A Celebration of Western Movies… Pardner!
Into high meadows we went.
My guide and I.
Cold wind blew down off of the glaciers.
And I looked upon wonders.
I felt that no Whiteman had ever seen such things before.
And may never again.
That night I camped under trillions of stars.
and watched magical lights dance across the heavens.
Green, gold and white.
And I cried.
Blue Canadian Rockies / Wilf Carter / 1962
Last Fall we took a drive out to Kananaskis country-
that’s in the mountains.
It had beautiful up till then. But it soon turned cool and cloudy.
No matter – it’s the Rockies. And just like the sea,
they are beautiful in any weather.
Doesn’t take us long to get up there.
Calgary is only about and hour’s drive from the mountains.
“One of the great explorers of the Canadian Rockies, Captain John Palliser, named the area on an expedition more than 150 years ago. He chose the name Kananaskis, derived from the name “Kin-e-a-kis,” a warrior who survived an axe blow to the head spurred by a fight
to win the attention of a woman.”
(That’s how I got my name!)
So Palliser was about the first White guy to see this area.
That makes him some kind of Canadian hero,
though the natives had been up here for a few thousand years.
If Palliser was an American, there woulda been 18 movies about him.
But since he’s Canadian, nobody’s ever heard of him.
Including Canadians.
to be continued …
