Extreme Frontiers: Racing Across Canada from Newfoundland to the Rockies (11 page)

I
’ve hung around the film business most of my life, and I can tell you that if you talk to any actor, they’ll confess that
the one genre they all want to be in is a Western. I’m no different. I’d love to be in a Western, and I know Ewan would too.
Perhaps we could do one together, remake
Butch Cassidy
or something. Right then, though, the chance of me getting a call from the Coen brothers seemed slim, so I decided to settle
for the real thing and the Circle Y ranch in the Badlands of the Big Muddy in southern Saskatchewan.

I slid my way on the bike around a gravel road that twisted through low-lying hills that were green and dusty. It was another
baking day, the sky overhead clear and blue, and we arrived at the clutch of buildings that make up the Circle Y in the heat
of the midday sun. Sitting on the porch in his hickory rocker was the owner, Michael Burgess. We were in a remote spot, very
isolated, and Michael told me that in the winter they sometimes had people walk down to the yard after getting stuck in the
snow on the hill. As he put it, theirs were the only yard lights for miles in any direction.

Much of the twenty thousand acres Michael ranched was rugged grazing land that he rented from the government in thirty-three-year
blocks. Originally it was his grandfather who came out here; an entrepreneur with various businesses in southern Ontario,
he’d had a yearning to ranch, and the family had now been here for seventy-four years. When I made the mistake of asking Michael
how he farmed, he put me straight right away.

‘We ranch,’ he said. ‘We don’t farm. Farming generally means cultivating the land. The only crop we grow is hay, permanent
cover that we cut every year. Basically we’re a cow-calf ranch, Charley: that means we run cows and raise calves to sell either
to dairy farms or feed lots.’

He told me it was a hard business that had hit a really low point with the BSE crisis in 2003. Things were finally getting
better now, though, with the export markets opening up again.

‘Having said that,’ he added, ‘input costs keep going up, with fuel and whatnot, so I don’t know if we’re getting any farther
ahead. We just feel better about it, I guess.’

I’d been studying the map before we got here and worked out that this ranch ran almost right down to the American border.
When you look at the map you can’t help but notice how the border is very squiggly back east but then becomes this long, straight
line once you get on to the plains. I asked Michael why that was, and he told me that back in the days of the first settlers,
the Americans were lobbying hard to take more of western Canada and the Canadians were fighting hard to keep it. In the end,
the politicians settled matters by agreeing that the 49th Parallel should form the border in this area. As with many
borders, however, the people living on either side are pretty similar, with most of them making their living from the land.
Tammy, Michael’s wife, was American. He told me how he and his two neighbours decided to find themselves American wives, so
they headed across the border. In Tammy’s case, although she changed country, she only moved four miles house to house when
she married him.

In the past, the border area wasn’t as heavily patrolled as it is now. When cattle crossed over, as they were wont to do,
there was no problem with the authorities in Montana when Michael and his hands went to get them back. That all changed after
9/11. Since then the US Department of Homeland Security has tightened things up considerably. Now, they patrol in SUVs and
on quads, and they also fly both manned and unmanned aircraft over the area.

We talked about the old days – Prohibition, when the rum runners would shift white lightning back and forth to speakeasies
and blind pigs in the US. Given that this was pretty rough country, however, there wasn’t that much smuggling going on up
here. Michael made the point that the Badlands wasn’t the easiest place to run illicit booze, but it did make a great hideout
for outlaws at the turn of the twentieth century. Train robbers and bank robbers, horse thieves from the US, they all would
come up from what back then was Valley County, Montana, to hide out in the Big Muddy Badlands of Saskatchewan. Eventually
it was such a problem that the North-West Mounted Police (as they were then) dispatched a couple of men from their post at
Wood Mountain, but even that didn’t help much, as I would find out later.

