By Pat Fream

Photos by Neville Palmer

Jason with a portrait of his great grandfather Tom Lauder

There was a time when Jason Glass was outside from sunup till sundown, tending to his 40-strong herd of Thoroughbred horses and training them for chuckwagon racing. In those days he derived all his pleasure from his animals and his sport, and for a couple of decades, that’s all he needed.
Today, the fourth generation World Champion Chuckwagon Driver has expanded his purpose to make room for marriage and for his most rewarding achievements yet – a son and a daughter. And while the long time cowboy bachelor welcomes the change with unabashed pride, it is clear that chuckwagon is in his blood, a staple in his character. Only now he has a new title and his home team is four-strong.
“For years I thought of nothing but the horses, I put them ahead of everything,” says Jason, who explains that this is what it took to get to where he is today – a three-time world champion. “Now I look at things differently. I still love spending time with the horses (he calls ‘the boys’), but I love being with my family too, so I try to set things up more efficiently outside so I can get back inside where my wife and kids are.”
Getting to this day in Jason’s life has a lot to do with guts, grit and fiery family roots. Born in Calgary in 1970, Jason inherited his grandmother’s get-it-done attitude and an indomitable appetite for wagon racing from his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather.
“Ya, it’s a natural for me,” says Jason, pausing to point out faded portraits on the walls surrounded by a whole slew of elaborate bronze wagons, more exquisite art than trophy.
“My great grandfather Tom Lauder started chuckwagon racing in the Calgary Stampede in 1924. His daughter, my grandmother (Iris), married Ronnie Glass and he won the world championship four times. My dad Tom Glass was a three-time world champion.” He grins sheepishly and implies the obvious – he pretty much has to carry on winning.
“As far back as I can remember I was either in a wagon or on a horse,” says Jason. “When I was a little kid I’d climb in the back of the wagon and try to grab the lines from my dad.”
If there’s such thing as genetic ambition this family makes a case for it with champion drivers and outriders in every generation descending from Tom Lauder. While the sport has mostly brought gratification and triumph to this long line of tenacious horsemen, it has also claimed lives from the 50-year chuckwagon family dynasty. Tom Lauder’s grandson Rod Glass was tragically killed at age 18 while driving chuckwagon in 1971. Two decades later Richard Cosgrave, married to Tom Lauder’s granddaughter, was also killed in a chuckwagon race.
Having lost two uncles to the sport, no one knows better than Jason what can go wrong in the high-speed adrenaline-charged atmosphere of chuckwagon racing. But that doesn’t seem to faze him, he accepts risk like it’s his birthright. And while tipping his hat to predecessors he clearly admires, Jason does what it takes to earn his own place on the family wall of trophies. Beginning with meticulous care of ‘the boys’.
“It’s all about the horses, you can’t win without them,” says Jason. “It’s not like race car driving where after the race you put the car away and forget about it.” For Jason, training and caring for his Thoroughbreds is a rigorous year-round commitment.
“Every day I go outside and feed the horses their oats individually, so I look at every inch of every one of them – make sure they’re all healthy and happy.” From September to March he spends hours with seven or eight new Thoroughbreds, immersing them in the herd and doing a variety of exercises to help them adjust to pulling a wagon.
“You can’t take a Thoroughbred off the race track and hook it to a wagon, that would stress him,” he explains. “It’s a long process to get them where they need to be. Some take two or three years, but once in a while you get one that takes to it in a couple of weeks.”
Come March, with the rodeo season just two months away, Jason ramps up the conditioning of his thirty-some other horses, already chuckwagon trained but in need of strength and endurance training to reach peak racing form. These horses get daily stints of trotting in an Equisizer, a motorized exercise pen that Jason and his cousin (chuckwagon driver and World Champion Outrider, Chad Cosgrave) constructed using some innovation and some market-made parts. The slick equi-invention can accommodate four horses at a time and is computer generated so Jason can set the speed, direction and duration of the sessions.
“The horses love it!” He says, with giddy enthusiasm. “Turn it on and they come running; they’ll run you over trying to get in there!”
When May rolls around it’s off to the races. Jason and his wife Brienne load up their twin toddlers, Steele and Brodie, along with 16 horses (four full chuckwagon outfits) and a crew of workers and outriders. The Glass ‘checkered wagon’ team takes four big rigs down the highway hitting every major rodeo in the province.
“We love being on the road,” says Jason, explaining how his travelling accommodations have gone from truck and camper as a boy to his current bus-sized coach complete with four slides and bunk beds for the twins. “We basically go from town to town for four solid months, 10 rodeos in all, it’s a blast.”
The Calgary Stampede, with over $1 million in prize money up for grabs in chuckwagon, is the crown jewel for most drivers, especially the Glasses whose family legacy began there.
“My family has been a part of the Calgary Stampede since 1923 and I’ve been going to it for all of my 41 years. It’s the most important 10 days of the year,” he says earnestly. Potential winnings aside Jason has high praise for event organizers and volunteers. “The work that goes in to the Calgary Stampede is astounding; I think it’s absolutely amazing they’ve kept it going, and made it better every year for 100 years.”
Asked the obvious question… can a person make a living in the sport of chuckwagon? Jason explains that sponsorship is everything in this business. “I’ve been fortunate to have three or four good sized company sponsors stay with me over the years. My main sponsor – Shaw GMC is great. I’ve had them for 22 years.”
Between winning races and having excellent sponsorship Jason says many in his family have been able to make a living at chuckwagon. But this is not the only family business Jason is heir to; the tenacious line of Lauder descendants have carved out a second unconventional career niche doing stunt work and small acting roles in movies.
“My family has been in the movie industry since 1970, my grandpa was in Buffalo Bill and the Indians,” he says. “Dad and grandpa saw people getting paid to fall off their horses and they said ‘why can’t we do that?’ So they got themselves into it.”
Jason started doing stunt work when he was 16 and has since performed in more than 150 movies, shows and commercials. His older sister (Corry Glass) is a full-time stuntwoman in Vancouver and his dad (Tom Glass) has been in more than 200 movies and has also performed stunt coordinator duties for some productions.
“Mostly I get hired for western scenes but I also do car racing, or I hang on a wire… basically anything they need,” says Jason. “The movie business has been great to me and my family over the years.” But there’s no doubt that chuckwagon is this man’s greatest passion, and his aim is to put more bronze on his walls. “You can compete at the Stampede until you’re 64, so as long as I’m healthy, I’m going to keep going for it.

Writer’s Note
Remarkably humble in spite of several noteworthy accomplishments, Jason names a whole crew of uncles, cousins, friends and hired hands, who have contributed to his success along the way. At the top of his list of mentors he names his grandmother, Iris Glass, who passed away in 2008. “She was the matriarch of wagons, always there in the barns, at the races, a very important person to all of us,” he pauses to gather his emotions, picks up his daughter and gives her a squeeze.

