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When the blizzards of 1906 starved the big leaseholders and absentee owners off the Western Canadian range, the government opened it up to let a new breed of independent, practical-minded ranchers try their luck. Amongst this new breed was W.D. Kerfoot, a Virginian who had worked for the absentee owners and, through bitter experience, had learned from their mistakes. W.D. (William) Kerfoot, with no money of his own, had ridden onto the Western Canadian range in the early 1880s. His duties as livestock manager of The Cochrane Ranche almost cost him his life. Ultimately, his refusal to compound his bosses’ mistakes cost him his job. No stranger to troubles and conflicts, W.D. as he came to be known, left Virginia and a heritage of plantations and gallant Confederate cavalry officers in about 1880, riding west to Montana. There he found himself dodging the crossfire between the shepherds and the cattlemen. Later, in Canada, he would always carry a pistol, although he said it was for shooting prairie chickens. W.D. looking for an opportunity, was hired at Fort Benton, Montana, in 1882 to replace Colonel James Walker as the manager of the Cochrane Ranche. Walker, a former NWMP officer, was in Montana buying replacement cattle after a year of serious losses resulting from the Eastern owners’ “ill-advised orders.” Walker had already made up his mind to leave when he hired Kerfoot. Eastern capitalists, under the leadership of Senator Matthew Cochrane of Quebec, had acquired the 109,000-acre lease for the Cochrane Ranche in 1881. Calgary, the nearest centre, was just a small town and the CPR tracks would not reach it for two more years, so all the cattle had to be driven up from Montana.
W.D.’s orders from the East were often impossible to follow. For example, one winter, Eastern management ordered him to keep the herd on Cochrane land at all costs. W.D. rode headlong into a prairie blizzard and didn’t emerge for two days. He’d already frozen one leg in a Montana blizzard (he always claimed he was 5’11”on one leg, 6’ on the other), and he barely survived this blizzard. His horse didn’t. Despite this close call, W.D. worked hard to follow his often erratic orders, bringing in 8,000 sheep when the Easterners decided the Canadian range was not suited to cattle. When the sheep broke through ice on a slough, the quick work of W.D.’s shepherds saved the majority of the flock. The Easterners, writing insistent letters, were less concerned about the loss of the sheep than they were about their manager’s refusal to fire the shepherds. W.D. countered their complaints and backed up the shepherds, claiming they were good men who had done the best they could. When Kerfoot refused to back down, the Easterners fired him in 1885. Not a man to be thwarted by bad weather, bad luck, lack of money or intimidation, Kerfoot sued for wrongful dismissal. He hired lawyer James Lougheed and won a settlement for back wages. “On a certain level the Eastern owners of the ranch were all good businessmen,” Kerfoot’s great-grandson, Hamish Kerfoot, acknowledges today. “It was just a totally different business out here.” W.D. then homesteaded the Virginia Ranch, almost next door to the Cochrane Ranche in the Grand Valley. More than 120 years later, the Cochrane Ranche is no more than an historical marker near the town of Cochrane. However, the Kerfoot family ranching legacy continued from W.D.’s homestead and is now in its fourth generation. Over the years, the Kerfoots expanded their holdings, branding their herds with their distinctive Crown brand. Today, Hamish Kerfoot runs the Providence Ranch, across the valley from W.D.’s homestead that is now owned by Simpson Ranching Ltd. Under W.D.’s leadership, the Virginia Ranch, about 15 km northwest of the town of Cochrane, became almost a blueprint for numerous other family-based ranch operations taking hold after 1907. This independent ranching heritage thrives today across Western Canada. Although he ran a good cattle ranch, W.D.’s love of horses was known to have dominated his interest in ranching. “I think my great-grandfather and many of my family really only raised cattle so they could have horses,” Hamish Kerfoot observes. The Kerfoots became well-known horsemen in the Cochrane area, importing the thoroughbred sire, Porten, to improve their ranch horse bloodlines and help the family win innumerable racing trophies. The Kerfoot name is in nearly all the horse records of the early 1900s, from racing to jumping to polo. “W.D. liked a hot horse,” Hamish says. “One race meet he won the entire card.” The Kerfoot competitive nature was not just directed toward the community. One morning W.D. and his wife, Adriana, argued over who rode the fastest horse. Nothing would settle the argument except a 20-mile race to the Gardiner Ranch. (The winner, Hamish says, was never declared.) W.D. liked speed, and his son, Archie, was expected to jump off the wagon on trips to town and run ahead to open the gates so his father wouldn’t have to slow down. Once, W.D. was taken to the hospital with a concussion after a fall. The nurses found him later that evening galloping in the yard on the laundry pony. Hamish admits to having the same enthusiasm for hot horses as his predecessors. “I don’t like rough stock, I like fast stock.” But, these days, after a few good wrecks, Hamish limits his riding. “If I have much more fun, I’m going to kill myself!” This remark has a special significance for all the Kerfoots. W.D. died in 1908 following a Calgary Exhibition parade accident when his horse reared sending him over a milk cow. W.D. Kerfoot was possibly the exhibition’s first casualty. Tyler and Judy Trafford live in Calgary and Cowley, Alberta and are regular contributors. Tyler’s recently published his first novel, The Story of Blue Eye. Judy paints and exhibits watercolours from scenes throughout Western Canada.
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