The area was also rife with horse rustling. Michael told us about a horse thief named Kid Trailer. Kid Trailer was a young
guy who played the fiddle and was a favourite at dances on both sides of the border. Apparently he was playing one night in
Antelope, Montana, when the sheriff recognised him and arrested him. He tied the kid up and was going to take him home to
Culbertson, but the dance-goers broke him out so he could finish playing.

I was keen to see if Michael could get us down to the border. From the beginning of this expedition we had wanted to push
the boundaries of Canada, and we’d already done that on the east coast.

I’d ridden here on the BMW, of course, but as soon as I saw Lane’s truck, I fell hopelessly in love with it. Lane is Michael’s
son, who recently bought his own ranch that butts right against the border. He had this really cool 1984 Dodge Prospector
pickup, which was on its third engine and gearbox; it had a short bed, which made it unstable, as did the height it had been
jacked up to. He told me it wasn’t safe to drive. In fact, that’s an understatement; the word he actually used was ‘insane’.
It sits up too high, rolls easily and therefore doesn’t corner very well – and this was rough and rugged country. Nothing on
the truck was original. Lane had replaced the half-ton chassis with one from a one-ton truck instead; inside the cab, the
taped-up bench seat was from an earlier model. He told me that most of the parts in the vehicle were ‘after market’.

‘That there used to be shiny,’ he said, pointing to the steering rack as we lifted the bonnet. ‘The pump fell off the other
day. I’d never even touched it but it fell off anyway. I guess over time most of what you see has fallen off. Got it fixed
back, though, and it only squeaks a little.’

He let me drive, and it was fantastic; massive knobbly tyres and the paintwork all covered in dust. Michael came with me
and I took the opportunity to ask him more about the area. He told me that the yard at their ranch sits right across what
was the old Willow Bunch Trail, along which Jean-Louis Légaré, the trading-post operator from Willow Bunch, had escorted Sitting
Bull and his people back to the US to surrender to the army in the late 1800s.

I loved driving that truck; of all the vehicles I’ve ever driven, it ranks way up there with the best of them. It felt like
it was part of Canada, part of the American continent, part of the west, I suppose. I drove with the window rolled down and
my elbow on the sill. The bumps in the road, the rock-hard suspension, the play in the steering – this was what driving in
North America is all about. The experience had made me a little emotional. I told Mungo that it had been the highlight of
my whole Canada trip. Never mind canoeing or climbing or making nails with the Vikings; it was all about this truck.

We reached a gate with a signpost for the Giles Ranch. A sign outside told us that ‘Trespassers will be given a fair trial
then hung’. Just to make it doubly clear for those who didn’t understand English, there was a picture of a neatly tied noose
draped over a tree branch. We really were deep in the Great Plains here and it’s hard to get across just how huge the distances
are. The American side is pretty desolate and the Canadian side is nowhere near as densely populated – the nearest town is
Big Beaver, where fresh fruit and vegetables are delivered to the store every Thursday. Michael and Tammy try to get to town
once a week to pick up groceries and the mail, and when their children were still at school, they had to travel fifty miles
there and back on the bus.

We drove a little further, through a collection of small hills and white-faced bluffs that personified the Badlands. It was
dusty; there hadn’t been much rain here lately. Finally we arrived. I could see the pyramid-shaped hill named Peak Butte that
marked the border. There was a pole on top, and normally a flag would be flying, but for some reason nobody had erected one
this year. This side of the hill was Saskatchewan and the far side Montana; we really were at the extreme frontier.

The whole area is littered with caves; this was the sort of place where the train robbers of old would have holed up. It was
a notorious hideout of the Wild Bunch, a loose configuration of bandits who congregated here in the late 1800s. With the price
of beef crashing and ranches going broke as far south as Texas, unemployed cowboys migrated up here and fell into collective
thievery. The caves were named after Sam Kelly, who ran the Nelson-Jones gang; a wooden sign marks the entrance to what was
originally an old wolf den that Kelly and his men had enlarged.