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Chuckwagon Basics:
Each chuckwagon is pulled by four horses (an outfit), and is accompanied by two outriders. There are four wagons in each race (heat). When the horn sounds, one outrider throws the barrel (stove) in the back of the chuckwagon while the other steadies the horses, then both riders jump on their horses and the wagons are off. Each wagon and its outriders must cut a figure 8 pattern around their respective barrels. They then proceed to race around the track. A chuckwagon’s running time ends when the nose of its first horse crosses the finish line. Each outrider must finish within 150 feet of its wagon or the driver will be penalized. Final times are tabulated based on running times plus any penalties incurred during the race (i.e. 1 second penalty for a false start, 5 seconds for knocking over a barrel). In this sport, penalty seconds can cost drivers thousands of dollars, and in some cases, championships.

Stars and Stunts:
Jason has worked with dozens of famous Hollywood stars, including Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and Owen Wilson. The biggest production he’s ever worked on was the 2011 release of Mission Impossible 4 – Ghost Protocol. In this movie he’s the stuntman driving the car during a race scene where Tom Cruise is hit by the car and ends up clinging to the roof, fighting with the driver through the window.

Portrait photo by Shelley Whitehead

When Neel De Wit-Wibaut talks about her life she recalls the friends, the music and the painting, everything else falls away. There is little talk of her Dutch heritage that includes witnessing and surviving war and liberation in the early 1940s. She does not draw attention to her career, marriage or immigration to Canada. Few are privy to her 1970s life chapter when peace, love and nature were freely and generously expressed at her remote Millarville property. For Neel, the focus today is on making art and music… as much as she can for as long as she can.

By Karen Gimbel

Art photos by Edith VanderKloot

 Interview with Neel by Shelley Whitehead

Global News Calgary, April 30, 2012

Millarville artist Neel De Wit-Wibaut has experienced a wide array of life adventures on her way to arriving in a skin she is most comfortable in. “Art and music are the only things I am suitable for,” says Neel, who at the accomplished age of 97 is set to have her first ever solo exhibition at Bluerock Gallery in Black Diamond.

Neel was one of the original viola players in the formative years (50s and 60s) of the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra. She began painting after going back to school to obtain a fine arts degree at age 60.

Neel was born and raised in Amsterdam and was working as a social worker in the Netherlands when the war broke out. She married during the war, and was in the hospital getting ready to give birth to her first child the day her town was liberated by Canadian soldiers.[1] She and her family immigrated to Canada in 1946.

When Neel and her husband parted ways in the 60s, he got the house in the city; she got the land with the rustic cabin near Millarville. For many years now Neel has spent her weekdays in an apartment in Calgary but every weekend she escapes to her country retreat with the great Alberta foothills right outside her front door.

Many of Neel’s interests are more urban (concerts, museums), but spending weekends, year round, in her tiny remote studio deeply and essentially nourishes her soul. “My joy and pleasure is to just be here, to see the sky, and the trees waving about, what you don’t have in the city, and all for free!”

Neel’s painting is a creative process born of her skill as a musician. She loves to describe how, just as her viola bow is drawn across the strings with varying pressures to make a range of sounds, so she approaches her paintbrush with varying amounts of paint and pressures to achieve lighter or heavier lines, or different effects.

While painting is her main creative outlet, music is its own reward for Neel. She still holds to the world where playing music together, not performing, is the main event. Although she still sight reads music weekly playing in a quartet, and organizes an annual music weekend for friends to come together and play, she doesn’t play music for audiences these days.

“Music and art are the activities that one can continue doing all through a long life – as long as you keep it simple,”  she says. “My eyes never stop seeing things – I am always looking for light, shadows, and color combinations that someone else might not see.”

Writer’s Note:

Neel De Wit-Wibaut is an inspiration to all of us artists who are late-bloomers. When she talks about her art, our hearts resonate. We are in love with Alberta light. We track its movement through every hour, noticing ever-changing nuances in passing days, dawn to dusk, and season to season. We are awed by the great presence of a Chinook arch, the subtlety of moon shadow, how sunlight filters through bare trees in winter.

Although Neel De-Wibaut has had annual art shows for her friends, this will be her first solo show in a commercial gallery. The retrospective show will highlight many works from the past as well as recent paintings. Her paintings include sweeping Alberta skies, seasonal light playing on local landscapes, familiar farm animals – all old friends in new light.

Neel will be at Bluerock Gallery for an artist reception from 2 -5 pm. Fittingly, the show launches on May 5, Dutch Liberation Day.

[1] Read more about Neel’s life and other stories of Dutch–Canadians about life during WW II in the book Hope in the Colour of Orange, compiled by Marika d’Ailly.

Excerpt:

“At night, in the presumed safety of the hospital, I could hear the constant artillery fire surrounding us. A few candles sent their shadows over the many mothers like me. We were all lying in between the rows of the seats of an amphitheatre and lecture hall on the main floor. Babies were crying. The next day as I stood in front of a window waiting for the first signs of labour a tank adorned with a Canadian flag came into view. This sight engraved itself in my psyche and I later sketched a picture of this incredible event. Our daughter, Sonja Mathilde, was born on April 17.”

Photo by Neville Palmer at Wales Theatre High River

Starring (in order of appearance): Bailey Kerluke (as himself), Zoe Slusar (as herself) and Peter Worden (as the interviewer and voiceover/narrator)

Setting: A short-film set, at night, in the treasure-like –and so tiny one might overlook it –Town of Black Diamond. The scene opens at a place called The Stop, a cultural hotspot bustling with what appears to be every man, woman and child from town streaming through the door; a full house.

[Camera: eye-level; pans the crowd entering the quaint venue, now filled with 100 or so. A beer bottle jangles on the floor. A child cries. There’s the hiss of a steaming latté. The chatter fades to shushes and then silence as the room grows dark. The first film begins.]

 Narrator (in baritone voiceover): Amateur – word that can be complimentary and demoralizing. The word, from the Latinamator or ‘lover,’ conjures the noble idea of one pursuing his or her practice unpaid. But what does it mean to be an amateur filmmaker in this age, in this part of the country?

[Camera: fades to black. Opens again in the same room, now mostly empty minus a few friends, family and stragglers. There’s the clanging of cleanup. Zoe and Bailey, the stars, move tables, projection equipment and unsold DVDs to the car. A local reporter catches up with the two.]

Voice of interviewer: Good show, you guys. If it’s alright, I’d like to video record an interview; a poetic change of pace from a regular interview.

Bailey: We can do that – my camera is in the car.

Zoe: Should we do the interview here? My place? The bar next door?

