How Guy Weadick learned to Rope

By Ken Finlayson

I think it was the summer of 1974 that I was competing in the Calgary Stampede. I didn’t travel as hard as most professional cowboys, preferring instead to use rodeo as a means to have a sort of a holiday with my family and if I was lucky we even made a little money to offset our traveling expenses. Unlike so many pro cowboys who try to attend two and three rodeos a day, I would spend time sightseeing. Since Calgary back then had two go rounds I was there for the week and spent the time visiting relatives and doing the “tourist” thing.

Back then the Calgary Brewing Company had a wax museum. It contained the usual array of famous public figures; the Queen, Elvis Presley, Prime Ministers, Winston Churchill, Marylyn Monroe etc. It also had famous Albertans; not the least of which was Guy Weadick. Each life size wax figure had next to it a little story board with a few details and highlights of the subject’s life.

Guy Weadick’s story board, while I can’t remember it verbatim, said that he was an American cowboy, ranch raised in Utah, who had started the Calgary Stampede.

I knew that this wasn’t quite true and that he really had a much stronger Canadian background than this story board implied. My wife’s grandmother (Audna Voigt, nee- Calder) was Guy’s first cousin. She had related many of the details of Guy’s early life to me. She was a taciturn little old lady who didn’t tolerate fools and dreamers, which didn’t exactly make cowboys candidates for her short list of favourites.

She did not hold in high regard anyone whose lifestyle oscillated between feast and famine – as is characteristic of most cowboys. Guy Weadick was such a man.

Granny related how Guy’s wife (Florence LaDue) was more responsible than Guy for any income security they might have had. She achieved this by her little known practice of buying and selling uncut diamonds. She carried a little leather pouch around her neck in which she carried uncut diamonds. When they were down on their luck (income) she would sell some diamonds; when times were good she would buy some to return to the little leather pouch. Granny said this practice of hers saw them though many a lean time. She knew his early life well because her family had raised the Guy from his infancy to his becoming a cowboy in southern Alberta.

Guy Weadick was indeed born an American in Niagara Falls New York, USA, but he was far from ranch raised in Utah. His mother died in his infancy and as was the custom of the time he was sent to be raised by relatives. In his case it was his mother’s sister who lived in Niagara Falls Ontario, Canada. Her husband was a Mr. Calder who was a blockman for the International Harvester farm machinery company. Mr. Calder was transferred to Winnipeg, Manitoba and it was here that the young Guy was smitten by the “cowboy bug”.

Sometime before the turn of the last century young Guy and his three girl cousins attended a Wild West show in Winnipeg and Guy resolved to become a cowboy there and then.

Granny told me he learned to rope in a back ally in Winnipeg, on foot, while his three girl cousins chased a neighbour’s milk cow down the back ally. This persistent and illicit activity didn’t endear the children in any way to the neighbour (or the cow).

The family then moved from Winnipeg to Lethbridge where Mr. Calder bought a bakery. The young Guy still drove the family to distraction with his persistent efforts to become a cowboy. Granny said that he was continually hooking up green broke horses to pull the bakery delivery wagons since he seemed to prefer the challenge of unruly horses to tame ones. Although I’ve never seen an old time bread wagon, Granny described them as being sort of a box like structure containing several layers of glass shelving (for sanitation reasons) to place the bread on. I have however, had some considerable experience with broncs. This would definitely not be a good combination! Granny said the wrecks were spectacular and costly.

The family next moved from Lethbridge to a farm near North Battleford Saskatchewan but Guy by now had found ranch work in southern Alberta. And as they say, “the rest is history”.