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.]

-30-

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.

Story and images by Veronica Kloiber

 Day 1

10:03 a.m.

We wait in the shimmering heat on the side of Federal Highway 5. Our eyes, squinting for a sign of her, are trained on a dirt track leading out of the Baja sands. This is the first checkpoint on the first day of the Mexican 1000, a three-day off-road race that jogs southward down Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Our entry is still out there, somewhere.

We call her the Black Pearl – a’78 Chevy step-side. She’s running hot and burning oil as she barrels out of the desert and onto the blacktop. Just miles from that morning’s start line in Mexicali, and days away from the finish in La Paz, our Pearl, stinking and shrouded in blue smoke, is looking more like any old beater than the cherry ride you’d want to take on this dusty road to glory.

10:51 a.m.

Driver Jayson Walmsley bounces out of the cab in a puff of smoke and expletives. Riding shotgun is Clint Melnechenko. Both men look more like excited boys as they jump around jabbering about how their girl did out there, to anyone who’ll make eye-contact.

Team mechanic Tyler Smith gets in close to the feverish heap of metal. The heat radiating off the asphalt is nothing compared to the fire coming off the Pearl. Her new three-speed Turbo 400 transmission is only running in second. As Smith pours in a litre of oil, she burps and asks for more. Three litres later her engine is satisfied, but burning oil at that rate is no way to beat the Baja.

Back in the chase truck, we follow the Pearl down the highway. Our second chase vehicle, along with the cargo trailer the Pearl rode to Mexico in, has taken the smoother and much longer road to the west. They are six hours away by now, navigating some of the most harrowing coastal roads south of the border. No one wants to say it but it looks like the Pearl will be back in that trailer heading for home before the next checkpoint.

We don’t see or hear from her again until later that afternoon. Her 383 cubic inch, 500 horsepower engine is too loud to make the CB radio useful while driving, and the Peninsular Ranges that separate the Pearl from our chase truck make for sketchy communication at best.

1:51 p.m.

At San Felipe a miracle occurs. The Pearl makes it. Now knowing she burns three litres of oil an hour, her cab is stocked with the juice to get her to the next checkpoint. She’ll burn more oil than fuel for the rest of the race but at least she’s still a contender.

We take to the Baja sands in our sturdy Dodge chase truck and gingerly follow the racers. It’s tame compared to what the Pearl can do but the scenery is what makes our snail’s pace worth it. Baja is both a void and filled with life; faces emerge from the rock formations all around us as cacti and tumbleweeds soften the dunes.

We make it to a favourite spot among Baja travellers. Literally in the middle of nowhere, Coco’s Corner is part concession, part museum and all Baja. Coco lives alone and off the grid but has rigged up a solar system to keep the necessities cold. Empty beer cans decorate the compound. Truck shells provide lodging for weary back-roaders and an aged semi truck is the honeymoon suite. Look up at the rafters at Coco’s Corner and you’ll see his mementos. Ladies’ undergarments hang from above, numbering in the hundreds. They say once you’ve been to Baja it’ll always call you back, and if you left your skivvies you’ll surely want to return sometime to claim them.

Day 2

7:36 a.m.

The second day of the race dawns as the sun rises over Bahia de los Angeles. We arrived after dark and missed it, but the view from our roadside motel is straight out of a travel magazine. A quick glimpse and we are back to why we are here. The Pearl turns over and the guys take that as a sign from above.

It doesn’t look as daunting on paper, but the Mexican 1000 has more miles to it than driving the length of our home province of Alberta – one thousand miles to be exact. Day two passes long and uncomfortable. We pass fishing villages and shanty towns with the blue waters of the Sea of Cortez to the east. Following the race course inland, the highway is littered with garbage and debris. This is the Mexico you don’t want to see; mile after mile of mirages and trash. Signposts reading peligroso (danger) seem as useless as guardrails on the steep slopes of the Sierras.

11:37 p.m.

The Pearl rolls into Loreto late on day two. She has no brakes as Mike Geier steers her down the mountain, near misses piling up behind him. With one light pointing up, the other growing dimmer by the second we hear her roar into the parking lot. Over a supper of popcorn and beer, the day’s events are tallied and retold.

Earlier that day the Pearl’s radiator blew, but thanks to a bottle of JB Weld shared by a passing team, what could have turned into a rescue mission, was only a few delayed hours. Getting stuck in the desert for the night may not be a death sentence but it would certainly be unpleasant.

Day 3

8:32 a.m.

In line at the start of day three, Tyler Smith lies under the Pearl. In five minutes he outfits her with new brake lines. While the team agonizes about the lack of brakes, the job is done. The brakes work and it’s a good thing because minutes into the race, the terrain goes up and then straight down into a dry riverbed.