Narrator: Sometimes it’s movie magic; other times just the luring possibility of Thursday night drink specials. Whatever it was that fateful night, Zoe, 23, and Bailey, 25, friends and co-filmmakers since Oilfields High School, choose the cinematic Black Diamond Hotel bar.

[Camera: tabletop-level; frames the two in front of piping fire, sitting side-by-side in big, cozy chairs. Bailey adjusts tripod. Zoe instinctively holds up the interviewer’s notepad to check white-balance.]

Zoe: We rolling?

 Bailey: We’re rolling.

 Interviewer: OK. Take one: Untitled Productions’ Zoe Slusar and Bailey Kerluke after “A Year Through The Lens” – their sixth annual free screening of film shorts. Black Diamond Hotel, December 29. Action.

Interviewer: This must be a tremendous amount of work you two do every year.

 Bailey: I don’t think you can count the number of hours that go into it. I’d like to. But I’d be frightened how much time I put into making a puppet move or to get a shot just right.

 Interviewer: Last night in Calgary Zoe, your mom went to get chocolate bars to hand out to guests and apologized for the late-start (although, nobody seemed too bothered). And Bailey, I understand your mom made the puppet featured in the film ‘Extended Play.’ [Camera: cuts to shot of “burlap sack baby” puppet.] Are both your parents in the picture – so to speak?

Bailey: It’s a full family production.

Zoe: We bring them in for acting. We bring them in for costume design. Maybe they like it a little bit themselves, too.

Narrator: Zoe and Bailey have been a complementary combo since Day One. Zoe preferred to act and direct; Bailey to film. While she attended workshops at the Attic in Dublin, he studied new-media production and design at SAIT. The two continue to cinematically combine and expand.

Bailey: I think there are some pros to how we do things, definitely. You can look at the limitations of, “it’s not a big studio,” but we don’t have anyone to please except for us and we have great community. People support us because they know it’s just us. Looking back at competitions, a movie will play that has 80 people working on it and received eight grants and then there’s just “Zoe and Bailey.” It’s pretty cool that it’s just the two of us and we’re winning.

Interviewer: Can we talk inspiration? Why do you do this and who do you emulate – actors, directors?

Zoe: For me it’s the feel of a movie – movies like Garden State, 500 Days of Summer or Juno, that have an independent feel but are done big-scale. You can really connect with the characters, their simple ideas and life observations. That’s what I want to do; make films that make people laugh, think about the world around them and say “that was an hour-and-a-half well-spent.” That’s what inspires me.

Bailey: That’s a good answer. Mine is mostly names. I’m going to list a couple. Um, horribly depressing: Aronofsky – beautiful shot, great direction. Also great – different but great – Spike Lee. And of course Christopher Nolan. He’s a legend, but especially his oldest movie Following because it was extremely low budget. He had to film it on Saturdays for two hours a day and made the actors rehearse their scenes 80 times because they could only afford to shoot once. It’s mind-blowing what they could do when they didn’t have a budget. That’s what we strive for.

 Narrator: It seems [pausing for effect] there’s a funny thing about independent film: the more a filmmaker does with less, the less viewers expect more.

[Camera: Cuts to clip of event at The Stop, with ‘Black Coffee’­– a 2010 first-place winner for CBC’s Calgary Short Films. In it, Bailey and Zoe are standing before a percolating coffee machine. Zoe: “Black coffee is such a metaphor for our society.” Bailey (with black nail polish): “Its darkness represents the bitterness of the world. But people try to cover it up. With cream and sugar.” Zoe: “Cream and sugar: man’s escape.” The two produce notepads, jotting something. The scene fades out and back in again. Zoe: “What did this inspire for you?” Bailey: “A poem; a quatrain.” Zoe: “I drew a self-portrait of me drowning in the darkness.” The audience laughs. The film ends. Hearty applause. Another begins.]

 Interviewer: This year you screened ‘1,100 kms and Back’ – 25 minutes and 25 seconds of clips from your road trip discussions from Black Diamond to Victoria and back. [Camera: Cuts to Bailey and Zoe in a car, Bailey at the wheel. Zoe: “What do you think of when you think of pears?” Bailey: “Pears.”] And my personal favourite in that film is you, Zoe, returning at long last to Black Diamond. [Cut to clip in car. Zoe, stretching: “Ah. A four-way stop. All you need.”]

Zoe: If people watching say, “wow, they did the same level of professionalism with just the two of them,” I think that sets us ahead. We know our limitations but we don’t think limited. You learn by doing, which is what’s great about independent film. It’s why we’re getting to a point of bigger and bigger success and international festivals; we’re taking what we learned from our past films and striving to make it more professional like it’s a funded rather than independent movie.

Bailey: Worst comes to worse, we’ll just be doing these screenings in 40 years.

Zoe: A cult following is acceptable.

Interviewer: Here’s to that and here’s to 2012 – another long year of short films. [The actors raise their glasses and cheers.] I think that’s a wrap.

[Camera: Slowly pans the bar and then out onto main street. Outside is a quiet, black night. The sound of passing traffic is heard as the scene grows darker and fades to black. Fin.]

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Peter currently lives in Calgary, attending an illustrious, one-off writer-in-residence program at Crown Army Surplus. Last summer he was admitted to their prestigious Yard of Military Detritus in his 1969 Airstream. He also writes a “semi-occasional” miniature newspaper in Nanton. His only feature films to-date are cooking lessons for the trailer-dwelling individual, which can be viewed on Youtube.

Click to read about getting the shot with Neville Palmer.

By Veronica Kloiber
Photo by Neville Palmer

Luke Ball, a fourth generation cattleman, sits at his kitchen table drinking coffee, his wife Laura at his side. The talk ranges from cattle and ranching, to life and family. Under the table their three kids play at what they know – cows, tractors and life on the farm.

“Ranching is all about long-term planning,” said Ball. He and his family have come through all that the past decade has thrown at the cattle industry. He feels the 2003 mad cow disease and the subsequent fall-out has changed the industry for the better.

“It has made us more efficient overall,” he said. From feed bans to the mandatory use of radio-frequency identification tags and age verification of all calves, the preventative steps taken by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have done much to improve the cattle industry.

“It’s different today, you need 200 head of cattle to make a living on commercial cows,” said Ball. “It has to make dollars and cents now.”

The Ball family ranches northwest of Millarville. Luke’s great-grandfather homesteaded out there and the wagon that brought them to the toe of the Rockies still sits in the yard – a silent reminder of the days when ranching provided for the family and people could take to this seemingly simple way of life with little more than what they carried on their backs.

It is not so today. On the banks of the Highwood River sprawls another homestead. It is here where Wade and Jaimie Nelson of Highwood Valley Ranch are getting their feet wet in the churning, changing waters of the cattle industry.

