ATHABASCA — The prairies are considered headquarters for cowboy culture in Canada, as much today as in the past, depending on location. But how many proud prairie dwellers are as familiar with the name John Ware as they are John Wayne? Green Walters? Walter Freeman?
According to award-winning black poet, professor, and writer Bertrand Bickersteth, not enough.
Bickersteth is Athabasca University’s (AU) newest writer in residence for the 2024-25 academic year. An active professor at the Werklund School of Agriculture Technology at Olds College, Bickersteth is also an artist who uses the written language to bring forgotten stories of the past into the present.
“When I grew up here, I was unaware that there was any black history here,” said Bickersteth, born in Sierra Leone and raised in Alberta. He recalled being at odds with his own racial identity in a province that denied both its past and its bias before being introduced to the work of a black storyteller hailing from the prairies.
“The first real exposure I got to that was through my mom actually, who had gone to a book talk by Cheryl Foggo,” said Bickersteth. “I remember her telling me that there are black people who are born and raised here, and people just don’t know about that.”
Like a typical youngster, Bickersteth said he rolled his eyes at the idea, influenced by the popular rhetoric around him. It wasn’t until he was in grad school in London, England, before he picked up Foggo’s book and discovered the impact black people and black cowboy culture had in the foundation of western Canada.
Athabasca locals familiar with Amber Valley may already know parts of the story; calls for settlers of the prairies were sent across the continent by the Canadian government in the late 1800s, reaching the black freemen of the south looking to escape the segregationist south.
“Now, after realizing there was such a thing as black history in Alberta, and that I as an Albertan had never known this, that that had been denied to me, I knew there must be more — I knew it,” said Bickersteth.
And beyond making an impact by way of historical black communities like Amber Valley, the largest and longest lasting black settlement in the province, Bickersteth wanted to uncover links between black figures of the past and elements considered canon in Alberta culture.
“My interest was in strongly trying to reveal what people didn’t know, but also to reveal it as part of that essential history that people have always thought was exclusively white, and to reveal that it has never been exclusively white,” said Bickersteth.
The Forge of Forgetting
It was during a Nov. 20 virtual presentation that Bickersteth unpacked this mission and his recent research and creative endeavours to an audience of approximately 40 listeners.
The talk, hosted by AU as part of the writer in residence program, called attention to the role of black individuals in the creation of cowboy culture, and named only a few who mainstream history accounts missed almost entirely.
Bickersteth cited a theory that the term cowboy itself stems from black people who worked with cattle in the southern United States.
“The word boy was generally reserved for black men, regardless if they were 60, 70, 80, if they had decades worth of expertise or knowledge,” said Bickersteth. “Before 1865, if you had to do labour, and your labour involved ranching or cowboying then very likely you’re going to have someone that’s enslaved doing labour for you — hence cowboy.”
Like Amber Valley settlers, cowboys from the states migrated north along the major cattle drive lines, many of which originated from Texas. Bickersteth estimates around a quarter of more than 30,000 cowboys were black, and upon arrival in Alberta, figures like John Ware started forging their marks.
“He is our most famous cowboy. He is probably, in Alberta certainly, the first touchstone — when we talk about black history, we go back to John Ware,” said Bickersteth. “I call him the most famous unknown person that we have.”
Ware worked at Bar U Ranch, a Canadian historic site of cowboy culture in Alberta’s foothills. Others, like Green Walters, who Bickersteth called “more cowboy adjacent,” created their own ranches and operations, evidenced by records of their livestock brands, albeit hard to find.
Portrayed as either slaves or servants in popular literature and representations like movies and dime novels, black people were written out of history by way of omission. And this omission makes tracking down evidence of their involvement that much harder for researchers like Bickersteth.
“There are happy discoveries, but at the same time, there are also these constant re-encounters with the stories of racism that these people went through, you get this reaffirmation of white supremacy and its long-standing presence,”
For Bickersteth, the dichotomy of the validation and the pain his research represents is embodied within his newest project. Committed to uncovering as many black historic cattle brands as he can, his end goal is to use the symbols, sometimes carved by the cowboys themselves, as a font.
In trying to find a way to express his feelings about the historic and current mistreatment and racism towards black people in North America, Bickersteth said he was struggling to find the correct medium.
“It then occurred to me that there was a language in the brands themselves,” he said. “If I could come up with a font that was based on these brands, then that would be a way in which the actual imprint, the actual marks of these people could then now live in the present.”
Dedicated to uncovering the forgotten, or hidden, history of black impact on Alberta culture, and at the same time challenging the belief that whiteness is the core of western life, Bickersteth said the poetry of his journey came together in a powerful way.
“For me, that journey begins with the use of branding on enslaved Africans, that’s where it begins. So it’s really important that the beauty of the poetry comes out of the ugliness of the past.
“I want people to recognize that I’m not using these symbols because it is cool that its connected to Alberta’s history — it is, bit I can never separate the fact that these brands were actually used on human beings because of this category of blackness that many people have inherited, including myself.”