This was the northernmost point in the Outlaw Trail, a series of intersecting routes created by Butch Cassidy that allowed
him to make his escape after robbing the Union Pacific Railroad time and again. By the time he was finished, Cassidy had a
notorious secret path that ran all the way from Canada to Mexico, with way stations (usually friendly ranches) every fifteen
miles. Outlaws could hold up a train or rob a bank, then use the trail to make their way north or south to safety, and the
authorities couldn’t get close.

Not far from the old wolf den was a larger cave dug from the hills that could house a dozen horses. Michael told me about
Dutch Henry, probably the most successful horse thief of all time. He would steal herds from ranchers in Montana, drive them
to Canada and sell them, then steal them back and drive them south to Wyoming or Deadwood in Dakota territory, where he would
sell them again.

The Circle Y is in Huntley Coulee, named after Jasper Huntley, a rancher from the old days who was a friend of the outlaws.
He’d use his running iron to change the brand on horses stolen in America. When the Mounted Police dispatched those two guys
from Wood Mountain to patrol the Big Muddy, they ended up staying with Huntley and consequently didn’t have much success in
catching anybody. Whatever they told him or he overheard, he’d pass to the outlaws so they could evade capture.

On the other side of the valley from the Burgess place is Carlisle Coulee, named after Frank Carlisle, a Mountie who, according
to Michael, ‘went bad’ and hooked up with a bunch of train robbers. One day he got drunk and was sleeping it off on the Marshall
Ranch when he was supposed to be in Montana blowing up a bridge to stop a train. Because of that there was no robbery, and
two members of the Wild Bunch rode to the Marshall place, grabbed Frank and took him to Carlisle Coulee, where they shot him
dead.

There’s another coulee further north known as Roan Mare; it was named after a horse that would swim the treacherous Big Muddy
Lake without hesitation. When they became aware of that phenomenon, the outlaws would bring up stolen horses and get the mare
to lead them across the lake. That gave them an advantage over the Mounties who were chasing them, because they would have
to ride around the lake, by which time the outlaws were long gone. The bed of the lake is alkaline and therefore soft, and
in the shallows it can suck you down. Somehow the roan mare sensed that and knew how to pick her way across.

Thinking about it, those outlaws were pretty smart guys. Taking the lead from Butch Cassidy, they devised routes and
trails and cultivated friendships with ranchers to make sure they always had the drop on the lawmen who were pursuing them.

I got to drive the Dodge up on to the hill overlooking Montana. A creek ran between the hills and it was easy to see how a
whole gaggle of outlaws could disappear in a place like this. It was staggeringly beautiful: copses of trees and the creek
meandering below me and nothing on the horizon but rolling hills and that big sky they talk about in Montana. Standing high
on a rock, I was on the extreme southern frontier of Canada. We’d started on the easternmost lip and now we were in the south,
and just a stone’s throw away from America.

Leaving the caves, we drove along a narrow strip of empty road to the border crossing that lies between Big Beaver, Saskatchewan,
and White Tail, Montana. The Canadian post had been closed some time ago, and stopping the truck, I walked around the barrier
that marks the end of Canada. Now I was in no-man’s-land, and ahead of me was US Border Station 1. There the colour of the
road changed from gritty white to a pinkish colour marked with yellow lines.

The US border agent walked up to see us; he knew Michael and his wife Tammy, but I suppose he wondered what I was doing prancing
up and down while Mungo recorded my every move with the camera. He was a nice guy named Carl, and he spoke to us about how
things were changing in Canada. With the drug wars going on in Mexico, the border agents down there were all over it, which
meant that some of the cartels were shipping drugs up the coast and bringing them into the States from Canada. On top of that
there was the problem of terrorists,
although he figured there were probably enough of those already in America to do all the damage they wanted.

I stared out across the border. The land of opportunity was just a few short steps away. But that was for another time and
another adventure. I jumped back into the Dodge, ready for my next stop: Alberta.