The Nelsons operate as a direct retailer of farm-raised beef at local farmers’ markets. They buy cattle on the hoof from Wade’s parents and slaughter the animals for consumers looking for smaller quantities.

“It was not feasible for us to buy into it,” said Wade Nelson. “We do what we do based on family deals.”

The concept of selling directly to consumers has been a tradition in the Nelson family for some time. Wade’s mother started selling beef alongside her homemade jams and jellies at the Millarville Market when Wade was a boy.

“Mom would just open a Safeway flyer and say we’ll be a little higher than Safeway,” said Nelson of the family’s initial marketing strategy. Each weekend in the summer added a few extra coins to the family coffers and peace of mind to a farmer’s wife.

Out of necessity, the Nelsons have come up with a new angle on ranching and farming. Taking their cue from Highwood Crossing Farms, another High River farm family who proved a good living could be made off a smaller land base, the Nelsons hit the farmers’ markets with a mind to make it work for them too.

“We needed to make more money off the same amount of cattle and land,” explained Nelson.

At Highwood Valley, the ranching practices of yesteryear still hold value today. Calves are born and finished under the watchful care of Wade’s parents. The Nelson family has grazing leases to the west but instead of trailing cows on horseback as they did when Wade was young, they now use a cattle liner to move the herd out to pasture each summer.

“The theory is we can get to a point where we run not all but a vast majority of our cattle through the beef company,” said Nelson of their plans for how their business will evolve.

Back in Millarville at the Ball’s UXL Ranch, the way the cattle are managed is much the same as it always has been, until it comes time to sell. The Balls sell their animals through auction at VJV Foothills out of Stavely, but technology has touched that aspect of the industry as well.

Auction marts conjure images of Marlboro men with slickers and huge hats, prodding lowing animals while the lilting singsong of the auctioneer calls out bids. A part of that song still plays today. An auctioneer mans the floor but the sounds of the livestock are digitized. A video of the animals for sale plays above where they used to run through the pens.

There is still a live audience in the ring but a substantial amount of the sales are done online with sometimes upwards of 250 bidders logging on for the Canadian Satellite Auction.

“Lots of people on vacation have watched from Hawaii, as their cattle sell,” said Rob Bergevin, co-owner of VJV Foothills Livestock Auction.

“The benefit to the producer is the cattle don’t leave the ranch until they’re sold,” explained Bergevin. This modern way of selling cattle minimizes the stress on both animal and rancher.

In Luke’s parents’ day, before satellite auction, one or two bidders would come to their ranch. The Balls would make the sale, set the delivery date and organize the hauling and transport of the animals. With a satellite sale there is no need for a social call. All aspects of the sale are taken care of by the auction mart – the selling, the shipping and the delivery.

“The auction mart supplies liners that come directly to our place and load them up,” explained Luke Ball. “This allows us to have maximum exposure on selling our calves with the best price possible.”

Time, its management and its passing, means everything in ranching. The UXL Ranch has years of positive word-of-mouth working in its favour. Luke Ball’s parents built a reputation that has stood the test of time. Buyers of their cattle range from grain farmers and feedlot owners to processors like Cargill and XL Foods (Lakeside Packers).

“We have a herd reputation for selling good calves – our name means a lot,” said Luke Ball.

Highwood Valley Ranch is building its reputation on a different set of standards. It is sought out by consumers who want to ensure their cattle aren’t finished at a feedlot.

“People want to know who their producer is,” said Nelson. “It’s nice to know who’s feeding you.”

Not that the Nelsons are out to knock the system. All they want for themselves is to carve out a little niche, a beefy little portion of a way of life that is changing with the times.

“The consumer wants cheap protein; they want a $1.49 cheeseburger. That’s why guys have to feedlot their cattle, “explained Nelson. Not that it’s bad,” he added, “that’s just the way they have to do it.”

On the road the Nelsons travel, the signpost at the crossroads reads ‘sustainable and organic’. For them, the organic route is not the path to follow – too much red tape. Sustainability on the other hand, raising cattle with no hormones, all homegrown or local feed, and butchering more often so the cuts can be sold fresh, are all tenets of the Nelsons’ business.

Being a smaller producer has its own share of problems. The Nelsons have discovered there is no middle ground in this business. At Cargill Meats, north of High River, an average of 4,500 head of cattle are processed daily. At Foothills Meats, where the Nelsons take their animals, they can get through 15 in a week.

“We have a really weird industry,” explained Nelson. “There’s small and huge and nothing in between.”

Even with all the troubles ranchers face, there are still those who choose to make a career in cattle.

“We’re seeing more and more people thinking a living can be made at this,” said Nelson.

With the number of cattle on the hoof dwindling as older ranchers hang their hats and slow down for retirement, the future holds promise for the up and comers who choose to follow the herds.

“Ranching and raising a family is a part of everyday life with us,” said Laura Ball. “On a family farm the kids go with grandma, granddad, dad and mommy. It’s our life, the farm, and they’re part of it.”

Having chosen this life, both the Nelsons and the Balls are tied to the land as strongly as they are tied to those who came before them.

“Ranching is a great life,” stated Luke Ball. “Where else on earth can you work as a family?”

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By Pat Fream

Photos by Neville Palmer

Driving tractor, mucking out stalls and showing quarter horses – hardly the most common prerequisites for building a commercial cupcake empire. But Crave co-founders and sisters, Jodi Willoughby and Carolyne McIntyre Jackson, credit their rural roots with giving them the grit to veer away from conventional career options and take a chance on a sweet business idea.

“We grew up on a third generation farm just outside of High River,” says Jodi, the oldest of three girls in the McIntyre family. “Our father was a farmer/rancher with an entrepreneurial spirit; he grew and diversified when he saw opportunities and had the ability.”

Like most farm kids, the McIntyre sisters learned at a young age that the good things in life come from hard work, perseverance, and more hard work.”We never took anything for granted, we had to work for everything,” said Jodi, adding, “sometimes we went to school with two pairs of shoes, sometimes we only had one.”

But no matter the shoe status, Jodi and her sisters Carolyne and Antionette could be counted on to pitch in and help keep the family’s two-section farm just west of High River in good stead. “Dad didn’t have a lot of hired hands so we worked with him on the farm a lot,” she said. “In the summers, Antionette and I would tend cattle and show horses and Carolyn would either drive tractor or help mom with the cooking and baking.”

(Uh-Huh! Baking! The elusive kitchen duty that, under just the right circumstance, can turn farm girls into cupcake moguls!)

“Carolyne loved to be in the kitchen with mom,” said Jodi. “She envisioned herself as a modern day Kraft Kitchen Lady.” But baking sweet treats for a living was not the first pick for the two older McIntyre sisters, and the youngest of the trio had her sights set on a whole different career path. Then fate dealt the family a harsh blow.

