IMAGE: MICHAEL BEDNAR
CANADA
EYEWITNESS COWBOY COUNTRY
Get a taste of Canada’s pioneer days with a ranch stay on British Columbia’s Cariboo Chilcotin Coast, where survival skills and equine etiquette are all part of the adventure. Words: Emma Thomson
“In some ranches, horses are treated like a bike you pulled off the rack,” laments Mike Christensen. He’s wearing a dog-eared cowboy hat and has a salt-and-pepper beard. “They don’t even know the horse’s name and degrade it to a vessel of transport,” he adds, shaking his head. “Here, we teach you how to build trust.” Standing beside him is Monty, a horse the brown colour
of autumn leaves. With the bridle hanging in his palm, Mike makes gentle clicking noises with his tongue and a barely discernible beckoning motion with his fingers towards Monty’s flank. He’s not touching the horse at all and yet, slowly, the steed starts to tip-toe in a circle around him. “Riding the horse is the least important thing. It’s connecting with them that’s key,” he explains. “I don’t want to sound too ‘hoodoo voodoo’, but it’s as much about energy as any physical pressure.” Mike is the wrangler at Echo Valley Ranch & Spa, a 160-
acre ranch with 30 head of cattle on British Columbia’s Cariboo Chilcotin Coast. The area is home to many of BC’s guest ranches and remains cowboy-and-cowgirl country, with the city of Williams Lake hosting the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame and the historic Stampede showground. Sandwiched between the crenelated limestone Marble
Range, boreal forest and salmon-rich Fraser River, the remote no-mobile-phone-service ranch is owned by Norm and Nan Dove. Now in his eighties, British- born Norm has called Canada home for 56 years. He bought the working ranch in 1990 and has been slowly converting it into an upmarket lodge. It’s a good example of how ranch culture is evolving out here, with horseback hacks combined with comfortable accommodation, fine dining and resort-style amenities such as a spa and yoga studio. Having joined their Horse Harmony experience, I found myself in the ranch corral with Mike, the sun making
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us squint. Years ago, Mike used to sell suits in Denmark but came out to try riding and got a taste of the Western lifestyle. He started by living with a ranch family in Montana before migrating across the border 11 years ago. “I’m a cowboy now, absolutely!” he enthuses, his accent still Danish. He assigns each of us in the group a steed based on our
ability. He pairs me with Diago, a bay with a velveteen muzzle and brown eyes shaded by long eyelashes. “It’s disrespectful to expect them to perform without any introduction,” explains Mike, so I slowly run my hand from Diago’s neck, along his flank, around his hind and up the other side. Then Mike demonstrates how to be in charge. “Horses
are herd animals; they need a leader. The horse will take that role if you don’t and see what they can get away with,” he says with a grin. I walk slowly, just in front of Diago, and he follows, his muzzle almost brushing the back of my shirt. When I stop, he stops. After an hour getting to know each other, we clop out
of the corral and into the woods. As we wind through the conifer, pine and aspen forest, ducking to avoid errant branches, Mike encourages us to feel the movement of the horse — to sense how they respond to the slightest shift in our seat, the squeeze of a thigh or the light pressure of a heel. I find I barely have to use the reins at all. Plodding along the trail, I catch glimpses of the
Fraser River cutting a 5,778ft-deep canyon through the Marble Range, sage brush growing on the hillsides. I spy abandoned wooden cabins once used as offices for the river ferry that transported prospectors travelling from Lillooet, in southwestern BC, during the days of the gold rush. I think of those late-19th-century pioneers on horseback, too, surviving amid this wilderness, hunting and foraging to supplement their canned food rations.
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