east and now both the government and the railway needed to fill the land with settlers.

Freer was contracted by CPR magnate William Van Horn and later by Clifford

Doug Nelson sits with actor Chris Cooper in between takes of One More Mountain shot in 1994 at john Scott’s movie ranch west of High River, Alberta. That’s Doug on the left.

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Sifton, Minister of the Interior, to produce films promoting Western Canada. The shorts bore titles like Harnessing the Virgin Prairie and Harvesting Scene with Trains Passing.

The Freer films generated some interest, but the CPR decided that British

producer Charles Urban would do a better job reaching potential immigrant audiences overseas. Urban hired noted cameraman Joe Rosenthal, fitted out a flatcar and sent the crew down the rails to film potential settlement areas and tourist attractions from Québec City to Victoria - with orders to shoot no snow scenes!

The result, 35 films called Living Canada, was originally shown throughout the British Isles

where it was so successful that the CPR used the films to induce Eastern Canadians to travel west, by train of course, ‘for pleasure or settlement.’

The BC government hired Urban in 1908 to create a film that would “make known the advantages and resources of

British Columbia to the outside world.”In 1910, the CPR commissioned

the Edison Company of New York to produce and distribute a series of dramas. Again, a special train was fitted out to carry a crew of actors and techni-cians filming subjects such as a lumber camp in BC, a silver mine near Field, an Alberta coal mine, irrigated farmland near Strathmore and a Red Deer ranch. The Edison Company completed thirteen ten minute, one-reel films. Two of these were non-fiction ‘scenics’ while the rest were dramatic shorts. Only two survive. An Unselfish Love weaves a romantic tale of love lost and found against the backdrop of a successful irrigated farm near Strathmore, Alberta. The Song that Reached His Heart features a lovesick BC lumberjack.

After WWI, Canadian Photoplay Ltd., backed by Alberta investors, sent a crew north to Lesser Slave Lake to film James Oliver Curwood’s Back to

Hoot Gibson was a huge star in the ‘20s. Movie making was slightly less formal back then.

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God’s Country starring Nell Shipman. They worked in the dead of winter in minus forty-degree weather and lost actor Ronald Byram to a fatal bout of pneumonia, but the movie proved a box office and financial success. Their next attempt, The Yellowbacks, failed and the company folded.

HERE COME THE AMERICANS

Throughout the 1920s and ‘30s hordes of Americans crossed the border to make black and white features. Usually, Western Canada was a sort of movie double, a gorgeous backdrop for American actors, American movie crews and American stories. A 1925 Hoot Gibson movie was the exception. It was about a then fairly new Western phenomenon. The movie, The Calgary Stampede, helped place Calgary’s Exhibition on the international map.

Oddly, in 1936, when Hollywood mounted a uniquely Canadian story, Rose-Marie, the producers, chose to film ‘Mountie’ Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald near Lake Tahoe in Nevada.

Director Billy Wilder came to Jasper National Park in 1946 to shoot The Emperor Waltz but he wasn’t satisfied with the Park’s foliage. Wilder had $20,000 worth of California pine trees and 4,000 ‘blue’ daisies planted on location. The film, starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine, received Western Canada’s first OscarTM nominations at the 1948 Academy Awards.TM

Several big Hollywood productions followed in the mid 1950s, including Universal’s Saskatchewan, The Far Country, and Otto Preminger’s River of No Return which was filmed in Banff and Jasper. The movie starred Robert Mitchum and Marilyn Monroe. She supposedly sprained her ankle making the movie but pioneer film maker Bill Marsden speculates that she may have just wanted time off to visit her boyfriend, Joe DiMaggio. Marsden, in his book, Big Screen Country, relates that orthopedic surgeon Dr. Pat Costigan “could find nothing wrong,

but enjoyed taping what was likely the world’s most admired ankle.”

In the early 1960s Marsden, with help from Hugh Dempsey and the Glenbow Museum, filmed a Blackfoot Sundance ceremony. An authority from the Smithsonian Institute called Okan “the best film ever made of a Native ceremony.”

HOLLYWOOD NORTH: THE BIG TIME

British Columbia experienced a burst of movie activity in 1969 with six features including parts of Five Easy Pieces, Carnal Knowledge and the quirky Robert Altman Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller. That same year another unusual Western, Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man, starring Dustin Hoffman, was shot partially in Alberta and BC, and helped make a star of BC actor (and Oscar nominee) Chief Dan George.

Alberta Premier, Peter Lougheed, saw the potential for film making in his province and in 1972 appointed Chuck Ross Manager of Film Industry Development, the first government office to promote film production for Canadian locations.

In 1975, Robert Altman returned to Western Canada, with Hollywood icon Paul Newman, to shoot Buffalo Bill and the Indians in Alberta and BC. Altman chose Western Canada “because we needed really good cowboys and Indians.” He got more Canadian help than he expected after delegates from the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) lobbied Ottawa and got a watershed ruling requiring movie producers to hire qualified Canadian crew ahead of foreigners.

Canada’s National Film Board opened Edmonton’s North West Studio in 1975 and it became a training ground for Western Canadian filmmakers like Anne Wheeler and Tom Radford. Fil Fraser’s Why Shoot the Teacher, one of Canada’s finest homegrown features, was filmed near Hanna, Alberta in 1976. It came in on budget, despite bad weather and post-production squabbles.

Usually, Western Canada was a sort of movie double, a gorgeous backdrop for American actors, American movie crews and American stories.

The role of Metropolis was played by Calgary.

IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S …

The Alberta Film Commissioner hit pay dirt in 1977 when Warner Brothers decided to shoot Superman and then Superman II in the province. For weeks Christopher Reeve swooped through the streets of downtown ‘Metropolis’ Calgary. Location scouts found the perfect house to “play” Superman’s boyhood home a bit farther south in High River. When they heard the good news, the house’s owners decided to paint and spruce up the place, but all the renovations had to be undone. The art director wanted the house as it had been!

With Alberta attracting numerous film shoots, other provinces began opening their own film boards. British Columbia, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan began promoting their provinces as prime movie locations.

In 1980, BC was home to what many reviewers consider one of the best Canadian movies ever made, definitely our best Western. In an obituary for director Philip Borsos, Maclean’s magazine related: “The Grey Fox (1982), the tale of a gentleman bandit who sought refuge in the wilds of British Columbia at the turn of the century, was a remarkably self-assured debut. A western romance unlike any other, it

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possessed a quiet grandeur, an intimate sense of time and place that suggested Canadian filmmakers could create their own version of Hollywood magic. The Grey Fox was, in fact, the first major English-Canadian movie to attract serious international acclaim.”

THROUGHOUT THE 1980s THE BUSINESS OF MOVIES IN WESTERN CANADA GREW EXPONENTIALLY, ESPECIALLY IN BC AND ALBERTA.

Notable indigenous features produced during this period include Anne Wheeler’s adaptation of Marilyn Halvorson’s novel Cowboys Don’t Cry, and the multi award winning Bye Bye Blues. TV series like Danger Bay, The Beachcombers and North

of 60 represented continuing Canadian stories.

In 1989, Alberta hosted the largest-scale film ever produced in Canada. Ten To Chi To (Heaven and Earth in English), a Japanese production, eventually employed over 4,100 Canadian cast and crew, and close to 1,000 horses. This movie set a world record for the most saddled horses (800) ever used in one movie sequence. In order to keep control, wrangler boss John Scott organized his wranglers and SSE’s (Special Skills Extras) into military style sections.

Two years later, Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven came to southern Alberta. Eastwood earned Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture,

Setting up for 1970’s Little Big Man, shot in BC.

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helped in no small part by a phenomenal Canadian crew and exceptional southern Alberta scenery. Unforgiven is only the third Western in history to win an Oscar for Best Picture.

A few years later Alberta’s scenery

WEST . 17

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helped Legends of the Fall win an Oscar for cinematography. It was the first movie I worked on and it was an eye-opener. One day I would be a Canadian army teamster; the next day I’d be a German cavalryman. One memorable

day, I was on horseback watching some doubles do a scene. After the last stunt shot the camera angle was changed and the young lead actor, who had been standing beside me, went in for his close-up. I hadn’t heard of him before but you can guess the response when I told a female acquaintance that I had been right next to Brad Pitt!

