Part of what motivated the horse breeders to break the law in the beginning, says McKee, was a feeling that revenge of some sort must be exacted on the federal government managers of the British Block for the eviction of their neighbours. This was a way to show their defiance and contempt. Later it became a great business arrangement for everyone involved; a business arrangement later voided by the British Block range managers when the breeders were told to round up their stock, get out and stay out in about 1960. The horse breeders complied but in one last act of defiance turned some of their old stallions and breeding mares back into the Block to live out the rest of their lives. McKee says what happened next is perhaps the most extraordinary story of horse evolution in Canadian history.
“It was something that took place that could never happen anywhere else in the world,” says McKee with awe. “A lot of breeders turned their old stock back before they left to live out what was left of their lives in the British Block, and they were locked in from then on. From approximately 1960 until 1994, the original stock these breeders turned back were in there. As time went on, nature, which is cruel, dictated. And over the years, it turns out only the strongest and the smartest survived.”
According to McKee, this nature-created cast has given the horses extraordinary qualities. They rarely have
foot problems, and don’t need to be shod. They heal extraordinarily quickly from even very serious wounds. They have a heavier and denser bone structure than any other horse of similar size he has encountered. There are imminently trainable as they recognize the dominance of the herd leader as an unbreakable law, and they are also amazingly intelligent, says McKee. McKee has bred and trained rare horses for most of his life, and says he has never dealt with a better quality horse than the Block Horses.
When he applied to get a filly from their roundup in 1994, he had expected what most people expect from wild horses: Scraggly, untrainable, “rank old mares.” What he got instead was a new purpose in life: To preserve this historical pedigree at any cost. He began gathering others of like mind. From 1995-1999 he and others in his Block Horse society attempted to track down every single Block Horse they could to buy and bring together to form a breeding herd to preserve the pedigree. They ended up finding only about 180 proven Block Horses out of the 1,200-3,000 that were estimated to be rounded up in 1994. The rest likely went down the road to Fort McLeod’s horse slaughter plant.
McKee carries about 100 descendants on his own Block Horse herd, and several hundred others are being preserved on other ranches. But McKee is now 73 years old, has had triple bypass surgery and is undergoing cancer treatment.
He knows he will not likely see his dream fulfilled of seeing the Block Horse recognized as its own distinct breed, and he worries constantly about whether anyone will be able to take up the mantle of their preservation after he can no longer take care of them himself; especially because Canada’s horse breeders have been struggling with tough economic times for the past decade.
Hundreds of thousands of bred horses have been dispersed and slaughtered during this period because there is little money to be made in the business anymore. “If I wasn’t into these Block Horses, I would have gotten out of it too,” admits McKee. “But because these horses can’t be replaced, and there are very few of them, I stay in it. I guess what’s sad is this is likely going to fail because there is no one going to come to come along who is as passionate. I hope there is, but I don’t know.”
McKee says he can only do what he can do. “I go out there every morning, and some of those mornings I am pretty downtrodden, and I take a look around and I think: ‘Holy man, they have to go on somehow.
“They are part of our history. Not only south eastern Alberta or Alberta alone, but of Canada. You only find these horses in one place, and they are all that will ever exist. They are a horse unto themselves. There were high quality horses locked in there (at CFB Suffield), and nature did its thing.” ❚
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41241842 • 03/28/2017
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