A
lberta sits directly to the west of Saskatchewan and is the fourth largest of the ten provinces at over 600,000 square kilometres.
When you consider that the entire United Kingdom is only 240,000 square kilometres, that’s still pretty huge! It is very much
cowboy country, still, famous for the largest rodeo in the world, the Calgary Stampede, and we were hoping to catch that while
we were there. But before we even reached Calgary, we stopped for fuel in the small town of Maple Creek, still in Saskatchewan,
and discovered another rodeo. Not quite the Stampede, but it was taking place today and we had to check it out. Yesterday
in the Badlands had been all about the old-time cowboys; now we had a chance to see the modern-day version displaying their
skills in the arena.

We had no idea what to expect when we arrived at the rodeo grounds. I asked around and was told that this was an annual event
where local ranch hands had the chance to show their skills at roping and branding, penning cattle and riding a saddle bronc.
There’s a part of every guy that wants to be a cowboy,
and I really wanted to get involved. The organisers told us that a saddle bronc – an unbroken horse bred to buck – was too dangerous.

They would let me have a go on a cow. So I’d be riding a steer then, like the children, when I’d been imagining climbing the
rail like Steve McQueen in
Junior Bonner
: it would be like the ice hockey all over again. Oh well, at least there was less risk of broken bones. Wandering over to
the main arena, we watched a few contestants putting some horses through their paces. We took a seat up in the bleachers and
I looked out beyond the metal fences – there was nothing but the road between us and the horizon far, far in the distance.
It’s flat around Maple Creek, so flat there doesn’t really seem to be much of a horizon at all. I found that I was missing
the cliffs of the Big Muddy.

The tournament announcer’s voice crackled over the tannoy, talking about the abilities of the competitors, and how they reflected
their day jobs. The rodeo is the only sporting contest in the world where work-day skills are tested in open competition.
And they’re big business – the Calgary Stampede is just one part of a professional circuit that takes the competitors all over
Canada and the United States. Competitors come from as far afield as Brazil, Argentina and even Australia, and the prize money
can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not here, though; here there wasn’t any money on offer, only the traditional
rodeo belt buckle awarded to the overall champion.

We listened intently as the announcer told us that if we were there for thrills and spills, we’d probably see a few. He added
that what we were really going to witness, however, was something similar to a game of chess. ‘It’s not necessarily the
move that is spectacular,’ he said. ‘It’s the thought process that goes into it.’

We watched the first teams out there ‘bulldogging’ – where two cowboys go after one steer and rope both the head and the back
legs, then get off their horses, haul the steer down and tie the legs together. It was fascinating watching the various competitors
and the animals they were chasing; how some were a lot wilier than others. A few teams managed to get it done really quickly,
whereas others made a small mistake and the steer took off in another direction.

Between the rounds, country music blared from the tannoy. You know the kind of thing: a croaky voice singing about how lonesome
he is since his wife and dog ran out on him. It’s the type of music that on any other day might make you contemplate suicide,
but out there in the heat and dust, with the smell of the livestock, it was just as it should be.

The place was heaving and there was a real buzz in the air. There was no doubt that people looked forward to this event, where
neighbours from different ranches could get together, drink beer and share war stories.

Down in the arena, I grabbed a seat next to an older, rake-thin cowboy called Eric. He was perfectly turned out in a striped
shirt and Wranglers and a white straw Stetson curled up at the sides. He told me that this event had been running for twenty-five
years now; it was a tradition that was entrenched in the community. He’d participated in the action plenty of times, competing
on about fifteen occasions – back in 1995 he was on the winning team, and today he was wearing the massive silver belt buckle
he’d won that day. He’d been particularly good at what they call team penning, which is when three cowboys use horses to separate,
or ‘cut’, a group of cows from the herd and
corral them. Cutting horses are generally a breed known as American Quarter Horses, renowned for their speed, and Eric told
me there is good money in breeding them.

