Alberta's foremost storyteller: Grant MacEwan.

Smith, Donald B.

In the spring of 1966 the Historical Society of Alberta honoured Grant MacEwan for his "outstanding contribution to Alberta's history."(1) The newly-appointed Lieutenant Governor of Alberta, then sixty-three years old, appeared to have reached the high point of his career as a western Canadian popular historian. But appearances can be deceiving. Thirty plus years, and thirty plus books, remained ahead. He had only begun to make his contribution to our understanding of ourselves and of our region.

Grant's extraordinary energy and organizational skills help to explain his success in popular history at a time when he had numerous university, community, and later political commitments. Born in 1902 he grew up on a pioneer farm just north of Brandon, Manitoba. After several years in Brandon itself, he spent his teenaged years on the family's new farm in the Carrot River valley near Melfort, Saskatchewan. Early in his life he developed work habits of long hours, marked by efficient use of time.(2)

Grant's knowledge of western Canada's rural past came from his farm upbringing, as well as from his university training and teaching. In Saskatchewan he walked two miles each way to school. En route the teenager studied the flora and fauna, acquiring the deep knowledge and appreciation of nature which appears throughout his work.(3) He knew intimately of what he wrote. On the family farm he lived through the entire early twentieth century prairie experience, from breaking virgin sod with horse and plow, to the full mechanization of agriculture. His years of study at the Ontario Agricultural College, in Guelph, Ontario, and graduate work at the Iowa State College of Agriculture, as well as his teaching at both the Universities of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, deepened his understanding of western Canadian agriculture.

The future historian of prairie Canada knew how to communicate easily with the public. While at the Ontario Agricultural College one summer, he sold nursery stock throughout southwestern Ontario. He sold as much as the average experienced salesman his first week, and every subsequent week his sales went higher. Meeting and talking with strangers came naturally to him. Later, as a professor of animal husbandry at the University of Saskatchewan, he loved giving community talks, and judging at cattle shows. By the early young 1930s the young professor had established a reputation as a gifted and popular speaker on agricultural topics, and on others as well. But when the University of Saskatchewan decided to emphasize scholarship and pure research, rather than contact with the public, Grant's interest in the institution declined.(4) He seized the chance in 1946 to become the Dean of Agriculture at Manitoba with the assigned task of taking the university out to Manitoba farms.

Grant had all the necessary attributes needed for recording and writing on western Canada's past. But the agricultural specialist only began to write on human historical topics when he was in his forties. Like many Canadians, before and since, he had a negative experience with history in school. His Ontario-born father and Nova Scotian-born mother had brought him up with tales of stamina and courage in the pioneer period of Canada's past. But in public school his teachers deadened rather than deepened his interest. Years later Grant told his son-in-law, historian Max Foran, that his teachers actually made him "hate history": "The only history I got in my school years was English history. There was no such thing as a recorded Canadian history. There was no textbook. The teachers didn't know anything about Canadian history."(5) Dates of kings and faraway wars had little appeal to him.

Arthur Silver Morton, a distinguished Canadian historian at the University of Saskatchewan, awakened Grant's interest in western Canada's past. A diary entry in 1938 refers to their joint search for the sites of old fur trading posts in Saskatchewan. Grant wrote: "I have this year been favored with the opportunity of acting as the chauffeur of the grand old man of history, Prof. A.S. Morton."(6) Years later he dedicated his book, Cornerstone Colony: Selkirk's Contribution to the Canadian West, to his friend, who had kindly acted years earlier as his "self-appointed private tutor in western history."(7) History now became the young professor of animal husbandry's hobby. Western Canadian history became the subject of more and more of his after-dinner speeches. Ideas received from Professor Morton took shape, leading Grant to prepare several CBC radio broadcasts.