“I had completed my second year at U of C and was taking a break, when our dad died suddenly of a brain aneurism,” said Jodi. “Losing him was devastating, it was extremely difficult for all of us, and not to mention our whole livelihood was at stake.” But tenacious genes run rampant in this family, and the girls and their mother pooled their strength, gratefully accepted help from neighbours and friends, and summoned the courage to carry on.

“Friends and neighbours helped mom keep the farm going for quite a few more years. It was difficult, but she wanted to stay there until we had all moved into places of our own, then she sold the homestead and moved to High River and went back to teaching,” said Jodi. Today Helen McIntyre is a retired active member in the community, and she still owns some of the family’s original land, which she farms with friends and neighbours.

All three girls graduated from Senator Riley and went on to university. Jodi continued on, earning a bachelor’s degree in community rehabilitation. Carolyne earned a Bachelor of Science degree in food business management. Antoinette got a degree in kinesiology and then went on to become a Calgary City Police Officer. All three girls were launched and employed, when the Kraft Kitchen Lady re-emerged.

“One day Carolyne came to me and said she was frustrated with having no creative latitude in her job. She asked me to join her in a cookie business,” said Jodi. “So I said ‘ya sure’, why not?” The girls (minus Antoinette who was content in her job) summoned their best cookie recipes, packaged them beautifully, and tried to sell them to a Calgary farmers’ market. They were turned down twice.

But the pair, still holding ‘real’ jobs persevered. “We really believed in the idea of a single serve dessert business, so we said, ‘Hey! We know how to do cupcakes!’” And so they did. Armed with their great grandmother’s chocolate cake recipe and their mother’s vanilla cake recipe, and steeped in their father’s staunch work ethic and keen market sense, they were off and running.

“We found a retail space in Kensington and Carolyn said, ‘Let’s go for it!’” said Jodi. “Carolyne quit her job first; I quit mine seven months later.” The pair did all the renovations themselves, and in September of 2004, Crave Cookies and Cupcakes made its debut in the Calgary market.

For several months, the pair ran the business entirely on their own. “Friends and family would come in and help, but basically it was just the two of us. We’d do the baking, open the store, sell the product, close the store,” said Jodi proudly. “We worked from four in the morning till close, seven days a week. We even had a shower in the back, we were there so much!”

But like the saying goes, you reap what you sow, or in this case, you reap what you bake. Crave became a raving success, with people lining up down the street to get their share of the decadent treats!

Today Crave has five stores in Calgary, one in Edmonton, and a new one that opened last fall in Saskatoon. Jodi and Carolyn work side by side in a suite of offices in Calgary’s Beltline. They recently added a kitchen to their head office so they can create, bake and test their own masterpieces onsite. “We source the best ingredients and all are pure and real,” said Jodi. “We use real butter; real whipping cream; we crack every egg one at a time.”

According to Willoughby, she and her sister have no regrets about the hours they have poured into the business. “It makes us truly appreciate every one of our (98) employees. All the positions, all the hard word, we know the demands, we’ve been there, and now we’re one big family.”

Echoes of farm life and the triumph over loss reverberate in all aspects of this family-run business. “Our humble roots have served us well,” said Jodi. “We never take our success for granted, we live for today and appreciate the time we have together, and we are deeply grateful to all the people who have helped us get here.”

Caroline and Jodi at their Willowpark location in Calgary holding their favourite flavour of cupcakes!

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By Pat Fream

Image by Neville Palmer

Q: What exactly is a luthier and what does your craft entail?

A: A luthier (pronounced loo-ti-er) is a maker and repairer of wooden stringed instruments. In the past it meant a maker and repairer of lutes, but today it includes other instruments. Folks who only do repairs usually refer to themselves as repairmen or guitar techs. Those who ‘jig up’ and run small factories cranking out a few models of guitars are light industrialists. Luthiers handcraft individual musical instruments.

Q: Explain how you came to be a luthier, and how one becomes a certified luthier today.

A: In the late 1980s I heard of a guy teaching guitar making on the west coast. I went out and met Michael Dunn, who was teaching at Douglas College in New Westminster and it seemed like a good mix to me. I studied there for two years, and received Certificates of Mastery in Musical Instrument Construction and Musical Instrument Construction-Advanced. Unfortunately that program is no longer running. Most existing ‘lutherie schools’ are short term and sometimes quite expensive.

Q: Are there many of you luthiers around? Or is this a dying art form in the face of mass production?

A: There are quite a few hobbyists, but few who have made the jump to full time. It’s not an easy way to make money. It is a competitive field especially for newcomers and you have to be consistently good and reliable. Often those of us who are doing well, are still not doing well enough that we can afford the loss in productivity that would occur should we take on an apprentice.

Q: What types of stringed instruments do you make?

A: Generally today luthiers make either violin family instruments or fretted instruments like guitars, banjos, mandolins, etc., but not both.  Although I do repairs to violin family instruments including cello and double bass; I only build fretted family instruments.

Q: Such as?

A: I’ve built a few banjos and an F-5 mandolin, but I mostly build guitars. I build fine French Polished, Classical and Flamenco guitars; loud balanced ‘Steel String’ guitars and a very good ‘Acoustic Bass Guitar’. I also specialize in a high performance type of jazz guitar invented by Mario Maccaferri, and played by the great Django Reinhardt.

Q: I’ve heard about an interesting instrument you are building for Calum Graham (profiled in this issue of Routes).

A: Yes, this is the second time I have been commissioned to make a ‘Harp Guitar’ (similar to a ‘Schrammel Guitar’ or ‘Contrabass Guitar’ as built in Vienna in the mid and late 1800s). It will have a normal six string guitar neck but also a number of extra bass strings off the bass side of the neck. I will incorporate things I learned from the earlier Harp Guitar, but this will also be somewhat different. We are pretty happy with the design, and have been talking about materials such as Flamed Maple, possibly with Brazilian Rosewood. I will also use an innovation patented by the great Toronto luthier Linda Manzer, called ‘The Wedge’. Basically the bass side of the instrument will be considerably shallower than the treble side. This makes it easier to bring the right arm over the instrument, making the instrument much more comfortable to play.

Q: What do you like best about your job?

A: That’s difficult to say. I’m very versatile; it’s part of my secret to avoiding a regular job.

I like the challenge of solving new problems and helping people and I enjoy the complexity of repair work. The challenge of designing a new instrument and bringing it all the way to completion and, even to stage performance, is very exhilarating. Restoring someone’s family heirloom violin is also deeply satisfying.

Q: What qualities do you have that make you good at this kind of work?

A: I am very meticulous and have high quality standards. This is a good thing because my customers tend to have high expectations. The required attention to fine detail is not for everybody.

