Editorial: Four strong winds

For its centennial anniversary, the Calgary Stampede is returning to its western roots. Leading the parade will be Canada's most famous singing cowboy, Ian Tyson, and seven honorary marshals, all First Nations chiefs representing the signatories of Treaty 7. The legendary Tyson barely needs an introduction. The Alberta rancher, as his website points out, is closing in on six decades "of singing stories that tell the real truth about horses and men, love sustained and relation-ships broken, heroes and heroines and the land and the weather and the Prairie sky." Heck, the cowboy learned how to play guitar in hospital, while recovering from a rodeo accident. But it was the inspiration of beautiful Alberta, where he worked the land and trained horses from his ranch in the breathtaking foothills of the Rockies, that produced the singer-songwriter's greatest work. Tyson penned some of Canada's best-loved songs, including Four Strong Winds and Someday Soon. His music inspired a cowboy renaissance and the inaugural Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering in 1983. "A small coterie of saddle makers, rawhide braiders, cowboy poets and pickers discovered one another in a small cow town in northern Nevada," says Tyson's website. "Tyson was invited to perform his 'new western music' - and he's missed only one or two gatherings in the 30 years since."...more