In BC, in 1997, Canadian cowboys and cowgirls, dressed in troll costumes, charged Viking ramparts aboard sturdy Fjord ponies. Other riders galumphed across the BC rangeland on loose-limbed Arabian camels in Antonio Banderas’s Eaters of the Dead (eventually renamed The 13th Warrior).

In part because of the (now very slightly) lower Canadian dollar, provincial tax credits and spectacular wide open spaces, Western Canada remains a primary location for numerous Hollywood features, series

and MOWs (Movies of the Week). After advice from Clint Eastwood,

John Cusack came north to do his father’s pet project, The Jack Bull, shooting on Cochrane’s CL Ranch’s Lonesome Dove site. Sam Elliot used the site for You Know My Name. So did Jackie Chan for Shanghai Noon and Tom Selleck for Crossfire Trail. BC Wrangler Danny Virtue’s Bordertown facility near Maple Ridge is a popular production site, too.

As the world eases into its third millennium, all four western Canadian provinces continue to benefit from the movie industry. With its diverse locations and large pool of experienced

crews, British Columbia is the third largest production area in North America, behind only Los Angeles and New York.

Since 1948, Alberta crews have been involved with movies that earned 46 Academy Award Nominations and 14 Oscars (most recently in 2005 when Brokeback Mountain earned an Academy Award for director Ang Lee.) That’s more than any other province.

Government agencies in Manitoba and Saskatchewan are actively pursuing more US productions but Longview’s John Scott bemoans the present situation in Alberta. “Alberta was the first to have a film officer,” says Scott, “but now we are lagging behind …” To him this is a great shame because he is bullish on the movie industry. “There is no bigger growth industry,” Scott enthuses. “And we’re not blowing something up in the process, or drilling a hole in the ground or burning or tearing something down. All the movie industry does is exploit the scenery in our backyard, exporting it and our peoples’ talent. ” WEST

British Columbia is the third largest production area in North America after Los Angeles and New York.

THE PEOPLE’SPAINTER OF ALBERTA


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bywENDy DUDLEy

ROLAND GISSING’S GREATEST DREAM wAS TO BE A fREE-ROAMING COwBOy ON THE CANADIAN RANGE wHERE fENCES wERE fEw, HORIzONS wERE fOREVER, AND THE CLOSEST NEIGHBOUR wAS A HALf DAy’S RIDE AwAy.

But, in 1923, at age 28, after 10 years of working for various ranches between Alberta’s Peace River country and the Mexican border, Gissing put down his reins and picked up a paint brush. He’d always done campfire sketches but after encouragement from one of the greats — cowboy artist Will James with whom he worked in a Montana cow camp — he chose to pursue art as a full-time career. We can be thankful he did.

Gissing’s art captured Alberta, its golden hay fields, hazy foothills, wild streams, and purple-shadowed mountains. Now, forty years after his death, Kori Gregory, Gissing’s step granddaughter and estate custodian, is seeking a place to permanently display his legacy, a celebration of his beloved West through hundreds of oil paintings.

“There’s nothing outside the Calgary Stampede to honour our western heritage. He lived that life, and I want

future generations to enjoy his legacy,” she said.

His work remains so popular that a recent exhibition of original work held at Spruce Meadows show jumping venue in Calgary sold out in four days. It attracted thousands, some familiar with his work, others seeing it for the first time.

If you ever saw a painting that made you homesick for Alberta, it was most likely a Gissing. During the ‘30s and ‘40s, he was Canada’s foremost landscape painter. His work included seascapes and Okanagan orchards, but he is best remembered for his love affair with Alberta. During World War II, he donated a picture to the Canadian Legion in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the request of soldiers who longed for a reminder of home.

“His landscapes of harvest fields, their hay stooks in the foreground and Gissing blue mountains punctuating a robin’s egg sky became his summer and fall signatures. Such vistas are a reminder of those days before technology changed agriculture,” said Calgarian Brian Stone, an avid Gissing collector. “You just don’t see fields with hay stooked like that. That’s why I like these paintings. They

PHOTOGRAPHY by jAMES MAy

Out where the hand clasp is a little strongerOut where the smile dwells a little longerThat’s where the West begins,Where there’s more of singing and less of sighingWhere there’s more of giving and less of buyingand a man makes friends without half tryingThat’s where the West begins.

Roland Gissing

THE PEOPLE’SPAINTER OF ALBERTA

john ware’s Cabin (Canada’s best known black cowboy). Oil on Canvas, 1963

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on Christmas greeting cards. In 1950, Alberta Distillers printed his Mt. Assiniboine painting on its Mount Rock Whisky label, and in the 1960s Calgary’s Maclin Ford used one of his bucking horses to promote its new Mustang car.

Personally, Gissing found the mountains ominous, but he knew what the public liked, so that’s what he painted. Subsequently,

he became known as the people’s painter. “The golden fields, the blue mountains, the creeks. He painted Alberta. We were so fortunate to have him. Look at what he’s left us,” said Stone.

Elite artists criticized Gissing for being too commercial, but he shrugged it off. He had bills to pay.

Over the years, his style evolved from early pen and ink sketches of bucking

broncs and cattle roundups, to pastel and watercolour scenes, to oil on canvas landscapes which, with their bold colours reflecting a bold landscape, captured the attention of galleries across the continent.

Gissing’s first exhibition was in 1929 at the Calgary Public Library. In the following years, he had shows in Winnipeg, Swift Current, Montreal, Chicago and New York. Throughout the 1940s, he painted the development of Alberta’s oil and gas industry in a series that was exhibited in San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. His sketch books also hold a record of southern Alberta’s ranches, including the Bar U west of High River, the A7 west of Nanton, and

documented something that is gone.”If his amber harvest fields saluted

Alberta’s countryside, then his landscapes of spruce trees casting long blue shadows across an icy brook and pristine snow were trademarks of a Western Canadian winter.

You don’t have to be an art collector to savour Gissing’s palette: In 1938, Coutts-Hallmark reproduced his scenes

Above: The 5300 sq. ft. exhibit honoring Gissing’s life and works at Spruce Meadows.

Left: Gissing created many works on location with his travelling paint kit which still contains an unfinished work.

Opposite: Roland Gissing at his studio near Okotoks, 1966.

WEST . 21

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the Waldron in the Porcupine Hills.Today, his work is in galleries and

private collections around the world. Among dignitaries owning a Gissing is Queen Elizabeth, who received a painting when she was a princess visiting Cochrane, Alberta in 1951.

In his later years, Gissing painted more for himself, depicting the big open skies around Medicine Hat, the sage and draws of the Cypress Hills, and the pillars of rock along the banks of the Milk River. Here was land that was so big it dwarfed its inhabitants and here was the frontier spirit that attracted him from his native England in 1913.

A humble man, Gissing wasn’t keen on people. He married twice, but solitude and nature were his closest companions, as revealed in his vibrant writings.

“Civilization is like a black plague or fog creeping over the land and obliterating all that is beautiful,” he wrote. “Barbed wire fences, ploughing, motor roads, ugly modern bungalows. To anyone who has known the charm of the wild open prairies, a carpet of green and flowers as far as the eye can see with its own solitude, such steps are terrible.”

So how would he react to the crowds flocking once again to see his work?

“He’d be pleased, as long as he didn’t have to be here,” said his stepdaughter Nonie Houlton. “He was a very, very humble man, very unassuming. I’m sure he’s looking down, wondering what the fuss is all about.”

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She recalls a man who cherished quietude, busying himself with various hobbies far from the roar of the city. He lived with his first wife along the Ghost River west of Calgary, in a cabin and studio he built. A resourceful man, he designed his own saddle, and carded and dyed the wool for his saddle blankets. He had a passion for trains, building steam-powered locomo-tives with a lathe he made from a McCormick Deering hay mower.

In 1944, a fire destroyed the cabin and many of his paintings and valuable railway books. When he sold the property in 1955, he bought 20 acres near Okotoks, where he built a home and spent days with his second wife tending to flower beds, painting, and building a model railway in the backyard.

“I can remember as a little girl watching these trains. I was just tall

Left: Gissing’s step granddaughter kori Gregory wearing a limited edition t-shirt from the Gissing Collection. This one is The Cowgirl, original watercolor, 1944.