Q: Who have you crafted guitars for? Anyone Famous?

A: Calum Graham is getting a lot of attention and he has a Shifflett ’Flamenco Negra’ (rosewood Flamenco Guitar) I built for him, and George Canyon has a stunning French Polished African Blackwood Classical Guitar of mine. Jim Peace has two custom built Shifflett steel string guitars that I am quite proud of. I have been doing repair work for Ian Tyson for many years, and as well, a lot of repair work for all those sidemen who play with the pros.

Q: Are you commissioned to make instruments? Or do you make your own creations and sell them independently?

A: I almost always work to order, though once in a long while I sneak in a project that I just want to do. In fact I generally don’t do any work for anyone that I don’t want to.

Q: Do you play your instruments? Do you have a spouse or kids who play?

A: Now and then my wife Fay and I enjoy playing a little at our friend Donna’s pub (Gitter’s Pub). My kids are very talented but a little shy.

Q: How many guitars can you make in a year? Enough to make a good living doing this?

A: I make between one and five a year depending on how much repair work there is to do. I would say it’s a steady modest living, but a good life? Oh yes, I think so!

Photo by Neville Palmer. Shifflett built his workshop measuring only 24 x 32 and 25 feet high but has good climate control, is in the side yard of his house in High River. He enjoy his 20 foot daily commute to work.

Locally, he needs no introduction. Mention just his first name in these parts and automatically people know you’re referring to the 20-year-old, bright-eyed, frosted-tipped, wunderkind guitarist, Calum Graham.

Nationally, he has broken ground already, sharing studios with Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace, Chantal Kreviazuk (the Chantal Kreviazuk) and – not too shabby either – the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. As he naturally branches into international territory, all that is familiar might be about ­to change.

He can play the guitar like few can on the planet. That’s not an overstatement. Of fans, now-legendary guitarist Don Ross counts himself one; a substantial endorsement considering Ross was Graham’s initial inspiration for learning to finger pick on the guitar.

“It blew my mind that one guitar could make so much sound,” said Graham.

With the admiration of such a big name artist and spades of recent accolades (such as, 2011 Song for Canada contest grand prize winner), there seems only room to grow for the newly budded artist in an understory of musical fame.

But putting it that way is too simple. Too nutshell. For one, it implies destiny. No self-respecting artist in the burgeoning part of his career wants to talk about something that negates tangible measures of hard work. It’s the teleological analogy of an acorn containing all the makings of an oak tree, though not necessarily destined to become one. For Graham, it’s a necessary denial at this stage.

“I think the terrifying parts help keep me in check,” Graham explains about the recent up-shoot in his musical career. An example: it dawned on him one day he was using the same master and mixer for recording his album that Led Zeppelin used. “It’s crazy,” he said, “just the momentum itself.”

Prior to breaking into the limelight, Graham was well tended to; nourished and supported by community, both that of High River and of fellow musicians. He can’t talk about his early guitar years without making two parental footnotes: recalling evenings as he sat at his father’s feet and listened to him strum chords, and crediting his artistic flair to his mother, who paints… with her feet.

Graham knew the guitar would take him far. “I wanted to see the world with a purpose,” he said. “It was always my incentive to play.” From his dad’s few chords, he quickly learned every song by Don Ross. (Tellingly, when Ross first heard Graham, he told the young guitarist: “That’s your ticket.”) And that ticket seems good. His time is now split between home in High River and recording studios in Los Angeles.

If you’ve heard Graham play the guitar, it’s likely you’ve only heard him play the guitar. Whereas – up to now – his guitar did enough singing for the both of them, this new studio album, with the working title, Indivisibility, will feature the artist’s lyrics and voice too. In this sense, the title takes on new meaning, implying his voice and the guitar’s are one and the same.

As he grows, Graham is still searching for that elusive idea of voice, like Zeppelin’s, he said, “you know it’s them.” And he is in good hands. He has a voice coach, Brian Farrell, and manager Neil McGonigle, who, incidentally, also managed Jann Arden. It was McGonigle who had just the right guy in mind in LA, and that guy turned out to be producer CJ Vanston whose tutelage produced Tina Turner and N’Sync.

Graham says that Vanston, acquainted with both the old, “dinosaur” way of music-making and today’s “ready, fire, aim” hyper-marketing method, wants to buck the modern convention of depriving the artist inside the celebrity. While there are plans for an iPhone app to accompany the release of Indivisible, Vanston and Graham both seek to preserve the album as a whole piece of art.

“What usually happens is artists go through a model – like the Britney Spears and Katy Perry stuff. And it works. It sells. But he’s all about the music,” said Graham about Vanston. “Let people come to us.”  

Back home in Alberta, equally passionate artists are chipping in, in one case, literally. Local luthier, Chuck Shifflett, is handcrafting Graham a guitar – a “monster,” Graham calls it – with a harp engrained into its woodwork; a truly unique bit of craftsmanship matched only by the young artist who will play it.

It’s obvious the beginning part is over. No longer bogged down by the torment artists face to get noticed or find their voice, Graham is bursting with ideas of new markets and major artists with which to grow alongside.

“I’m just going to go for it – not letting fear hold me back,”he said, reaffirming the total dedication to a living. “Years down the road I just want to be making music on a bigger scale.”

To wax philosophically one last time, an acorn’s end result might not be a tree. It could just as well be a guitar or dust or, who knows, a star. Graham gets this. It’s what drives him.

***

Graham was the 2011 Song for Canada contest grand prize winner; one of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics’ top artists of Alberta; and winner of the Canadian Youth Talent Competition. The previous winner of that competition was Micheal Bublé.

Watch a Video of CALUM

About getting the shot by Neville Palmer

By Peter Worden

Martin (right) works with students during a workshop. Photo by Neville Palmer

Martin Reinhard cups a few handfuls of damp coke, pushing a pile around the edge of a small flame. The forge feeds voraciously on vented air and is soon ablaze, rising to a near-instant 4,000˚F.

“Beats any acetylene torch,” he announces. Seconds later a steel rod inside the heat is orange-hot, or in blacksmith language, warm. “We never say hot.” He strikes it. When it starts to cool (though, still warm enough to sear third-degree burns), Martin continues with the natural rhythm of a blacksmith, musically tinging the hammer twice against the anvil face in-between each heavier metallic clang of the rod. Clang. Ting, ting. Clang. Ting, ting. “Heat it and hammer it, heat it and hammer it, tempering it,” he says, and places the rod back in the fire for a second heat.