Early on we’d bumped into a team of girls, and we’d been rooting for them all day, because they seemed so nice and chatty,
interested in who we were and what we were doing there. They’d done well with the team penning, but hadn’t been so successful
when it came to bulldogging. I asked Eric about the girls and he said they’d grown up on ranches with their brothers and were
a match for any man when it came to a saddle horse.

Eric ranched five thousand acres just down the road, which was a pretty small outfit for this part of the country. He said
that these days it was all he needed – he had a small herd and he didn’t want to be leasing great tracts of crown land from
the government. I asked him whether he farmed at all or if it was just cattle. Looking at me with his hat at a jaunty angle,
he half smiled. ‘Charley,’ he said. ‘I’ll put it this way. I’ve never sold a bushel of wheat in my life.’

Back in Saskatchewan I’d asked Michael the same thing, and although, like Eric, he’d had a smile on his face, both men were
pretty swift to point out that they were cattlemen and not farmers. Now I come to think of it, I seem to remember there was
something in the Old West about range wars between ranchers and what were called ‘sodbusters’. Anyway, this was
definitely
ranch country, and I could tell it was very much a community. It was clear that Eric knew the majority of the competitors,
or at least their families anyway. He told me that the ranches tended to be handed down from generation to generation, and
in this part of the country some of the family-owned places went back to the days of Canada’s confederation.

While we were talking, the branding competition got under way. Eric explained that when the competitors roped the calf, they
had to encircle both feet below the hock (which is sort of like the horse’s elbow, if you can imagine that). If they only
managed one, they were penalised. If they roped above the hock they would be disqualified. Turning to the elderly lady sitting
next to me, who introduced herself as Rita, I asked her what she thought about it all.

‘I guess it’s just ranch work,’ she stated. ‘I guess it’s what we do every day around here.’ Rita’s son was the organiser
of the rodeo, and she told me that each team was sponsored, with the money going to the old school, now a museum – the Jasper
Center – which needed money to redo its roof. It was a lovely idea – the whole town coming together, having fun and putting
something back into the community all at the same time.

Eric and Rita were two stalwarts of Maple Creek and they were really lovely to talk to: old-school people with good values.
Eric was very proud of the cowboy heritage, and was keen to emphasise that far from being dumb ‘leather-arses’, as they’re
sometimes known, the working cowboy or cowgirl is a real professional. He pointed to one guy competing in front of us who
had been down at these same grounds only a few days before sorting a mass of cattle into different herds for breeding purposes.
It is a skilled and sometimes dangerous job – animals are always unpredictable.

We took a wander through the lines of parked vehicles and horse trailers and found another great Western tradition: a bunch
of contestants sitting in the sun with a cooler full of beer. They all wore hats, jeans and boots and most of them also had
leather chaps on, as well as yellow competitors’ vests. They all seemed fairly laid back, just sitting there waiting for their
turn. Every
member of a team has to take part in at least three events, though they don’t all compete at the same time. It seemed that
each year the members shifted from team to team, a bit like the transfer market in football.

I said it was nice to see them taking it seriously, making sure they were drinking enough beer. They told me that there were
two things they needed to make the day work: fun and luck, and one tended to run into the other. They were currently lying
fourth, but they weren’t worried about it; in previous years they’d gone into the second half of the competition with only
half a point but pulled out all the stops and won anyway. The events coming up were their specialities: cow milking, horse
catching and the bronc riding. They seemed to be pretty confident.

Apparently the cow milking was the real spectacle of the day. ‘That’s when you want to get your pictures,’ one of the guys,
Alan, said. ‘You see, Charley, one guy ropes the cow, another guy’s mugging and the third has to get the milk.’

‘Mugging?’ I said. ‘What’s mugging?’

‘That’s when you jump on the cow’s head,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘If you get a horn up your arse – whatever – you just have
to go with it.’

