To Be a Cowboy: Oliver Christensen''s Story
ISBN: 9781552384602
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Calgary Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Christensen Oliver; Christensen Oliver -- Family; Cowboys -- Alberta -- Biography; Ranch life -- Alberta;

During a time of two world wars and a sluggish world economy, many Northern Europeans left their homelands to build the American and Canadian West with dreams of abundance and new life. Spanning a period from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, To Be a Cowboy : Oliver Christensen's Story recounts the dreams and realities of a father and a son. Otto Christensen came to North America in the early 1900s as an indentured farm worker from Denmark with a dream of becoming a successful farmer in Alberta. His son, Oliver, grew up on his father's farm during the Dirty Thirties and soon realized his dream of becoming a cowboy in the mid-1940s. As a rider at the Bar U Ranch -- the largest, most successful ranch in Canada at the time - Oliver discovered life as a cowboy could not be his for long. Based on oral history interviews and a treasure trove of family papers, To Be A Cowboy is a compelling memoir that paints a portrait of a dying way of life.

Holliday Barbara :

Barbara Holliday was a historian on the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site development project for six years. Born in Manitoba, Barbara moved from one Canadian Navy base to another, dreaming of owning a horse and living in Alberta one day.


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