WEST . 23

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enough. The track was above my head,” said Gregory, whose fondest memory is of her “Grandpa Gus” in his plaid shirt, sitting at his easel.

On the evening of Sept. 29, 1967, Gissing was working on his model railway when he suffered a fatal heart attack. He was 72.

In 1969, Calgary’s Gainsborough Galleries, which for many years held an annual Christmas exhibition of Gissing’s works, hosted an estate art sale. In less than half an hour, nearly all of the 54 paintings were sold.

Over the years, what remained of his work and items were passed along to Nonie Houlton, who, without a place to display them, put them in storage. When Kori Gregory decided to mount an exhibition, she inherited the estate. Within months of creating a web site, she began to hear from collectors across Canada and the US who loaned paintings for the Spruce Meadows show. Reproductions, originals and other memorabilia are available through the web site at www.rolandgissing.com

“I’ve always been interested in western heritage, and my grandfather was a big part of that,” said Gregory. “His artwork was well received, but he was about so much more. He played a big role in Alberta’s heritage, and … that’s what I want to honour.”

Watching the crowds once again admire her grandfather’s work, she struggled with words: “You just don’t know how great this makes me feel. He was so loved, so admired. And people are coming out again, falling in love with his work again.” WEST

Over the hills and far awayWhere the white clouds playin the sunWhere the West wind kisses our faces,Oh, there’s nothing on earth but fun.

Roland Gissing

Collectors from across Canada and the US loaned paintings for the Spruce Meadows show.


THE CANADIANTRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE RANGERS

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by jUDy wAyTIUk

jEffREy QAUNAQ jOINED UP AT 18, AS SOON AS HE wAS OLD ENOUGH, BECAUSE “I’M A CANADIAN. I wANT TO PROTECT My COUNTRy.”

Now 29, Qaunaq is one of 1,500 Canadian Rangers, all military reservists, in the 58 patrols that make up the First Canadian Ranger Patrol Group (1CRPG). He’s based 1,100 kilometers above the Arctic Circle in the hamlet of Grise Fiord, at the southern tip of Ellesmere Island. Grise Fiord, Canada’s most northern community, is called Aujuittuq, “the place that never thaws,” in Inuit.

The 1CRPG volunteers patrol the Northwest Territory, Yukon Territory, and Nunavut, 40% of Canada’s land mass.

1CPRG is one of five Ranger Patrol Groups, 4,500 members in all, that have protected outlying regions of Newfoundland and Labrador, northern Ontario, Québec, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, and the remote west coast regions of British Columbia, for more than sixty years. The Maritimes don’t have Rangers, probably because they don’t have the kind of isolated communities that need them.

Few Canadians outside the remote regions they serve even know the Rangers exist. Here at West, we stumbled across them while researching the annual Hudson Bay Quest dogsled race a few issues back. The Rangers, we discovered, help the race to run safely every year, staking out the trail and watching for mushers in trouble.

The Rangers’ training equips them to help regular troops and to conduct reconnaissance. They’re also available to pitch in whenever their communities need them. They even give northern winter survival training to southern Canadian Forces.

KNOWLEDGE ABOUT THE NORTH

“The guys down south have to learn to cope with the cold, because it’s not the same there. If you light a stove in the south, you do it in a certain way. Up north … you have to pour naphtha on it to warm it up, or it just won’t work,” says 1CRPG Commanding Officer Christian Bergeron who is based in Yellowknife.

There are women Rangers and there’s no upper age limit; Bergeron has an 84-year-old in his command and says older Rangers offer invaluable experience. “They’ve got so much knowledge about the North,” he marvels, “ice conditions, navigation - it’s one thing to read a GPS, but how can you read the ice to tell what is safe and what is not?”

Arctic-based Rangers carry out more than 110 exercises and operations a year to ensure Canada’s sovereignty over the wild, windswept, achingly-empty Arctic terrain. “This year from March 19th to April 14th, we launched three patrols on Ellesmere Island, on the northwest, central and eastern sides,” says CO Bergeron.

And, every year or so, Qaunaq and a small band of Ranger companions travel west from Grise Fiord by air to Resolute, Canada’s second most-northerly community, aka Qausuittuq — where the sun never sets — on Cornwallis Island. They make the 450 km. return trip by snowmobile. The journey can take up to three weeks, depending on the weather and how often the snowmobiles break down. Really harsh weather can drive the patrol group into their tents to hunker

TRUE NORTH STRONG AND FREE RANGERS


KEEPING THE NORTH CANADIAN

The Rangers’ sovereignty patrols, regular training exercises, and simple, steadfast presence up here function as a quiet, continuous declaration that these frozen lands belong to Canada. Resolute and Grise Fiord were both artificially “seeded” by the Canadian government more than fifty years ago when a small number of Inuit families from northern Québec and Baffin Island were moved here partly to establish firmer claims of Canadian sovereignty in the north. (This summer, Russia sent a submarine deep under the ice to plant a flag at the north pole.)

Today, nearly all northern Rangers are local Inuit. They provide critical services to their communities, says CO Bergeron, who’s worked with them for seven years. “It’s impossible to do

without them up here. We do domestic operations a lot, like ground search and rescue, help with power outages. If

there is a flood, who else will handle evacuations? Northern communities don’t have any resources, so the Rangers become very important. And we support most of the events in the North; we do the Hudson Bay Quest, the Yukon Quest, the River Quest.”

As well, the Rangers are role models for Northern teens. There’s even a Junior Canadian Rangers program for boys and girls aged 12 to 18 with 104 locations and 3,000 members, half of them in the remote North. The youngsters learn life skills, first aid, firearm safety, and traditional Inuit skills - whatever the community feels its young people need to know. “The Junior Rangers program is designed to respect the needs of each patrol’s communities,” explains CO Bergeron. “We ask the elders what skills they want to teach the kids, and we try to find elders to teach what’s wanted.”

The Rangers’ history goes back to World War II when the volunteer

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RANGERS

down, sometimes for days, and wait for a storm to pass.

“We keep the tent warm, the stove filled up, look out from time to time to see if there are any polar bears,” says Qaunaq. They receive military rations, but Qaunaq and his comrades prefer their traditional diet so they hunt caribou, ptarmigan, seal, and rabbit. “A caribou’s about three to four days of food,” he says.

Although the Armed Forces would supply them with winter gear, these Rangers wear their customary clothing of parkas (anoraks), mitts, and mukluks made from animal hides. Caribou, mostly. The traditional clothing is much warmer, says Qaunaq.

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A Canadian Rangers patrol flies the flag as they halt for tea on jones Sound en route from Resolute to Grise fiord in April, 2006.

WEST . 27


Pacific Coast Militia Rangers, modeled loosely after the British Home Guard, were formed in 1942 to act as coastal watchers looking for enemy activity along British Columbia’s isolated coastline. Officially stood down on September 30, 1945, they were revived two years later as a corps of the reserve militia and renamed the Canadian Rangers. Their duties were expanded to cover the Arctic and Canada’s coastlines.

With active recruiting, Canada’s Rangers numbers are slowly increasing. From a current 4,500, they are expected to grow to 4,800 by 2008. And if they’re all even half as dedicated as Jeffrey Qaunap, Canada’s Northern and remote regions are in strong, quiet hands. WEST

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Ranger BASICS

The Rangers’ weapon is the WWII era .303 calibre •Lee Enfield No. 4 rifle. It’s an old gun, but it’s proven to be the most reliable in Arctic weather conditions. Each Ranger is issued 200 rounds a year. Rangers aren’t required to carry the weapon, but most do. Rangers get paid for between eight and 12 days •of annual service and for special training and operations.New Rangers take a ten-day qualification course, •including basic drill, shooting, general military knowledge, navigation, search and rescue, wilderness first aid, radio communications, and annual programs of formal military instruction and field exercises.The Ranger uniform is a red sweatshirt, t-shirt, •ball cap and arm band.The Rangers’ motto is • Vigilans.

when it’s stormy, the Rangers pitch camp and wait, peeking outside every now and then to check for polar bears.

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wE kNOw wHO THEy ARE AND wHAT THEy’RE fAMOUS fOR, BUT wHAT ELSE DO wE kNOw ABOUT THEM? NOT MUCH UNTIL NOw.