As a teenager Grant kept a diary. He enjoyed writing. On trips he recorded logs of the day's events. While working in Ontario selling nursery stock on commission he collected short character sketches in a journal, a habit which he continued for the rest of his life.(8) Under Professor Morton's influence, he began in the late 1930s gathering notes on historical events in western Canada and on interesting people in the region. One of the first individuals he began to research was the Alberta cattle king, Pat Burns, whose biography he eventually wrote forty years later.(9)

Grant loved agricultural writing. During his honeymoon in 1935 the work-driven newlywed brought with him the manuscript of his first textbook on agriculture, a co-authored study. During idle moments he worked on it during the trip.(10) Three more textbooks on agriculture followed, one also co-authored, the other two with Grant as sole author. At the same time he wrote university texts he kept up his popular writing, contributing more and more to newspapers to reach a wider public. In the 1930s he wrote for among other publications: the Western Producer, the Saskatchewan Farmer, the Free Press Prairie Farmer, and the Family Herald.(11) His wife Phyllis Cline, a former teacher, allowed him the freedom to plunge fully into his writing by supporting him in his many university and community commitments. Early in their marriage Phyllis once counted forty nights in a row that Professor MacEwan had been called away on one sort of public service or other.(12) After the birth of their daughter Heather in 1939, Phyllis raised her largely on her own.(13)

Grant's first history book, The Sodbusters, appeared in 1948. The manuscript originated six years earlier in a four-part CBC Radio series, which the network aired in 1943 and 1944.(14) Grant's interviews with old-timers, as well as his own library research, furnished him with the ideal topic, the pioneer farmers and colourful individuals who opened up the Canadian prairies. To supplement the radio portraits previously prepared, Grant added new biographies, bringing the total number to thirty-seven.

This book reveals Grant's marvellous gift for anecdotes, the raisins in the dough essential to popular writing. Speaking of the days of the whiskey trade in southern Alberta in the early 1870s he wrote in his essay on Fred Kanouse: "Those on the frontier at that time didn't ask personal questions about `the past,' and didn't tell much. Actually a man was more likely to achieve old age if his interests in history was not too highly developed."(15) To chose another Alberta example, Grant included this tale of rancher Frank Collicutt, "one of the best-known names in the livestock fraternity." The professor of animal husbandry at the University of Saskatchewan mentioned that he planned a visit to the Collicutt ranch. To which Frank replied: "It will take us a couple of days to get used to you, so you must stay at least a week."(16) Throughout his book Grant included insights that indicated his intimate knowledge of the western range, little facts such as cowboys' love of chewing tobacco, as it "helped to counteract the dust when driving cattle."(17) Throughout the volume the author's love of the early ranching period shines through, a time when "there was no barbed wire to restrict the cattle, and a man could ride 500 miles in any direction without opening a gate."(18)

One can best describe The Sodbusters as a "white man's history" of the Canadian West. The "sodbuster heroes"(19) occupy centre stage. Few wives or female companions receive mention. Native people appear only occasionally, and when they do, they surface negatively more frequently than positively. Grant, for instance, includes a reference to "Kootenai" Brown and party in 1865, "being pursued by a band of Indians on a scalp hunt. Scalps are difficult to replace, so the white men, instead of stopping to enjoy the scenery, pressed on eastward."(20) Yet, The Sodbusters does include two African-Canadians: Alberta cowboy John Ware, and Dr. Alfred Schmitz Shadd, a Saskatchewan doctor who practised, as well as farmed, in the Carrot River valley where Grant was raised. Grant's later books in the 1960s and 1970s were far more sensitive to the Native people and women as he left behind this "white man's history" flavour.

Grant moved to Calgary in 1951 and a year later Between the Red and the Rockies was published by the University of Toronto Press, telling the story of one and half centuries of agriculture in western Canada. Grant's foreword includes this statement of belief: "The agriculture of Western Canada thus has a personality that is rich and colourful. The story of its romantic rise should reveal entertaining, academic and cultural values and is one that should be told in school and college classrooms."(21) Hilda Neatby of the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan, enjoyed reading the volume, "written with the verve and zest of one who loves the story he has to tell"; but she did voice serious concerns. The book lacked documentation, a bibliography, and analysis. The author, she added, was no historian: "He lacks the historian's faculty for combining mastery of facts and logical analysis with that exercise of imagination necessary to produce one whole clear picture of the past."(22)