5:36 p.m.

There are only two seats in the truck but the guys have picked up a hitcher who now sits on co-pilot Jack Krushkÿ’s lap. The third man is none other than race promoter and president of the National Off Road Racing Association, Mike Pearlman. All three are grinning through the blue smog still billowing off the Pearl as she rolls into La Paz.

She crosses the finish line, groaning. The Pearl made it, 35^th place, smack in the middle of the pack.

March 2011 – back in Black Diamond

Baja bested the old Chevy in her inaugural race in 2010 and by the looks of her; she narrowly made it out. But racing is not over for the Pearl. Once that dust gets in you, it’s there to stay and will call you back again and again. Back home in southern Alberta the Pearl is being overhauled and improved with designs on a trophy in the 2012 Mexican 1000.

The Black Pearl’s crew, (from left to right) Jack Krusche, Mike Geier, Tyler Smith, Clint Melnechenko, Byron Neu, Jayson Walmsley, Kerry Riess and Tracy Torunski

“Last year we raced to finish, this year we race to place,” declares Melnechenko.

In May of 2011, writer Veronica Kloiber met the owners of the Black Pearl and joined them as they headed south to race in the second annual Mexican 1000, an off-road race that runs almost the full length of the Baja Peninsula. Invited by brother-in-law and team mechanic Tyler Smith, the adventure took Veronica and the team some 2,500 kilometers from Black Diamond, Alberta to the Mexican border. The Black Pearl’s crew, Jayson Walmsley, Clint Melnechenko, Tyler Smith and Mike Geier are all southern Alberta locals and hail from Millarville, Black Diamond, Turner Valley and Okotoks.

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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Learn more about the Big Sky Astronomical Society

Rohan Marley introduces House of Marley audio products. Photos by Zac Bolan

Photos and Story By Zac Bolan

Global technology manufacturers, buyers, sellers and press converged at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to salivate over two million square feet of the very latest gear and gadgets. Held annually in Las Vegas, CES has become the preeminent trendsetting event for consumer technology. This year the designers of appliances, home entertainment systems, cars, smartphones, tablets and even personal biometric devices are fixated on web connectivity and mobile access.

Intelligent TV – Every major television manufacturer is offering “smart” TV products this year in an attempt to finally bring online content delivery to the living room. Notably Samsung and Panasonic Smart TV sets provide a seamless user experience that delivers streaming content from YouTube and other online sources. While 3D TV technology is increasingly prevalent in this year’s high-end sets, the lack of 3D content is still proving to be a barrier to widespread acceptance.

Take Two Tablets – Once again the burgeoning tablet market scrambled to compete with the iPad, and once again no viable contender emerged from the pack. Obscure tablet manufacturers from Asia showcased their products along side major players such as Samsung and Sony, all trying to emulate the iPad user experience and Apple’s App Store ecosystem with little success.

Home Automation – CES 2012 highlighted a growing emphasis on the home with a barrage of appliances enabling smart technology in the laundry room, kitchen and household power management. Samsung and Haier launched interactive appliances designed to communicate with smartphones and tablets while accessory manufacturers Belkin and Monster introduced a variety of power management products designed to reduce household electrical consumption.

Health and Wellness – Numerous iOS and Android enabled biometric monitors introduced at CES 2012 enable users to accurately monitor exercise, food intake and sleep. When combined with application-based or online tools, users can track progress towards achieving health goals.

Smart Cars – Ford, Kia and Mercedes all showed interactive car technologies at CES. The MyFord Touch™ system stood out as an elegant combination of steering wheel controls with a mid-console touch screen interface enabling everything from hands-free communication and navigation to web browsing.

It Don’t Mean A Thing (If it ain’t got that BLING) – Fashion has become the latest battlefield for accessory makers in a bid to stand out in a crowded marketplace with many flaunting premium celebrity endorsed product lines such as Monster’s Gratitude headphones inspired by Earth, Wind and Fire. Meanwhile Swarovski-encrusted iPhone cases add glitz while being more expensive than the devices they protect.

Overall CES 2012 had an interesting living-in-the-shadow-of-Apple vibe. Though the consumer electronics giant had no official presence at the show, the Apple effect was felt in many of the product categories. For example, nearly a quarter of CES floor space was consumed by accessories or products directly associated with the iPhone, iPod or iPad. Meanwhile, the TV market scrambles to compete with the rumoured Apple iTV – a product that doesn’t even exist yet.

It’s going to be an interesting year for gadget geeks!

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.