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Glenbow Archives NA-263-1
REMEMBERING AN
ALBERTA RANCHING PIONEER
JOHN WARE, WHO RANCHED IN
south and central Alberta for about 25
years, has been described as “Canada’s
most famous black cowboy.” Ware, shown
here with his wife Mildred and two of
their five children, was born a slave in
South Carolina in 1845, but grew up on
a small ranch in northern Texas. Part of
Ware’s life story was captured in a book
titled
The Golden Age of the Canadian
Cowboy: An Illustrated History
, written by
Hugh Dempsey, an Alberta author and
the first archivist at the Glenbow Muse-
um in Calgary.
Upon earning his freedom from
slavery after the American Civil War,
Ware became a cowboy and travelled
to Canada leading a 3,000-head cattle
drive. He arrived at the Bar U Ranch
south of Longview, in 1882, where he
worked as a bronco rider and ranch
hand for a couple years before moving
to the Quorn Ranch, where he was in
charge of the horse herd. His ability to
handle horses became legendary. After
watching Ware at a roundup in 1885,
Fort Macleod’s newspaper reported,
“The horse is not running on the prairie
which John cannot ride.”
While many black Canadians were
no strangers to discrimination during
Ware’s lifetime, Dempsey wrote that
Ware’s “skill and personality tempered
the hostility.” Dempsey’s book also noted
that Ware’s “remarkable horsemanship,
his prodigious strength, his good-natured
humour and general kindness, and his
loyalty to friends and neighbours” all
served him well.
Other published reports from the
period described Ware’s almost mythical
ranching prowess: “He was said to have
walked over the backs of penned steers
without fear and that he could stop a steer
head-on and wrestle it to the ground.
It was also said that he could break the
wildest broncos, trip a horse by hand and
hold it on its back to be shod, and easily
lift an 18-month-old steer and throw it on
his back for branding.”
Ware and his family ran their own
ranch along Sheep Creek south of Calgary
until homesteaders settled on the grazing
land around the area, prompting a move
to the Red Deer River east of Brooks in
1902. In 1905, at the age of 60, Ware was
killed in a riding accident when his horse
stumbled and fell on top of him.
The Food Issue
2017
Grains
West
50
AGAINST
THE GRAIN