Was Professor Neatby's review fair? One could argue that she and many future reviewers of Grant MacEwan's books, misjudged his intentions. He wrote for a general audience. Grant aspired to be a good teller of stories,(23) and not to analyse or to provide the latest interpretations. The agricultural expert came to human history with a sense of urgency. He wanted both western and eastern Canadians to know western Canada's past. As he told Max Foran in 1983: "My own parents belonged to a generation which came in soon after the railroad arrived. I knew that they had a story and that there were people around me who made me laugh and inspired me with their stories, but that nothing was happening to record their memories."(24)

As Grant was the first to admit: "I wasn't an historian by training. I stumbled into it."(25) Professor Morton had provided initial guidance. By reading English historian Arnold Toynbee's monumental A Study of History (10 volumes, 1934-54) which appeared in an abridgement by D.C. Somervell (2 volumes, 1946, 1957), he also obtained useful background. Toynbee's interpretation of world history as a cyclical one in which civilizations rose, declined, and eventually fell, influenced him greatly. Years later he mentioned to writer Donna von Hauff that he greatly admired Toynbee. Once, he added, someone asked Toynbee if a civilization could prevent its own decline. The historian replied that it could, by reviving "some of the old-fashioned values, resourcefulness and self-reliance and thrift."(26) Grant fully shared this outlook.

Grant's first three history books were published in Toronto. After completing his next manuscript in 1956, he sent it off to Ontario. The manuscript carried the working title, "Boozological Bob -- Alberta's Prize Personality." It was a biography of the life and times of Bob Edwards of the Calgary Eye Opener, the most outrageous newspaper in early twentieth century western Canada. No one had ever written a full study of him. At the end of his enquiry letter Grant mentioned: "I think that I should add just this, that if and when a book is published on Bob, the people of the West will go for it enthusiastically."(27) But Grant's track record, and assurances of a western Canadian market, were not good enough. Thomas Nelson & Sons decided not to proceed as did the University of Toronto Press and Macmillans, all large Toronto publishing houses.

Fortunately, the Institute of Applied Art, educational publishers in Edmonton, and the only book publisher in Alberta at the time, took a chance on the manuscript. They brought it out as Eye Opener Bob that October.(28) It proved a great success and ranks as one of Grant's best books. In Bob Edwards, a noble man who fought a losing battle against alcoholism, he had the ideal character. In Grant's words the best subject for a biography is, "somebody who achieved something, wasn't all saint and wasn't all sinner. But a little of both ..."(29) Grant located copies of the Eye Opener, and read them carefully. Throughout he indicated the issues from which he took his information, and mentioned in his text the old-timers he consulted.

When Grant first came to Calgary he obtained a position as the Beef Producers Council's general manager, a perfect day job from his point of view, as it left him with plenty of time for other interests. He quickly became involved in community activities, winning a seat on city council in 1953, and then election to the provincial legislature in 1955. After becoming a MLA he remained an alderman but resigned from the Beef Producers Council. To continue his writing he took an office in the Maclean Building downtown (since demolished). He bought some second-hand furniture and decorated the walls with prints of the Old West by the American cowboy artist, Charlie Russell. In his small low-priced office, his "hole in the wall," Grant produced in the late 1950s Eye Opener Bob, Fifty Mighty Men, and several other very successful books.(30)

Calgary changed enormously in the 1950s. Grant came at a time when the huge influx of newcomers during the city's oil and gas boom pushed aside tales of early Calgary. He arrived just in time to record stories soon to disappear. One must appreciate the context. The Glenbow Archives and Library, that wonderful repository of western Canadian history, only began in 1956. In late May 1957, Grant urged the Men's Canadian Club of Calgary to work for more historical research and for the preservation of old Calgary records. "The ideas and records of the past are like the passenger pigeon, once they are gone they are gone forever."(31)

In 1958, the year that Grant became leader of the provincial Liberal party, he published two books: Calgary Cavalcade and Fifty Mighty Men. Calgary Cavalcade, the first history of Calgary since a slight promotional work in 1912 and a soft-cover booklet written in 1950.(32) It emphasized the city's remarkable characters. To write it Grant went through newspapers and old city council minutes, as well as interviewing old-timers. Well received, it went through four printings, the last in 1975.(33)

Fifty Mighty Men, a collection of fifty articles that Grant published in the Western Producer newspaper from May 9, 1957 to April 24, 1958, came out as well in 1958.(34) The collection included biographies of six Native people, all presented in a positive light. In 1975, it was followed by a companion volume, ... And Mighty Women Too, with character sketches of fifty western Canadian women.(35) Grant also wrote two volumes of collective biography on the Native peoples of western Canada: Portraits of the Plains (1971) and Metis Makers of History (1981).(36) Both offered to the general public examples of leading First Nation and Metis community leaders, warriors, athletes, and artists. In both volumes he presented a very positive image of the Native peoples.