CINDY KLASSEN (born in Winnipeg)

She wanted to be a hockey player. But when she didn’t make Canada’s 1998 Olympic team, her parents suggested she give speed skating a shot. Cindy didn’t much like “… those skin-tight outfits and strange, long-bladed skates,” but she gave it a try and eventually won more Olympic medals (6) than any other Canadian, ever.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN (born in Edmonton)

As a University of Manitoba student, he failed to win a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. So he enrolled at Cambridge. The renowned communi-cations theorist is not understood so much as quoted (“The Global Village” —“The Medium is the Message” — etc.) Wired magazine declared him its patron saint in the early ‘90s. He once called Andy Warhol a rube.

BRENT BUTT (born in Tisdale, SK on the day Lenny Bruce died)

Comedian Butt is the creator (and star) of Corner Gas. He’s married to co-star Nancy Robertson. His almost-perfect school attendance resulted in perfectly poor grades although he did

THINGS YOU PROBABLY DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT

12 FAMOUSWESTERN CANADIANS

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manage to write a play called Bored of Education. He was inspired by standup comics on Al Hamel’s Vancouver TV show in the late ‘70s. He’s the youngest of seven kids.

LOUIS RIEL(born in Red River settlement in [now] Manitoba)

He was an American citizen (and a Republican of all things) when the Canadian government hanged him in November of 1885. Amazingly, the Americans didn’t seem to care that Canada had executed one of their citizens.

JOHN DIEFENBAKER (born in Neustad, ON)

Dief is our only Prime Minister of neither British/Irish nor French extraction. He failed in his first 5 attempts to get elected to something (House of Commons twice, SK legislature twice, Mayor of Prince Albert) but once he made it to Parliament, in 1940, he didn’t leave for 39 years. He wasn’t born in his beloved Saskatchewan but he got there as fast as he could.

TOMMY DOUGLAS (born in Falkirk, Scotland)

Emigrated to Winnipeg at the age of six. Became a Baptist minister then premier of Saskatchewan. He’s known as the father of Canadian Medicare, in which he believed passionately, perhaps as a result of an experience he had as a child. He’d injured his leg and it might have been amputated

12 FAMOUSif a Winnipeg orthopedic doctor had not operated for free, as a teaching aid to medical students.

LESLIE NEILSEN (born in Regina, raised in the NWT)

A disc jockey and stage actor before his first, of about 1,500, TV appearances in 1950. He worked mostly in dramatic roles for the next 30 years. Then, cast as Dr. Rumack in Airplane!, suddenly he was funny and he stayed funny in Police Squad, Naked Gun, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Mr. Magoo, and Wrongfully Accused. His brother Erik was a longtime PC MP for the Yukon.

ERNEST (E.C.) MANNING(born in Carnduff, SK)

Premier of Alberta from 1943 to 1968. For a while, he was the longest continually serving democratically elected official in the world. He was, at the same time and for many years, a radio preacher on Canada’s National Back to the Bible Hour. His son, Preston Manning, is founder of the Reform Party.

MICHAEL J. FOX (born in Edmonton)

Fox’s middle initial isn’t J. It’s A. He first tried to register with the Screen Actors Guild as Michael Fox but somebody already had that name. He considered adding his real middle initial but thought he’d get teased as Michael Eh? Fox, so he borrowed Michael J. Pollard’s initial.

LEON MANDRAKE (born, probably, in New Westminster)

A working magician and, apparently, the inspiration for the comic strip Mandrake the Magician. He and the fictional Mandrake sure looked alike. On tour in the US in the forties, Leon Mandrake and Company met Phil Davis, the cartoonist for the strip. They became friends and corresponded for years.

KIM CAMPBELL (born in Port Alberni, BC)

Her real name is Avril Phaedra Douglas Campbell. She was Canada’s first female Prime Minister. When Avril was 10, she worked as a host and reporter on the CBC’s Junior Television Club, which

ran for nine weeks in the spring of 1957. You can see a clip here: http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-73-2084-12975/politics_economy/kim_campbell/clip1

DICK ASSMAN (born in Regina)

Somehow, in 1995 David Letterman, far away in New York City, found out about this Regina gas jockey. He thought the name was funny enough that for about a month he interviewed Assman every night by remote feed. By September that year, 49% of Canadians had heard of Assman who, reportedly, is working at a PetroCanada station on South Albert Street. WEST

Louis Riel was a foreigner?

Ernest Manning, Alberta’s premier preacher.

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In fact, it features everything Western Canadians want the most, according to Ipsos Reid’s extensive 2006 Survey. (See the results at ipsosreid.com.)

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kevin Hawayhe lives and dances his destiny.


WEST . 35

THE QUIET IN THIS TOwERING STAND Of POPLARS IS BROkEN By THE THUNDERING BEAT Of A DRUM AND kEVIN HAwAyHE (HAy-wAH-HAy) BEGINS A wARRIOR DANCE.

He believes that destiny put him here to keep his culture’s traditions alive. “When I was a kid, there were people who told me to let it go. They said our past will never come back so I should just let it fade away. The spiritual ways here were lost sometime in the ‘50s when so many of our people dropped away. We have to return to the cultural way of life in order to realize who we are and move forward. I come here humble. I come like waves of wind in the grasses, hoping people will see that they need to be reconnected with our past.”

He was born 40 years ago right here on the Carry the Kettle reservation, 100 km east of Regina. His earliest memories are of traveling to powwows with his parents, of hearing the drums and seeing the warrior dancers. He gave it all up in his teens and during that dark period, which lasted two years, Haywahe discovered there was no escape from destiny.

He says it began with dreams and visions of coyotes and wolves. They came to him nightly and they haunted his subconscious. “The animals even started appearing to me in the daytime, and later on they began coming to our home.” The normally shy coyotes came right onto the front steps of his parents’ house.

Kevin’s older brother, Tim, had visions of coyotes and wolves at the same time and his dreams moved him to create a coyote dance headdress, an ancient symbol for

hunting scouts; it’s not common among modern-day native dancers. Apparently, other tribes began connecting to Kevin’s dreams. Some members of a Sioux tribe from Cheyenne River in South Dakota saw Haywahe in their visions and coyotes and wolves appeared to them in their lodges telling them about ‘a man from the North.’

“They had never met me before, but when they finally saw me with the coyote regalia at a powwow, they gave me gifts and invited me to visit them. I didn’t really believe this was happening to me, but I went down (to South Dakota) anyway.” The South Dakota tribe adopted him into their cultural family and gave him his Indian name, Walking Wolf.

After that visit, he embraced his dreams and they continue to guide him today.

“They directed me to help people with my gift of dance. From that time on, when I danced, it was more connected with the spirits and drum, and it became about helping people.”

He says he has witnessed people rise from their wheelchairs when he dances, while others have claimed to be cured of illness. Recently he was at a powwow in BC and was asked to help a 26-year-old veteran of the war in Afghanistan who was suffering from post-war trauma. “He had killed people, so I believe the spirits probably followed him home.” Haywahe danced for the young soldier, holding a special drum ceremony which led the man to tears and helped relieve him of his anxiety.

For the past 23 years, Kevin Haywahe has attended powwows throughout North America, dancing for as many people as he can. Seventeen years ago, he joined the New York-based American Indian Dance Theater by Schwei Productions, which travels the world. This October, Haywahe will rejoin the troupe on its world tour which includes stops in the Middle East and Europe. Spreading his gift worldwide is important to him, but Haywahe says his first obligation is to his home community. “I made a promise long ago when I was a teenager that I couldn’t leave my community stranded.”

He is one of just 15 residents on the reservation who can speak Nakoda, the traditional Assiniboine language. He has made every effort to educate younger generations about their traditional roots but he still fears that the language might

HaywaheMeet Kevin

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHSby CHRISTALEE fROESE


INSURANCE

be lost. “If you lose your identity and what we originally were, you don’t know self-respect, you don’t know discipline and some don’t even know respect for their own families.”

Kevin and some members of his family have set up the Flinthorn tipi camp at Carry the Kettle in an effort to educate others about traditional ways. Sweat lodges, talking circles, trail rides and traditional arts such as beading and drum-making give visitors a tangible feel for the Assiniboine culture. The camp features traditional meals, such as bannock and Saskatoon berries, with the highlight being the preparation of a fresh buffalo. According to traditional values, every part of the buffalo is used during a camp experience, from the hide to the meat to the bones.