Their cow-milking team consisted of Skinny, a hulking great guy in a black hat, Werbil, who was sitting on the bonnet of a
truck, and Brutus, who seemed to be in charge of the cooler. Looking at them, I thought they’d probably do all right so long
as it was Skinny doing the mugging. The milk was the key to winning the competition; they told me that a few years ago someone
from another team had stolen their milk and it had made the front page of the local newspaper.

I really liked Alan. He was great fun with a really dry sense
of humour. When we’d arrived this morning, the announcer had introduced him as the cowboy with the shortest legs in Canada
and it’s true he was pretty short, but according to Alan, the announcer was no taller than he was.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘That bugger likes to mess with me, but I don’t get mad, I get even. I’ll find a way to get back at him
before the day’s out.’

‘So how tall are you?’ I asked him.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I was five one, but I think I’m about five foot now. You know, kind of shrinking with age.’

Leaving Alan and his team, I walked back to the arena, where I came across the team of girls we’d been supporting. They were
pretty gutted that they had started so well and then fallen away. The competition was not over yet, though; they had the cow
milking and were intent on making up the points they had lost so far. They were not that experienced, though, certainly not
when compared with Alan’s team; only one of their number had actually competed before. Having said that, this was stuff they
did every day, and it was only the fact that people were watching, country music was playing and an announcer was introducing
them to the crowd that changed anything. Get that out of your head and it was just like being on the ranch.

We were interrupted by the announcer, hoping that we were ready for some mayhem and wild activity. As far as I could tell,
that mayhem was going to include me. Everyone seemed to know that I was due to ride a steer a little later, and I asked the
girls if they had any tips for me.

‘Sure,’ one of them said. ‘Keep your chest out, tuck your chin right in and grip as tight as you can with your legs.’

The cow milking was about to get under way. I was looking forward to this after everything Alan’s team had been saying. As
the first team walked their horses into the arena with their ropes at the ready, I went to get a better look. What I hadn’t
realised was that all the teams competed in the arena together, charging after their allotted target with hooves flying and
dust kicking up, the cows getting the better of most of them. It really was mayhem: cowboys on horseback, others on foot trying
to mug the cow while the rest dived for the flying hind legs. Sadly the girls came back empty-handed, not so much as a drop
of milk in their bottle and their chances of winning disappearing into the distance. I loved the whole thing … the smell of
the horses, the bawling of cattle in the pens, the crackle of static from the announcer’s mike, even the country music. The
atmosphere was just electric.

It was time for me to make my rodeo debut, and the nerves were beginning to kick in. What with the diving, the day training
to be a Mountie and now this steer riding, I’d certainly done my fair share of nerve-racking things on this trip. Fortunately,
there were lots of portable toilets dotted around the rodeo grounds, so I was able to have a last pee before I got on the
steer. I hooked up with Skinny as he made his way over for the next event, the rowels of his spurs clanking as we walked past
a stationary ambulance. I took a good long look inside, hoping they had everything I would need should I break any bones.

While Skinny and the other real cowboys would be climbing on to a bucking horse, my cow was waiting for me in the chute. I
stood there in my T-shirt, trainers and floppy sun hat, taking in how small the animal actually was. I’d probably be able
to drag my feet along the ground.

Before I got on, the guys in charge of the bucking chutes gave
me some coaching. They told me to take my wedding ring and watch off, then gave me a leather glove to put on my left hand.
I insisted that I was right-handed. It didn’t matter if I was right-handed or not; everybody used a left-handed glove. I guess
it must’ve been something to do with being able to go for your gun … but surely there were left-handed cowboys in the old days?
Wasn’t Billy the Kid left-handed? It didn’t matter; the glove was for the left hand so it was my left hand I’d use. The trick
was to have your hand between your legs, fingers gripping the rope, and ride on your hand, which added a touch more stability
and some very necessary cushioning against the cow bucking beneath. My free hand should be up in the air for balance. I was
nervous all right, but at the same time I was quite looking forward to it. I’d never done anything like this before, but then
again, I’d galloped a herdsman’s pony in Mongolia during
Long Way Round
, so how hard could this be?