It’s funny how the same situation can elicit such different recollections – here’s Grandpa’s version of the story of the fire. I have previously posted Grandma’s version here and another version here, as well as some photos here.

You’ll notice there is no mention of Grandma trying to outrun the fire in her car with her toddler and her baby bump. It is, though, a really good description of how it must have felt for him, and all of them, after the fire when they were trying to figure out how to feed and care for their cattle.

We had serious droughts which created feed shortages but the worst situation I experienced was in the fall of 1936 when a disastrous fire burned all our feed and most of the pastures. That evening when everything was burned and things looked hopeless, Ken Coppock, Sec. Manager of the Western Stock Growers paid me a visit and told me to come and see him as he would help to figure out a way out of this predicament. At this time, there was a lot of straw stack, some three and four years old up in the Olds district. Ken contacted a man up there for me who acquired enough straw to winter what cows I had to get through the winter. The government was shipping cattle at the time free of charge from southern Alberta which was dried out, and so Ken got me on the band wagon as well. There was some losses, a lot of defending on what kind of a farmer was looking after the cattle. There were about five hundred or more head and these had to be placed in small lots around the country at different farms. One place in particular, the cattle did not do well because they were not getting enough water. Roads were blocked for a couple of weeks and I was unable to check this particular herd until several cows died, which were then hauled up to the pigs. Instead of cows living high on the hog, the hogs were living high on the cows.

It was a happy day the following spring when I trailed them home from Cochrane. It took some of them longer than others to make the trip, but they sure knew their way home.