As in previous MacEwan books he aimed in his collective biographies to tell a good story and provide an enjoyable read, without deep character analysis or interpretation of events. The volumes include a number of well-researched essays, such as that on the important female Alberta farm leader Irene Parlby,(37) and several fine descriptive passages. His word picture of the famous Cree leader Big Bear on horseback is exceptional: "When rising within sight of enemy Indians he could cling, spider-like to the side of his galloping horse and use the animal as a shield while shooting from the under side of the neck."(38)

Grant also wrote many full length individual biographies, including those of John Ware, Pat Bums, Walking Buffalo, Sitting Bull, Charles Noble, Frederick Haultain, and Col. James Walker. He used this format to tell the story of a person and their times. As a popular historian he felt that biography furnished the best approach to the general public. He once mentioned to his son-in-law, Max Foran: "I believe that biography is the best way to inspire young people. Kids need heroes."(39)

Grant resigned as Alberta Liberal leader in 1959, returned to the city council, and became mayor of Calgary from 1963 to 1965. Appointed lieutenant governor of Alberta in late 1965, he served until 1974. He kept writing, he simply could not stop. When a reporter asked him in 1967 if he planned to write another book, Grant replied: "That's like asking an alcoholic if he's going to get drunk again."(40) With the assistance of son-in-law Max Foran, he completed in 1968, West to the Sea, a general history of western Canada. This book also appeared in paperback as A Short History of Western Canada, that same year.(41)

Three months after his "retirement" as lieutenant governor in 1974 the University of Calgary appointed Grant to give a credit course in the History Department, "From the Red to the Rockies," on the exploration and settlement of the Canadian prairies.(42) He also undertook to give two lectures a week at Olds Agricultural College on the history of western Canadian agriculture. In the following year he began giving a western Canadian history course for seniors.(43) At the same time he kept up his publication of books on western Canada at white heat.

Grant's extraordinary ability to manage time helps to explain the prolific publications. If not travelling he would get up early in the morning, or stay up late at night, to jot down a few extra sentences. He also wrote on trips. Grant could write anywhere, on buses, trains, airplanes, but he preferred buses. He worked from files on his chosen subject. Through reading, research, and interviews he collected information which he put in a file; when the file on a subject became thick enough he began his book. He wrote out by hand the first draft, then transcribed it himself on his Royal portable typewriter. As he transcribed, he revised the text and polished the language. After a few handwritten corrections off the manuscript went to his publishers.(44)

Grant's lack of analysis, his poor documentation of sources, and his invented dialogue, worded some academics. But they recognized his extraordinary ability to reach the general reader. "MacEwan has certainly told a good story in this book, although it is not necessarily good history," one academic wrote of Sitting Bull (1973). Another disliked the author's uncritical approach in Charles Noble (1983), yet added: "MacEwan writes well and tells a good story."(45)

What did Grant think of his academic critics? If their reviews upset him he never mentioned it, with just one known exception. In a 1984 newspaper article a hint of his discomfort appears. In one rare outspoken moment the 82-year-old author replied to a reporter's question about Marie Anne, his just-published book on Louis Riel's grandmother, Marie-Anne Lagimodiere. On account of the lack of documentary information Grant wrote the book in a fictionalized manner. He invented several characters, and wrote dialogue for them to create a living, moving story. When the reporter asked about the academic community's possible reaction, Grant replied: "I don't know what the scholars will think of it. Nor do I really care. I'm not writing for them, I'm writing for Canadians."(46)