Photo by Neville Palmer

While his storefront is located on Nanton’s Main Street, Martin’s workshop is located in a non-descript back-alley entranceway off Hwy 2. For all its modesty, it’s the only one of its kind in the province and there are three (maybe) like it in Canada. Likewise, Martin himself is equally modest and rare. He’s a master blacksmith of which fewer and fewer remain (none in Canada, to his knowledge). He’s a sculptor of art in which “each piece is one of one.” He’s an inventor of a wall-mounted kindling-splitter called Mr. Quicksplit. And he’s a chemist or – chemistry’s medieval precursor – an alchemist, possessing knowledge of elements’ properties with an ability to meld them into wrought iron – something stronger and just as historically significant as gold.

“Material gets 10-times stronger after it’s been forged,” he says. The rod he’s forging now begins to take shape with a twisted loop at one end and a hook at the other. “I make my own tools,” Martin continues, explaining how he petitioned the Government of Alberta once in a letter to advocate at least 14 different trades that could benefit from a day in his shop. “I can work with no electricity,” he says, “you show me a trade that can do that.”

There was a time when a town couldn’t survive without a blacksmith. But today, a one-man shop working with the four elements, fire, water, earth and air, is quaint, parochial. If ‘humans’ – traditionally held as the fifth element – are shapers and tinkerers, then Janet Rose, Martin’s partner at their Willowcreek Forge storefront is the sixth, tirelessly promoting Martin and blacksmithing in general.

“Martin has no apprentice,” she says, explaining that when the blacksmithing world loses Martin, a lifetime of master blacksmithing experience will be lost with him.

What does it say about a generation with no understanding of wrought iron? Either Janet or Martin will tell you, it says something about the world’s “Wal-Mart mentality” and explains in a nutshell how society popularly defines value. Martin knows first-hand the hard balance between blacksmith-as-artist and blacksmith-as-knickknack-maker.

“It’s tomorrow’s antiques, my stuff,” he says. “The stuff that comes from China …” he says, trailing off to insinuate the obvious. “This,” showing a previously forged work, “is like having an original oil painting.”

One measure of a blacksmith’s work is how many times it has been placed in the fire or “heats” it took. Like this, Martin has undergone several heats. He grew up in Lucerne, Switzerland, the son of a long line of hard-working oven builders. He passed his master blacksmith exam, which requires six types of welding know-how. “It’s not multiple choice, believe me,” he says. In 1976, he moved to Alberta, welding in the oil patch, doing stainless steel work at the Calgary airport, helping restore the Banff Springs Hotel, and more recently, from his shop in Nanton, forging gates for luxury homes in Canmore and Bearspaw and other works, which like everything in blacksmithing: “You have to start from scratch. Nothing will be identical.”

With all the tools, knowledge, shop space and patience (his blacksmith course is open to anyone) all Martin needs is to find an apprentice. The job isn’t perfect, “Oh you get burned,” he says. But there’s a need for more and more of it, and importantly, money to be made.

“I got a call this morning,” he says. “Well-spoken man. Wants a window basket made by a real blacksmith; like what you would see in England,” his steely blue eyes, gunmetal in the reflection of the anvil as he continues to work. “I’m the guy for you.”

Photo by Neville Palmer

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Photo by Neville Palmer at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel

Contrary to public opinion, Mike Holmes never believed he was destined to become a contractor, let alone a Canadian icon in the construction industry, but from the age of six, and by virtue of his father’s influence, he was constantly fixing or building something. Never at a loss for words or ideas, this natural born leader has always aspired to make the world a better place – beyond building homes that won’t burn, mould or rot. Now at 48, his drive to educate millions of people – all at once – is stronger than ever, and he has new goals on the horizon. But when his work is finished, don’t be surprised if Holmes disappears from the public eye – seeking seclusion on an island in hopes of regaining some well-deserved privacy.

By Mary Savage

Photos by Neville Palmer
Read more here about the photoshoot by Neville.

After spending an afternoon with Canada’s most trusted contractor it became apparent that Mike Holmes is even more personable than his “non-scripted” television demeanor depicts. Behind the piercing blue eyes and diamond-studded ears, the self-proclaimed workaholic is starting to realize the importance of enjoying life by stealing pockets of time amidst his breakneck schedule, his vision for change never sleeps.

“For whatever reason, we don’t think outside the box: we know it’s wrong, but we don’t change our approach to building better homes. It’s not about changing the minimum building codes, it’s about changing how we look at things,” says Holmes. “Things won’t change until we know better – by learning from our mistakes.”

He appears to be a knight in shining armour to the thousands of families he personally helps to ‘make it right’ when renovations go wrong, it’s no wonder he has a global following. “We’ve got to stop doing things because that’s the way we’ve always done them. We haven’t changed the minimum building codes for 30-odd years and they’re not working,” remarks Holmes. “Two of the fastest growing businesses are home inspections and mould abatement.” Because according to Holmes, every single house has mould – the question is how much.

“Imagine living in a house that won’t mould or burn, it won’t fall down or blow down. Imagine building a community that operates as ‘net-zero’, meaning it actually produces more electricity than it uses,” Holmes adds.

When Holmes forayed into the Wind Walk project, a sustainable community slated for development south of Okotoks, his vision of the Holmes Community was to build houses that would last for centuries (costing about 15 per cent more than the going rate). Three years later, the project sits before the provincial government awaiting its decision, and Holmes has no intention of giving up.

“Eventually, it will move forward because I’m not giving up, it’s the right thing do to. I picked Alberta because it’s progressive with respect to the environment,” explains Holmes. “It’s about doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time.”

Holmes explains that the project’s greatest challenge has to do with water. “We want the water and sewer to be 100 per cent contained within the community. The water source comes from the aquifer: we’ll use it and clean it and return it to the aquifer. Everything in life is about that cycle: how can we move, how can we grow, how can we continue – for our kids and their future.”

As for other communities like Wind Walk, there’s one slated for Haiti. It’s being built near Port au Prince to house children who were left orphaned by the earthquake. His team has been down there several times and he will go down in November to begin the project.

And when it comes the next generation, Holmes has met with the prime minister on several occasions to talk about ‘green’ initiatives. “We’re all thinking green, we’re all talking green, but who’s teaching it?  How do we move from the level we’re at now, building minimum code that’s literally not working, to designing differently?” he asks. Holmes Communities will hire local apprentices and teach them how to build these houses. It creates a brand new certification and will change the industry overnight.”

When it comes to building a better house, Holmes combines history with technology and a bit of common sense. “When you think about how we built years ago, we had canopies over our windows and they were positioned at perfect degrees. In the summer, it shaded us from the solar passive and kept the house cool, but in the winter, it still allowed the sunshine to heat the environment,” he says. “Why did we stop using canopies? Was it cheaper or did we just become stupid?”

His forward thinking, backed by his drive for action, has landed him in a league of his own where he is both respected and disliked. Regardless, Holmes has already made a tremendous difference and he attributes many of his traits – like them or not – to his father.

