Ya Ha Tinda: A Home Place - Celebrating 100 Years of the Canadian Government's Only Working Horse Ranch

Kathy Calvert

Jan 2017 · Rocky Mountain Books Ltd

About this ebook

An illustrated history celebrating the 100th anniversary of this historic, working horse ranch located along the eastern slopes of the Canadian Rockies.

The story of the Ya Ha Tinda and its evolution into the only continuously operating federal government horse ranch in Canada is much more than the story of the people who worked and lived there. Its ancient history is an amalgam of geological evolution, with archaeological evidence of ancient indigenous people's use of the land for over 9,400 years and a biophysical inventory of flora and fauna unique to this particular landscape. So important is this small footprint, that it has been the source of a constant struggle for control between governments and special interest groups since the early 1900s, when the Brewster Brothers Transfer Company first obtained a grazing lease in the area for raising and breaking horses for their guiding and outfitting business in Banff and Lake Louise.

This unique book covers the 100 years since the inception of the ranch: its challenges to survive intact to the 2017 centennial celebration and the stories of the men and women who worked and survived on the spread as they fought the elements and the politics to keep it as a "home place" for both the warden service and Parks Canada.

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About the author

Kathy Calvert grew up in the Canadian Rockies. In 1974 she became one of the first female national park wardens in Canada; in 1977 she was a member of the first all-women expedition to Mount Logan and in 1989 was on the first all-women ski traverse of the Columbia Mountains from the Bugaboos to Rogers Pass. She is the author of three books: Don Forest: Quest for the Summits (RMB 2003), Guardians of the Peaks: Mountain Rescue in the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains (RMB 2006) and June Mickle: One Woman's Life in the Foothills and Mountains of Western Canada (RMB 2015). She and her husband, Dale Portman, live in Cochrane, Alberta.