This fall, Haywahe will reach an even wider local audience as he performs his shield dance for the Saskatchewan Roughriders at their September 29 home game against the Montreal Alouettes. WEST

Spreading his gift worldwide is important to him, but Haywahe says his first obligation is to his home community.

WEST . 37

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TRACy ISABELLE LEfT MAPLE CREEk, SASkATCHEwAN TO TAkE HORTICULTURE AND LANDSCAPE DESIGN AT OLDS COLLEGE IN ALBERTA, AND MOVED TO BROOkS IN 1994 fOR A LANDSCAPING jOB. While visiting her parents she bought a loom at a garage sale for $20 because it looked like an interesting contraption. To figure out how to use it, she joined the Weavers and Spinners Guild in Brooks, a group that meets to weave and spin wool and learn special techniques. Eventually it led to a felting class.

Four hours southeast of Maple Creek, Dave Kuffner was raised on a cattle ranch near Glentworth, Saskatchewan. He moved to Brooks in 1990 to drive a truck in the oil patch for a friend from his hometown. Tracy worked next door to Dave, and that’s how they met. They were soon married and then Dave began driving a truck for Brooks Industrial Metals. Wanting to live in the country, they bought a ramshackle 80-acre farm located 20 minutes north of Brooks, gaining an old farmhouse, a garage, and a leaning barn.

For the Kuffners, sheep farming began

by accident when a friend sold them four bred Corriade/Romney ewes. All four had female lambs, then all eight produced, and suddenly they had a sheep farm. Eyeing the old garage on the property, Tracy envisioned The Wool Mine Gift Gallery to sell wool and felt creations as possible income since they lived on the high-traffic road leading to Dinosaur Provincial Park.

By the time their son Maxwell was three and daughter Isabelle was one, Tracy’s parents retired and moved from Maple Creek to help. With childcare in a mobile home across the yard and someone to

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHSby DONNA MACNAUGHTON

The Accidental SHEEP FARMERS

WEST . 39

help Dave when she was away, Tracy could devote more time to her business. After a small profit the first year, the farm’s income grew—especially with the addition of summer craft camps in July for 15 kids at a time during weeklong sessions.

Looking for new ways to use wool, Tracy self-published two children’s books with illustrations made of felt, and now speaking engagements are another source of revenue. She attends craft sales throughout western Canada and teaches workshops at Olds College during Fibre Week in July.

Once a year, the Kuffners hire Dave Carlson from Fort Macleod to shear their flock of 68, a task that takes about six hours. They send three enormous lightly packed bags of wool to be cleaned and processed, getting back about 40 per cent of the 175 lbs. in each bag after dirt, dust, and lanolin are removed. The less desirable belly wool is sold to manufacturers for insulation and cigarette filters. The herd supplies Tracy with enough wool for the year, and each spring they replace older sheep with new lambs, selling the rest to a meat packing operation in nearby Duchess.

Tracy colours the processed wool with special dye and creates designs from photographs or her imagination, using the wool like paint and laying her creation out on a bamboo blind. She sprinkles the wool with water and dishwashing liquid to remove any remaining lanolin, rolls up the blind, and rubs it back and forth until it lathers. When it’s unrolled, the wet felt that results resembles a watercolor painting. For larger pieces of felt used as fabric for coats or blankets, Dave built a felting machine that sandwiches the designs between two blanket-sized wooden platforms lined with rubber

mats, and uses a hydraulic system to raise and lower the top one. He attached a slightly off-kilter motor to agitate the machine, a process that makes felt the same way the rolled blind does for smaller designs.

In addition to sheep, they raise a calf for meat and three llamas that protect the sheep from coyotes. Tracy sometimes uses llama wool in her designs because she likes the natural colour. She has also used angora from bunnies, mohair from goats, and, once, even dog hair to make mittens for her daughter’s friend.

There isn’t much actual shepherding required on the farm. A simple handclap calls the sheep from the fields to the pens for the night or, if they’re out when Dave comes home, the horn on his pickup starts them moving. Dave sells a hay crop each year and still works as a truck driver because there are a lot of improvements needed on the farm, including a new house. Going from cattle rancher to sheep farmer didn’t appeal to him at first, but he’s gotten used to it.

Despite old westerns perpetuating the notion of feuds between sheep farmers and cattle ranchers, neighbours have no problem with the Kuffner farm. In the past, sheep probably went through fences and killed grass by nibbling it to the roots, but with better fencing today, Tracy says the sheep rarely escape, so all is good. WEST

Above: Tracy in her wool Mine with one of her unique wool paintings.

Left: Newly shorn sheep seem to have a few questions for Dave.

The Accidental SHEEP FARMERS


WEST . 41

jOANN AND ANDRé BABINEAU, MARRIED 11 yEARS, LIVE NEAR STONy PLAIN, ALBERTA, jUST wEST Of EDMONTON. THEIRS IS NOT A TyPICAL LIfE.

Joann lives with Friedreich’s Ataxia, a rare and debilitating nerve disorder. The first symptoms appeared when she was 19 and began having problems with her balance. Some of her relatives had had FA, but Joann didn’t make the connection and thought she had an inner ear problem. Then came the diagnosis followed by the prognosis: her doctors told her she probably wouldn’t live to see her 26th birthday. She turned 40 in August. “I’m stubborn,” she says with a smile.

She’s optimistic, too.Seven years ago, when she was still

using a cane to get around, Joann fell in a parking lot and had to crawl to her car, scraping her knees. That’s when she considered getting a nurse but hesitated because she thought she might lose some of her independence. While she was debating what to do, she met a man with Muscular Dystrophy. He was in a wheelchair and right beside the chair was a dog, a dog trained to handle his special needs. Like the rest of us, Joann had seen Seeing Eye dogs and heard of Hearing Ear dogs but this was a new concept. Joann made some inquiries that led her to the Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guides’ school in Oakville, Ontario.

The Lions asked for the relevant medical information from her doctor and therapist and a videotape of how she walked. They

also wanted her to tell them what she needed from a special skills dog.

And eight months later Joann brought home Anton, a Golden Retriever, who immediately boosted her quality of life, confidence and sense of independence. “He’s there for safety and peace of mind,” she said. “He’s like an extension of me.”

I was lucky enough to witness Anton helping Joann. For instance, on the command “fetch phone”, Anton quickly walked to the cordless phone, picked it up by a knotted cord attached to the antenna and brought it to Joann. He tugged on a rope attached to the fridge door to get Joann a bottle of water, leaving a steak on an adjacent shelf untouched. He even helped her do the laundry by picking up any stragglers that fell out of the basket she wheels on her walker to the laundry room. Anton could pick up a credit card or even a dime from the floor. And Joann and André told me it took them just fifteen minutes to teach him to turn on a touch lamp.

Away from home, Anton opened handicap doors and pushed elevator buttons. If Joann fell, he stood sturdily, bracing himself, so she could lean on him to get up. Joann just had to whisper “Help” and Anton barked to alert people that she needed assistance.

Anton even helped Joann to meet people. Just his presence seemed to make her more approachable. Passersby would stop to ask about her beautiful dog or about her illness; before Anton, most people just ignored her.

And Anton eased some of André’s Eagle stands ready to help make joann’s life easier.

HELPING JOANN

byLOUISE SCHUTTE

PHOTOGRAPHY by BLUEfISH STUDIOS INC


worries. He makes it home every evening but during the day he’s on the road a lot in his job as a golf and turf technician. Pre-Anton, he called Joann often. Now he can focus on his work.

Anton retired recently and loves his new home with André’s sister in New Brunswick. His successor is Eagle, a

Yellow Lab, who hasn’t mastered fetch phone yet but he can open the fridge and pick up small items. Joann doesn’t recommend leaving paper money around, though. Eagle makes it disappear.

The Lions don’t charge qualified applicants for the dogs. Most of the costs are covered by donations and

Top: Eagle gets the phone and brings it to joann.

Centre: Eagle casts a baleful glance at the camera.

Bottom: Anton, Eagle’s predecessor, in his New Brunswick retirement.