“My Dad was a real unique person and, among other things, he taught me respect and to think for myself,” Holmes says. “I grew up in a tough neighborhood and maybe that’s what made me strong. I was a wimpy kid and got beat up a lot. I was about 14 when I finally stood up for myself and realized I was strong enough to fight back.”

For the past five years, Holmes has been working on Mighty Mike a cartoon character to be launched in 2012. “It’s a version of me as a kid. It follows Mighty Mike’s activity with a crew of kids around him. It’s going to help teach kids integrity, kindness, respect, having a passion for what they do and, of course, how to become a contractor,” Holmes explains. “He’s going to be an icon for the next generation.”

Looking at Holmes’s bucket list, there appears to be a lot of checkmarks. “In the last 10 years, everything was planned, with one exception: the accident was going from Holmes Homes to Holmes Communities!” With four companies, a bi-monthly magazine and four books under the Holmes Group, he’s on a roll.

“I planned every book ahead of time and I’ve still got two more to go. The fifth one is about the environment and how we need to understand the changes that are necessary. The sixth book is called, Men are Easy, because I have always been drawn to write a book about love, life and sex,” he says with a grin.

“When I read the book, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, I was 30 and newly divorced. Afterwards, I said to myself, ‘It’s that easy?’ Then I called my ex-wife and apologized – for everything.”

Holmes looks at life as one continuous learning curve, turning mistakes into lessons and moving forward. “To me, there’s never a mistake in life. Everything is a lesson and that’s how we learn. I’ve never regretted anything that has helped me understand life better and helped me get to where I am today.”

Holmes admits he thought Wind Walk would have been better received, but like most things in life, he sees it as a learning opportunity. “There’s nothing negative about this project – we spent over a million dollars planning and testing it,” he says. “No matter what happens, after the first community has been built, I’ll have changed the industry.”

In a rare moment, when Holmes is not working, you’ll find him on his boat or travelling across the country on his new three-wheel motorcycle. “I calculate my time by what’s important to me. It’s important to finish what I’ve started and I speculate I’ve got about five years to go, but I doubt it will ever stop,” he adds. The next bucket list will take him to 60 and according to Holmes, it’s anybody’s guess what happens after that.

“I always said I’m going to buy an island and disappear and I’m probably going to do that, but then again, maybe I’ll build an underground house.”

Wind Walk at a Glance

For the 1,000 – 1,200 Wind Walk residents, their community would be a compact, walkable neighborhood featuring Green™ and sustainable building solutions that include Holmes Homes, Holmes Approved Homes and high performance infrastructure. The concept, introduced in spring 2008, proposes development of a 145-acre parcel of land, located south of Highway 7 and the Cornerstone area, just outside the Okotoks city limits. The current plan promotes a mixed-used land plan:

• 457 single and multi-family homes
• 33 per cent of the land is comprised of open green spaces, allocating ten acres to public park use
• a full-sized soccer pitch
• over 80 plots designated for a community garden and farmers’ markets
• 7.5 acres for a school
• approximately 80,000 sq.ft. of retail space

The plan also includes technological integration to offer:

• district wide heating and electrical generation plan to be the first net-exporting energy subdivision in North America
• improved automation and home energy management
• renewable energy systems such as solar on every rooftop
• an integrated water management system retaining storm water on-site to pre-development rates and conservation standards
• improved broadband speed and capacity through fibre optic infrastructure
• full compost, recycle and waste management plan during and after construction
• district wide battery back-up storage to eliminate risk of power outages, surges and interruptions

Photo by Neville Palmer, Okotoks, Alberta

Look up and all around and you’ll find the Zman’s work everywhere. From the caricatures on ceiling tiles in the Twin Cities Bar in Longview, and on business windows all over Calgary during Stampede, in carvings, on walls, and even in his self published books.

By Sandra Wiebe

Around here, most people know Matts for his murals, most recently, East Longview Hall, the colourful depictions of the ranching lifestyle can be seen for miles. Matts also loves to sketch, draw, carve, chainsaw or otherwise, turning anything into a work of art.

“I just can’t stand white walls,” he told me as we sipped coffee together one afternoon. He was wearing the same well-worn cowboy hat he had on the first time I met him. In fact, I’ve never seen him without it. Along with his gentle persona, that is as much a part of his distinct character as is his bushy, walrus moustache.

Born in Edmonton, Matts always felt a calling to the cowboy lifestyle and moved from place to place all along the Cowboy Trail, including Sundre and Priddis, and for the past 10 years, Longview. He spoke of moving again, going south – 30 kilometers south that is. “I think I have one more move left in me, but this area is home.”

At 57 years old, he has held over 46 jobs to which his good friend remarked: You’re either the most interesting person in the world, or the most unstable individual I’ve ever seen.

“What makes me happiest is doing, it’s a fire that needs fuel.” Matts has a real passion for learning. One of those past jobs was being a physical education teacher, where he said, “The biggest job is to instill the love of learning.”

Matts’s love of learning is evident in his latest creative venture, a western historical novel (set in the Pekisko area), with the details based on facts of the era in which the story is set. While preparing a sample for the East Longview Hall, he found the project to be a history lesson. “I had depicted cowboys doing strictly ranch work in my original draft and the history of the east Longview area, as I learned, included more farming activities. There is a strong distinction, yet strong ties between the cattlemen and the farming community of east Longview.”

Another of Matts’s art projects, fueled by his creative mind, is turning a seven-foot plaster Greek urn into a lingerie wearing, big busted trashy bar maid – complete with a moving arm acting as a lever to dispense beer. Everything Matts touches becomes a one-of, a unique piece. But don’t go looking for Matts’s work in any art gallery. “What makes be happy is doing something – seeing something, creating it, then selling it.”

A one- of-a-kind himself, Matts won’t refer to himself as an artist, “My whole life is a hobby – I just get paid for some of the things I do.”

Photo by Neville Palmer, Longview

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Matts started his ‘bucket list’ in the early ‘60s, with one rule: when checking off one thing, another must be added! “It’s so you always have 100 things to do, so you are never done, never content,” he said. “I’m happy but I never want to be content.”

Done are:

• Owned a ’53 GMC pick up.
• Participated in a rodeo with wild horse racing and as a steer wrestler.
• Wrote a book.

To do:

• Learn to type (with more than two fingers).
• Learn to speak Spanish.
• Learn to play the bagpipes.
• Ride around the world on horseback, visiting every horse culture. No highways.
• See one of his 62 money-making ideas come to fruition.

Where to view the Zman’s work in the area:

East Longview Hall (completed October 2010).

Boot Hill Gallery, Okotoks.

Ceiling of Twin Cities Hotel bar, Longview.

Coming soon: River Roadhouse, Factory Outlet Trailers, Calgary business windows for Stampede.

GETTING  THE SHOT