Well into his eighties the former lieutenant governor kept up his rigorous community commitments, as well as his historical writing and research. One day in early 1986 deserves to be remembered. Invited to participate in events at Edmonton's Grant MacEwan Community College, Grant rose in the early hours and boarded a Greyhound bus for the four-hour trip north. In Edmonton he visited the several college campuses for "Grant MacEwan Day," then asked to be dropped off at the Edmonton public library to do some research for a few hours. Just before his hosts returned to drive him to the elegant college dinner, Grant changed his clothes in the library's public washroom. As the evening's guest speaker he spoke for twenty to twenty-five minutes on public service and the life of Saskatchewan's Tommy Douglas, who had just died. Then, at his request his hosts drove him back to the Edmonton Greyhound bus station for the four-hour return trip to Calgary. He returned home around midnight. He was then eighty-three.(47)

In 1986 Grant's major project was his study of Paddy Nolan, Bob Edwards' great friend, "whose presence at any western gathering" Grant once wrote, "brought as much joy as a chinook arch in a winter month."(48) Just the previous summer the veteran author had made a special trip to Limerick, Ireland, to check for additional information on Paddy's past. Paddy had always claimed his birthday was March 17, St. Patrick's Day, 1864, but very clearly the parish baptismal records of St. Michael's Church in Limerick gave his baptismal date as March 3, 1862. Grant's mention of this fact contains an additional detail, which in itself speaks volumes. St. Michael's, he found, was "not a comfortable place in which to be accidentally locked on a cold night as the author can testify"!(49) He says no more of his night in the Limerick church.

After the death of his wife Phyllis in 1990, Grant's life became quite lonely. The den in his home on Hallbrook Drive in southwest Calgary became his refuge, with magazines, papers, and books lining the walls from the floor to the ceiling.(50) He published two more books, Coyote and other Humorous Tales of the Early West in 1993; and Buffalo: Sacred and Sacrificed in 1995.(51) He still had fun giving historical talks. Seniors' World, an Alberta seniors magazine, reported in January 1995 a recent address of his at the Golden Age Club in Calgary. The 92-year-old popular historian spoke on "Funny and Humorous People," a tribute to the foothills personalities, bold and creative, who made nineteenth century Alberta so unique. He spoke of Bob Edwards, Paddy Nolan, and several early eastern Canadian characters in Alberta. Then, he added: "When the smart and daring people left Ontario for Alberta, that left a pretty boring province back east." The crowd roared. Grant still knew how to work an audience.(52)

Grant died five and a half years later. He lived in the mid-1990s in his own apartment in downtown Calgary, near his beloved Glenbow Library and Archives, and the Local History Room of the Calgary Public Library on Macleod Trail. In 1997 he moved to the Beverly Centre, a long-term care facility in southwest Calgary. Just a few weeks before his death on June 15, 2000, he completed the dictation to his son-in-law Max Foran, of his book on water. Watershed: Reflections on Water appeared several months after his death.

On May 6, 2000, Grant made what would be his last public appearance. At the Alberta Book Awards Gala in Calgary The Writers Guild of Alberta presented him with a Golden Pen Life-Time Achievement Award, given for significant literary contribution and/or literary achievement. To date the Award has only been previously been given to one other individual, the late W.O. Mitchell in 1994. Grant, ninety-seven years old, ended his acceptance speech, with these words of encouragement: "I tell the young people who haven't had many books published, `Don't give up,' the best books are yet to be published, the best have yet to be written, the best books are yet to be read."(53) The spirit of this remarkable man who believed so intensely in western Canada, and who lived throughout almost all of the twentieth century, lives on to inspire us in the twenty-first.

Acknowledgements

Grant's good friend Mary Mjolsness kindly showed me her excellent clipping files on him. She has since donated them to the Glenbow Library. In addition, Mary lent me numerous volumes from her complete collection of Grant MacEwan books. I am also grateful to Lee Shedden for his identification of important book reviews in the Grant MacEwan fonds, University of Calgary Library Special Collections /Archives, which I had missed, particularly in Acc. No. 392/86.14, 2.54. Valuable collections of clippings about his life appear in both clipping files of the Glenbow Library, and the Local History Room of the Calgary Public Library, Macleod Trail branch, both favourite haunts of Grant. My thanks to my son David Smith, once again, for his computer expertise.