WEST . 43

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WEST is the only magazine about Western Canada’s people, their lives, communities, families, organizations, history, future, land, wealth, beauty, uniqueness, characters, etc. It’s about who they are, where they come from, what sets them apart, what makes them proud. If it’s upbeat, important or

interesting and about Western Canada, it will eventually be in WEST.Published quarterly, each issue features articles and personal

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sponsorships. The Edmonton Lions Club contributed $10,000 to help pay for Eagle. Joann flew to Oakville for almost three weeks training. “To be a good team,” Joann explains, “you have to work on the commands every day, be repetitious. It’s a lot of work having a working dog, but the payback means saving your life.”

And there’s another form of payback. Joann says “I wanted to do something different to pay back the Lions for what they had given me.” She worked hard for three months to help organize the first ever Mall Walk for Dog Guides at West Edmonton Mall in 2004. The $27,000 raised was the most money in Canada that year. She started Tender Hearts in 2002 to collect, wrap, and hand deliver gifts to assisted living homes. In 2006, they handed out 2,000 gifts. On June 9th of this year Muscular Dystrophy Canada awarded her the 2007 National Mary Ann Wickham Award in recognition of her volunteerism. Joann couldn’t believe she was being recognized for something she’s so passionate about.

She’s working on a new idea she calls the Awareness Race. It’s similar to the Amazing Race, but it pairs a person with a disability with a public figure such as a politician or a media personality. “It will be to raise money, but the bigger picture will be awareness of the importance of wheelchair accessibility,” she says.

I asked her about her involvement in volunteerism. “It keeps me strong and positive,” she answered. WEST

Special Skills DOGSHERE ARE THREE wEBSITES yOU CAN VISIT fOR MORE INfORMATION OR TO MAkE A DONATION TO A VERy wORTHy ORGANIzATION.

Lions Foundation of Canada Dog Guideswww.dogguides.com

Western Guide & Assistance Dog Societywww.guidedog.ca

National Service Dogswww.nsd.on.ca

STORY AND PHOTOGRAPHby CINDA CH AVICH

SIMPLY DELICIOUS

MASTERINGThe BasicFRENCH SAUCES


WEST . 45

ACCORDING TO jULIA CHILD IN The FrenCh CheF, fRENCH COOkING IS ALL ABOUT THE SAUCE. fRENCH SkILL wITH SAUCES TURNS CHICkEN BREAST INTO SUPRêMES DE VOLAILLE AU CHAMPIGNON, MAkES A STEAk A BIfTECk SAUTé BéARNAISE, AND GIVES POACHED EGGS ON TOAST THE CACHET Of EGGS BENEDICT.There are only a few “mother” sauces in the French repertoire, (plus endless variations, of course; I’ll get to some of them in a future column), so if you can learn to make a basic white sauce, brown sauce and hollandaise, you’ll be on your way to gourmet territory.

WHITE SAUCEWhite sauce is the basis for so many

everyday dishes: creamed spinach, asparagus au gratin, even a gourmet version of macaroni and cheese (see recipe below.) The formula is essentially flour, butter, milk or white broth (chicken or fish). A medium white sauce requires 1½ to 2 tablespoons of flour for each cup of liquid, and about the same amount of unsalted butter.

Start by melting the butter over low heat in a heavy saucepan. Whisk in the flour,

getting rid of any lumps, and stir for about 2 minutes. The result is called the roux

Meanwhile, heat the cup of milk or broth and slowly add it to the roux, whisking constantly as you pour. Bring to a boil over medium heat and whisk for a minute to thicken. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Et voila! – le basic white sauce.

BROWN SAUCEYou start your basic brown sauce, or

Sauce Espagnole, like a white sauce, only with a brown roux of 6 tablespoons of butter or olive oil and 4 tablespoons of flour, cooked together slowly until the mixture starts to brown. Add a little more butter or oil if the mixture is too dry; it should be creamy and start to look like peanut butter. Make sure to stir constantly to prevent burning.

The next step involves a homemade beef stock (best) but you can also use canned bouillon, simmered with a bit of white wine or sherry and some minced onion or bay leaf. The stock should be strained and hot before you add it to the browned roux. Add the liquid slowly, and continue to whisk, to avoid lumps. Season the brown sauce with salt and pepper, and whisk in

Real macaroni and cheese doesn’t come out of a box. It starts with a white sauce variation that’s combined with shredded cheese (aka mornay sauce). Use your favourite old cheddar, or a combination of cheeses, and an interesting short pasta like gemeli or orichiette, to take it into gourmet territory. For a more virtuous (but equally silky) sauce, try using one 13-oz (385 mL) can of evaporated milk instead of whole milk and cream. It makes a low fat, yet amazingly creamy, macaroni. Kids like it, too.

3 cups (1/2 pound/225 mL) macaroni or cavatappi(Italian spiral macaroni)2 tbsp (25 mL) butter1 heaping tbsp (20 mL) all-purpose flour1 cup (250 mL) milk 1/2 cup (125 mL) whipping cream1/2 tsp (2 mL) Dijon mustard

2 to 3 drops hot pepper sauce2 cups (500 mL) grated old cheddar (or substitute 1cup/250mL of the cheddar for Monterey Jack,Swiss, pecorino romano or Parmesan) Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bring a big pot of salted water to a rolling boil and cook the pasta for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente (tender but still firm to the bite). Drain and set aside.

To make the sauce, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Whisk in the flour and cook for 1 to 2 minutes or until flour begins to colour. Slowly add the milk and cream, whisking until the sauce is smooth and bubbly. Whisk in the mustard and hot sauce. Remove the pan from the heat, add the cheese, and stir until just melted. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Add the pasta to the sauce and heat through

for 1 minute on medium low heat (be careful not to overheat or the cheese may separate). Serve immediately. Serves 2 to 4. W

MASTERING

a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste to add flavour and body.

A classic brown sauce is a demi-glace, which is enriched with an intense, syrupy reduction made by making a brown meat stock from scratch, then boiling it until it is reduced to a thick glaze. Brown sauce should be translucent and glossy, never glutinous.

HOLLANDAISE SAUCEA hollandaise is like a mayonnaise – an

emulsion sauce thickened by the action of fat, like olive oil, suspended in a mixture thickened with egg yolks. It can be tricky to regulate the heat on the stovetop to make a hollandaise so I like to make it in a blender. This always works and it’s easy to keep warm in a small thermos.

Just start with 3 egg yolks at room temperature. Then you’ll need 2 tablespoons of freshly-squeezed lemon juice, a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper, and ½ cup of hot melted butter.

Put the yolks, lemon juice, salt and cayenne in the blender and, with the machine running, slowly add the melted butter in a steady stream. When the butter has all been incorporated, the sauce should be thick and emulsified. WEST

The BasicFRENCH SAUCES

RECIPE FOR GOURMET MAC AND CHEESEfrom The Guy Can’t Cook, by Cinda Chavich.

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Turning Milestones Into Stepping Stones.

WEST . 47

byANGELAMORRISON, RN

HEALTH MATTERS

EVERy fALL, My PARENTS’ AND GRANDPARENTS’ DOCTORS REMIND THEM TO COME IN fOR THEIR fLU SHOTS. We all should probably get our flu shots, but it’s especially important for people over a certain age, say 60. Anyone can get the flu but the elderly, people with chronic illnesses, and immuno-suppressed people are especially at risk.

Influenza or “the flu” is a contagious viral infection of the nose, throat and bronchial tubes. There are two main types of influenza viruses, Type A and Type B, but that classification is a little too simple because both types have many different strains and they change from year to year. Broadly, Type A tends to cause more serious illness.

Though influenza’s impact can be mild, the more severe versions can be fatal. The famous flu epidemic of 1918 killed an estimated 20,000,000 people worldwide. (Recent research suggests that the epidemic might have been one of the first appearances of the bird flu.)

In the northern hemisphere, flu season occurs mostly from November to April. According to the Health Canada website an estimated 10 to 25 per cent of Canadians get the flu every year. Most recover completely, but 4,000 to 8,000 Canadians, mostly seniors, die annually from pneumonia related to flu and many others die from other serious complications.

Flu-like illnesses can occur in the

TIME FOR FLU SHOTS

summer but the culprit is usually another kind of virus.