ENDNOTES

(1) W.C. Mattie, Secretary, Historical Society of Alberta, to Grant MacEwan, March 7, 1966. Historical Society of Alberta fonds, M2059, file 63. Glenbow Archives.

(2.) R.H. Macdonald, Grant MacEwan: No Ordinary Man (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1979), 92.

(3.) Ibid., 42.

(4.) Ibid., 71, 120, 161.

(5) "Interview with J.W. Grant MacEwan August 8, 1983," in Max Foran, ed., assisted by Judy Dundas, Grant MacEwan's Journals (Edmonton: Lone Pine Publishing, 1986): 146.

(6.) Grant MacEwan, 1938 diary entry quoted in Macdonald, MacEwan, 141.

(7) Grant MacEwan, Cornerstone Colony: Selkirk's Contribution to the Canadian West (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1977), preface.

(8.) Macdonald, MacEwan, 71.

(9.) Grant MacEwan, Pat Burns: Cattle King (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1979), foreword.

(10.) Macdonald, MacEwan, 127.

(11.) Ibid., 111.

(12.) Ibid., 128.

(13.) Donna von Hauff, Everyone's Grandfather. The Life and Times of Grant MacEwan (Edmonton: Grant MacEwan Community College Foundation, 1994), 110, 134, 184.

(14.) Macdonald, MacEwan, 144.

(15.) Grant MacEwan, The Sodbusters (Toronto: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948; reprint, Calgary: Fifth House Publishers, 2000), 66.

(16.) Ibid., 220.

(17.) Ibid., 55.

(18.) Ibid., 69.

(19.) Ibid., 122.

(20.) Ibid., 223. Other scalping references appear on pp. 2 and 6.

(21.) Grant MacEwan, Between the Red and the Rockies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1952; reprinted 1953, 1956, 1963, 1967, 1972), vii-viii.

(22.) Hilda Neatby, "Review of Between the Red and the Rockies" by Grant MacEwan", American Historical Review, 58,3 (April 1953): 670. Grant bore no lingering resentment against Professor Neatby for her essentially negative review. Later he included a biographical portrait of her in his ... and Mighty Women Too: Stories of Notable Western Canadian Women, published in 1975. He described her as one of Canada's "greatest teachers, historians and authors." (p.252)

(23.) Macdonald, MacEwan, 259.

(24.) Grant MacEwan, quoted in Foran, ed., Journals, 147.

(25.) Ibid., 148.

(26.) Grant MacEwan quoted in von Hauff, Grandfather, 37. She includes other references to Toynbee's influence on Grant, on pp. 36, and 143. See also, Grant MacEwan quoted in Foran, ed. Journals, 144: "in Toynbee's view, western man must renew his old values and spiritual base or else face the ruin of his civilization.

(27.) Grant MacEwan to B.R Neary, president, Thomas Nelson & Sons, Toronto, dated 605 Maclean Building, Calgary, January 22, 1957; Grant sent a previous letter to Mr. Neary on December 22, 1956. Grant MacEwan fonds, University of Calgary Library, Special Collections/ Archives, Acc. No. 444/89.06, 1.23. References to the rejections by the Toronto publishers also appear in this file. The typescript for "Boozological Bob, Alberta's Prize Personality" is now in the Glenbow Archives, Grant MacEwan fonds, M3842, on the 6th floor of the Glenbow Museum. As the now demolished Maclean Building stood almost adjacent to what is now the Glenbow Museum, the manuscript, in effect, has simply moved a few hundred yards of so from its location in the late 1950s -- from 605 on the 6th floor of the Maclean Building to the 6th floor of the Glenbow!

(28.) Grant MacEwan, Eye Opener Bob. The Story of Bob Edwards (Edmonton: The Institute of Applied Art, 1957). First printing October 1957.

(29.) Grant MacEwan, quoted in Foran, ed., Journals, 148.

(30.) The office is described in Macdonald, MacEwan, 195; and Jim Stott, "MacEwan Leads Double Life; Prefers Pen To Being Mayor," Calgary Herald, August 8, 1963. From Grant's correspondence with the Toronto publishers about his Bob Edwards manuscript, we know the room number, 605. This address is confirmed in Henderson's Calgary Directory for 1958. The following year Grant moved to room 315 in the same building. He is listed there in the Henderson Calgary directories for 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1965.