Coughing and sneezing are the most common ways to spread the flu bug from person to person but just shaking hands or even touching something a flu-contaminated person has touched can do it. A healthy adult can be contagious one day prior to symptoms developing and then up to five days after becoming ill. There’s a blood test for the flu but it’s rarely used because of time and cost. Usually diagnosis is based on symptoms

which include fever (usually very high), chills, headache, tiredness, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, muscle aches and stomach discomfort such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Complications can include pneumonia, ear and sinus infections, dehydration and worsening of chronic medical conditions.

See a doctor when your fever has lasted more than three to four days or if it gets over 39 C (102 F) in adults and 38 C (100.4 F) in children. If symptoms last longer than a week, definitely see a doctor as soon as possible. Also, if you have trouble breathing, chest pain or a cough that is bloody or rust-coloured.

The common treatments for the flu are rest, drinking plenty of fluids, avoiding alcohol and tobacco, taking over-the-counter medications to reduce fever and pain. Antibiotics don’t work on a virus but they might help with complications. High-risk individuals may be treated

with anti-viral medications but these will need to be prescribed early.

The most important prevention control measure is routine yearly immunization before the start of fall flu season. Frequent hand-washing with warm, soapy water is essential to reducing the risk of contamination. Covering the mouth and nose when you are coughing and sneezing is more than polite; it cuts the chance of infecting others with the virus. Most of all, stay home when you are not feeling well.WEST

Illustration: Julie McLaughlin


BACKGROUNDER

MEET A REAL MOVIE COwBOyOn a western movie set Head Wrangler John Scott

of Longview, Alberta wears red so the director knows where he is. He’s worked in about 130 movies in the last 37 years. His first was Little Big Man, which starred Dustin Hoffman.

He supplied stock and equipment for the 1972 movie Prime Cut starring Lee Marvin and Gene Hackman. Three years later he began working in movies full time with five of them scheduled back to back, including Mustang Country with Joel McCrea and Paul Newman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians.

For work on set, he hires skilled ranch hands and, often, World or Canadian Champion rodeo competitors. “I couldn’t have done it alone,” he says. “I’ve always had good people … Tom Glass and Frank Edge were with me from the start.”

Scott and Glass are founding member of Stunts Canada and Scott has acted as stunt double for numerous stars, including Gene Hackman, Paul Newman, Burt Lancaster and Roy Rogers, his childhood idol.

For the Antonio Banderas epic The 13th Warrior, Scott needed to supply camels and train BC and Alberta cowboys to ride them. Other movies have called for just about everything from badgers and eagles to muskoxen and butterflies.

Jackie Chan’s Shanghai Noon needed a paint horse to sit and drink from a bottle. Scott found the horse, Fido, then brought in a ‘liberty’ horse trainer from Québec to do the job. Claude Chasse had just three months to prepare the paint to work without visible constraints, and Fido stole his scenes much as Lee Marvin’s horse did in Cat Ballou.

For the Japanese epic Heaven and Earth, Scott had

to gather and train over 800 period mounts and that experience led to an invitation to New Zealand to oversee the massive cavalry scenes in Peter Jackson’s spectacular Lord of the Rings.

STAy HOME OR GO SOUTH?It’s a tough call for Western Canadian movie

talent. There’s more work, more money and potential worldwide fame down south, if you’re very good and very lucky, so it’s hard to blame them for leaving us. Michael J. Fox, Rod Cameron, Alexis Smith, Yvonne DeCarlo, Giselle MacKenzie, Raymond Burr, James Doohan, Arthur Hiller, Chief Dan George, Jill Hennessey, David Steinberg, Leslie Nielsen and dozens more took the Hollywood route. Edmonton’s Anne Wheeler, a talented director, is a prime example of a great talent who stayed home. She’s made some terrific features including Loyalties and Bye, Bye Blues. Of all the famous Western Canadian stars to go south, only one costarred with a giant ape.

CARDSTON’S fAy wRAy

She’ll always be famous for her role as Ann Darrow in the original King Kong (1933) but Vina Fay Wray starred in dozens of other movies, including The Four Feathers (1929), the last mainstream silent movie made in the US.

She was born on September 15, 1907, on a farm near Cardston, Alberta. Her mother was from Utah and her father from England. The family left Canada when Fay was just three and eventually settled in Los Angeles. She appeared in 22 movies, mostly Hal Roach comedy shorts, before she turned 20. She was consid-ering an offer to appear in a cameo role in the 2005 remake of King Kong when she died in her sleep at home in New York City. She was 96. The Empire State Building dimmed its famous roof lights for 15 minutes when the news was announced. In 2006, Canada Post issued a Fay Wray stamp.

wESTERN CANADA’S fILM fESTIVALS

North America’s longest running film festival is The Yorkton Short Film Festival in eastern Saskatchewan. It recognizes outstanding Canadian shorts and rewards the best of them with the annual Golden Sheaf Awards.

Larger Festivals in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver offer screen space for local and international features. The Edmonton International Film Festival lets film fans mingle with film makers before and after showings, “… all for the love of movies.”

The Calgary International Film Festival features three of the city’s older theatres: the Globe, the Uptown and the Plaza. The Empress Theatre in Fort Macleod, Alberta’s oldest, recently hosted the 2007 French Language Film Festival.

At the annual Gimli Film Festival, documentaries and dramas from Manitoba and circumpolar nations are projected onto a huge 35 foot outdoor screen on the shore of Lake Winnipeg.

Many smaller festivals focus on specific subjects. Victoria’s Antimatter Festival bills itself as ‘the premier showcase of experimental cinema in the west’. This might be disputed by Calgary’s Underground Film Festival (CUFF), which shows ‘independent, provocative and bizarre film and videos’. Another Calgary festival, herland, specifi-cally displays women media artists.

The annual Banff Mountain Film Festival presents the world’s best mountain related films and speakers. At Dreamtalkers in Edmonton, indigenous people from around the world gather to share their common bonds and to educate the public about Aboriginal culture, art and heritage. Kelowna’s Okanagan Film Festival and the Whitehorse Available Light Film Festival both prefer locally produced film and video. Most festivals offer timely seminars and even financial support for local film makers. The National Screen Institute’s Film Exchange in Winnipeg shows 100% Canadian shorts and features. With made-for-TV movies of the Week so important to Western Canada’s movie industry, the Banff World Television Festival is vitally important. With its prestigious awards, the Banff Festival is considered ‘the world’s most important television content creation event’. W

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THE 2007 Hudson Bay Quest Sled Dog RaceNEITHER SNOw NOR RAIN NOR GLOOM Of NIGHT NOR …

“Never again” swore Quincy Miller after finishing 6th in the 2006 Hudson Bay Quest. Miller and some other mushers were caught in a fierce blizzard twice during the 250 mile race along Hudson Bay’s unforgiving coast. “I was never so scared in my life,” he said.

Then this year’s training season came along and Miller, who operates the adventure company

Paws’n’Paddles Wilderness Tours near La Ronge, Saskatchewan noticed that his team of 10 Alaskan Huskies was stronger than ever. “Seeing those dogs I just had to go back and race again.” And he did.

This year, the weather was warm, for the Arctic, and the first 30 hours were fairly pleasant. Then the skies opened, drenching mushers, dogs and gear. As night fell, the rain turned to snow, the wind picked up and the annual blizzard settled in. “I thought I was scared

last year,” Miller said after the race. “This year was worse. Being wet with temperatures dropping can be deadly when you can’t build a fire. I just had one thought: Get my dogs and me back to safety, before the storm gets too nasty to move.” And with that he started passing team after team until his lead dog crossed the finish line and a surprised Miller had won the Hudson Bay Quest in a record 37 hours and 57 minutes, 14 hours faster than the previous best time. W

FRIEDREICH’S AtaxiaIT’S A HEREDITARy NEURODEGENERATIVE DISORDER first described in 1863 by German physician Nikolaus Friedreich. It affects speech, coordination, sight, hearing, and eventually leads to heart disease. The gene responsible for FA has been identified and research is continuing.

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MOVIE ReviewIn our Spring issue, Deborah Lawson wrote about Edmonton’s Danish hero, Lynn Hamilton, and about the courage of all Danes during the WWII Nazi occupation of their country. Disney made a movie about it called Miracle at Midnight. Here’s Deborah’s review.

September 27, 1943. Nazi occupation troops, in Denmark since April 9, 1940, have posed no direct threat to Danish Jews. But increased resistance activity goads Nazi General Werner Best (Benedick Blythe) to declare a surprise deportation of Denmark’s 7,500 Jews.

In spite of warnings from Georg Duckwitz (Patrick Malahide), a German naval attaché who’d lived in Copenhagen for many years, Best launches his plan. “Arresting the Jews is inevitable. I just want to get the credit for it.” In a stroke of malice, he plans the raid for Rosh Hoshana, the Jewish New Year. Horrified, Duckwitz warns the Jewish community.

Miracle at Midnight presents the story, based upon true events, of Chief Surgeon Dr. Carl Koster (Sam Waterston) and his son, Henrik (Justin Whalin), each of whom is actively working against the Nazis without the other’s knowledge. With only four days warning, Koster opens his

home and Christiana Hospital to hide Jews, transporting them to safety in ambulances. Meanwhile, Henrik smuggles refugees to the coast, where fishing boats, the only vessels not commandeered by enemy naval forces, smuggle people to Sweden. When Carl and Henrik are discovered, they and Koster’s daughter, Elsa (Nicola Mycroft), must themselves flee. Mrs. Koster (Mia Farrow) is separated from her family for two years.

Full of realistic action and edge-of-the-seat sequences, Miracle at Midnight vividly portrays heroism in action. It tells of a country whose people put their lives on the line for truth and humanity. Denmark is the

According to Dr. Patrick McLeod at Victoria General Hospital, “We think that the mutation affects how iron is handled [between] cells in the body. This indicates that we now can think of treating our patients with FA.”

It is estimated that one person in every 50,000, has Friedreich’s

only nation that rose to the challenge of Hitler’s Final Solution in this way. But with typical humility, Koster said, “We felt we only did what was normal. In a time when the world was lost in madness, we were lucky to escape it.”W

Ataxia. Males and females are equally affected. In this country, the condition is more prevalent in the French Canadian population.

The Canadian Association of Familial Ataxias collects donations to fund scientific research for this slowly progressive genetic disorder. W


WEST’s editor raves…

RANTS & RAVES

I GOT A NEw LAPTOP COMPUTER THE OTHER DAy AND fOR SOME REASON I STARTED TO wONDER wHAT ARISTOTLE OR SHAkESPEARE wOULD THINk Of MODERN COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGy.

The last 50 years have seen more technological advances in all fields than the previous 5,000 years, roughly the length of time it took to get us from the invention of the wheel to the personal computer and the cell phone.

Some of West’s readers are old enough to remember when a “car phone” was just ship to shore radio. In 1960, long distance calls from any kind of phone were a big deal. To call Prince George from Selkirk, you’d dial (what a quaint word) “0”, give the operator the number you want, then hang up. She’d ring you back when the call went through and half the neighbours on your party line would listen in on your chat with Aunt Mabel. Now phoning

Newfoundland, or New South Wales, is as easy as calling across the street.

Just 40 years ago, computers were huge machines, constantly fussed over by white-coated technicians in climate controlled rooms. My tiny laptop is hundreds of times more powerful than those massive UNIVACs but I don’t use it for anything a manual typewriter couldn’t handle.

Oddly, with all the dazzling technology at our fingertips, the biggest change in communications is a completely human one; for the first time in history, average people can reach out and touch just about anyone, millions of anyones, for almost no cost.

And that human element would probably interest Aristotle and Shakespeare the most, once they got used to the technology. They were born almost 2,000 years apart and in all that time, and for another 400 years after Shakespeare, the power of mass communication was always in the hands of very few people. Now a 16 year old kid blogging in his basement in Kelowna can reach more

people than Aristotle reached in his lifetime, or, probably, since then.

This is great, I suppose, but it’s weird, too. For one thing, the thoughts of a kid in Kelowna don’t quite match up with the thoughts of Aristotle. For another, the Internet has no values. None. So it’s been a boon to pornographers, perverts, terrorists, criminals, spammers, scammers, phishers, liars, gossips, thieves and other assorted creeps. Most adults can cope but kids can’t and they have easy access to all this stuff. We used to be able to keep our kids out of bad places but now we can’t.

The Internet has changed the nature of commercial transactions. Twenty years ago, sellers controlled the flow of information about products, services and prices. Now, thanks to the Internet, buyers are in charge. It’s a fundamental change but somehow I don’t think Aristotle would care all that much if he was still with us.

Communication is also changing the way newcomers assimilate into society. Until fairly recently, immigrants from (and to) any country had no choice but to adapt to their new homelands because they were cut off from their old ones. The only way to stay in touch with the “old country” was by snail mail. The only way to visit was by a long and expensive sea voyage. Now, you can move from, say, Italy to Edmonton, and stay in touch with Naples constantly and fly back and forth on a whim. That may be good or bad, we don’t know yet, but it’s going to make Canada a very different country.

The Quality Issue. Nearly all communication via email and telephone is drivel. If the people who send us jokes all day had to use envelopes and stamps, they wouldn’t bother. And, judging by the chatter we hear all around us, nothing people talk about on cell phones would be worth a quarter if they had to use a pay phone. As the quantity of communications increased a zillion fold, the quality of communications decreased by about the same factor. We’re using the most powerful communications systems in history to write and call each other about nothing at all.

It’s amazing; electronic digital communication makes it possible for us to perform magic but we treat it as if it was Rodney Dangerfield. No respect, no respect at all. (If you’ve never heard of Rodney, try here: http://who2.com/ask/rodneydangerfield.html) W

mike mcc

Ain’t TECHNOLOGY Grand?

We’re using the most powerful communications systems in history to write and call each other about nothing at all.

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Ad Number: DC3 RRM O7 5130 Publication(s): 4/C West Magazine

JOB SPECIFICS

Client: DaimlerChryslerCreative Name: 345 HorsesMain Docket #: SCD COR O7 4071(Studio Use Only)

Art Director: NoneCopy Writer: NonePrint Production: Frank NinnoRetoucher: NoneLive: 6.875 in x 9.875 inTrim: 8.375 in x 10.875 inBleed: 8.625 in x 11.125 inArtwork Scale: 1:1Print Scale: 100%

FILE SPECIFICATIONS:

File Name: O7 5130.inddCreation Date: 7/24/07 4:16 PMLast Modified: 7/27/07 4:32 PMInDesign Version: CS2Round #: 1 Page Count: 1GRAPHIC PRODUCTION:

Operator: Graham WasherCorrection: Carly Pelham

PREMEDIA:

Operator: Joshua Hardaker

SIGNOFFS:

Creative:

Production:

Account:

Premedia:

FILE LOCATION:

SGL_Chrysler:Volumes:SGL_Chrysler:Chrysler_National:CurrentJobs:O6 9176-345 Horses:O7 5130.indd

INKS:

Cyan

MAGENTA

YELLOW

BLACK

FONTS & PLACED IMAGES

Family Style

Meta Bold LF RomanMeta Normal LF RomanBullpen Italic, 3D

File Name Colour Space Eff. Res (PPI)

RamRanch.eps CMYK 286 ppiGLBTHh_LCR.epsMASTER TRIMARKSBS18083_FPO_bw_grd.eps Gray 291 ppi, 280 ppiAlberta's Truck Stop_084.eps

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This ad prepared by SGL Communications

for BBDO Toronto 2 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario

phone 416.413.7495 fax 416.944.7883

345 HORSES, REAL LEATHER, NO BULL.2007 DODGE RAM 1500 > The available 5.7L HEMI® V8 combines 345 hp with the advanced technology of a fuel saving Multi-Displacement System (MDS) – a fi rst for large pickups. For more powerful stuff, visit your local Alberta Dodge Dealer. Dodge Ram 1500 starts at 28,260*.

Every Dodge Ram comes ready to work. MDS only available on Ram 1500 models equipped with the 5.7L HEMI V8 engine. *MSRP for Dodge Ram Regular Cab short box ST 4x2. MSRP for Ram 1500 Quad Cab 4X2 SLT short box shown: $38,400. Price includes freight ($1350) and excludes taxes, insurance, registration, licence, dealer administration fees and new tire duties (in Quebec) not included. Dealers may sell for less.

Available leather-faced seating standard on Laramie models.

V i s i t a l b e r t a t r u c k s t o p . c aVisit albertatruckstop.caV i s i t a l b e r t a t r u c k s t o p . c a

T: 8.375 inT

: 10.875 in

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