(31.) Calgary Rich in History," Calgary Herald, May 25, 1957.

(32.) Sheilagh S. Jameson, "Review of Calgary Cavalcade, second edition, by Grant MacEwan", Alberta History, 24,2 (Spring 1976): 30. The 1912 book was the anonymously written, Calgary (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1912). Leishman McNeill's Tales of the Old Town (Calgary: The Calgary Herald, 1966) was originally written as a series of articles for the Herald in 1950.

(33.) Grant MacEwan, Calgary Cavalcade. From Fort to Fortune (Calgary: Western Producer Book Service, 1975; fourth printing with one chapter added)

(34.) Grant MacEwan, Fifty Mighty Men (Saskatoon: Modern Press, 1958; fifth printing, 1967). The dates of the series appear in the foreword.

(35.) Grant MacEwan, ... And Mighty Women Too. Stories of Notable Western Canadian Women (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1975)

(36.) Grant MacEwan, Portraits From the Plains (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1971); Metis Makers of History (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1981)

(37.) MacEwan, Mighty Women, 146-58.

(38.) MacEwan, Portraits, 103.

(39.) Ibid., 97.

(40.) Grant MacEwan quoted in, Bob Harvey, "Lieutenant-governor is hooked on writing-- he just can't stop," Edmonton Journal, March 28, 1969, p. 57.

(41.) J.W. Grant MacEwan and Maxwell Foran, West to the Sea (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1968); A Short History of Western Canada (Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1968).

(42.) "MacEwan to teach history at U of C," Calgary Herald, July 25, 1974.

(43.) Macdonald, MacEwan, 263.

(44.) Ibid., 256-57. The research files for one of Grant's books, Frederick Haultain (1985), three thick files, are held in the Grant MacEwan fonds, University of Calgary Special Collections/Archives, Acc. No. 420/88.01, 3.62, 3.63, 3.64.

(45.) Interesting academic reviews of Grant's later books include the two cited here: Gary Pennanen, "Review of Sitting Bull: The Years in Canada, by Grant MacEwan," Canadian Historical Review, 56 (1975):203; and John Herd Thompson, "Review of Charles Noble: Guardian of the Soil, by Grant MacEwan," Canadian Historical Review, 65 (1984): 596. Other valuable commentaries include: R. Douglas Francis, "Review of The Best of Grant MacEwan, edited by R. H. Macdonald," Prairie Forum, 8 (1983):281-82. David C. Jones, "Review of Charles Noble, by Grant MacEwan," Prairie Forum, 10 (1985): 232-34. David Hall, "Review of Frederick Haultain: Frontier Statesman of the Canadian Northwest, by Grant MacEwan," Canadian Historical Review, 67 (1987): 117-18. R. Bruce Sheppard, "Review of Heavy Horses: Highlights of Their History, by Grant MacEwan," Prairie Forum, 12 (1987): 308-09.

(46.) Grant MacEwan quoted in Bradley Bird, "Grant MacEwan takes run at fictionalized history," Winnipeg Free Press, October 6, 1984, p. 27.

(47.) David Kilgour tells this story in, "Chapter Ten. Grant MacEwan. Ongoing Legend," in Uneasy Patriots. Western Canadians in Confederation, (Edmonton: Lone Pine, 1988): 205-06.

(48.) MacEwan, Mighty Men, 67.

(49.) Grant MacEwan, He Left Them Laughing When He Said Good-Bye. The Life and Times of Frontier Lawyer Paddy Nolan (Saskatoon:Western Producer Prairie Books, 1987), 166.

(50.) Von Hauff, Grandfather, 185.

(51.) Grant MacEwan, Coyote and Other Humorous Tales of the Early West (Calgary: Rocky Mountain Books, 1993); Buffalo. Sacred and Sacrificed (Edmonton: Alberta Sport, Recreation, Parks & Wildlife, 1995).

(52.) John W. Berger, "What it's like to be Mayor of Calgary," Senior's World, January 1995, p. 5.

(53.) Grant MacEwan quoted in the press release of the Writers Guild of Alberta, issued after the Alberta Book Awards Gala in Calgary, May 6, 2000, p. 2.