ST. PAUL - There are many fields of endeavour that make up agriculture, and longtime St. Brides resident Les Trach, who passed away April 11 at the age of 70, enjoyed long and very different careers in two of those fields.
Trach graduated from high school in 1971 and went on to auction school, working at the St. Paul Auction Mart at the beginning of his 52 years behind the microphone. Later, he moved on to conduct sales in Vermilion and other areas, returning to Vermilion for the remainder of his years calling for bids and encouraging bidders with, “We’ve got some mighty nice calves, boys!”
His second career started shortly after high school, when he began competing in local rodeos. Riding bulls led to following the circuit with Ken McGinnis, one of the founders of the Lakeland Amateur Rodeo Association, and helping with the McGinnis rodeo stock. When McGinnis passed away suddenly from a bee sting at the Stoney Lake Rodeo in 1979, there were still two rodeos left on that year’s calendar, and McGinnis' widow Mary Ann asked Trach to take over and complete the season.
When the LARA held its first finals that September in Saddle Lake, Trach served as the arena director.
The following year, he formed the Les Trach Rodeo Co., with a lineup of bulls and broncs that grew year after year and started racking up awards. Longtime rodeo fans will remember five-time Lakeland Rodeo Association (LRA) champion saddle bronc War Sam, 10-time champion bareback bronc Hot Chocolate and five-time champion bull Arena Police, all those awards won by 1996.
Later, LRA Showdown programs don’t list the champion stock, but for Trach Rodeo, the wins continued to add up, including the Cowboy of the Year award for Trach in 1998 and multiple years when he won all three awards for his stock.
Trach and longtime sidekick Claude Labrie expanded their horizons, hauling the Trach rodeo stock to locations far and wide, ranging from the Ponoka Stampede to El Paso, Texas, where Trach was the only Canadian contractor to do so.
With Trach as director with both the LRA and the Wildrose Rodeo Association, their popularity grew to the point where rodeos became double booked and it was necessary to hire more help and get the show on the road in two directions at once.
Around the time Trach sold the rodeo stock to son Steven and daughter-in-law Karen in 2009, he was interviewed at the St. Albert Rainmaker Rodeo by our colleagues at St. Albert Gazette and said that after being in the business for 30 years and a competitor himself before then, “Today's riders are more professional and face a bigger challenge. The bulls have come so far that it is unreal. We have three, four and five generations of breeding into these bulls now."
In that same interview, he expressed his love of the sport and its benefit for young people.
"It is without a doubt the closest-knit sport there is. Even hockey players aren't as close as these kids. There is no team doctor, you kind of look after each other."
Rodeo is in itself a family. You see the same families at most of the shows on the rodeo circuit, whether it’s the Lakeland Rodeo Association, Wildrose or one of the others across the province, including the Alberta High School Rodeo Association that brought its show back to St. Paul this weekend. And, it is people like Trach who fostered that relationship between competitors.
They ride for the wins, but are still friends after the rodeo, win, lose or tiebreaker, and a lot of those friendships last a long, long time.
That aspect was very obvious, with an overflow crowd of farm folk, rodeo competitors and fans gathering at the St. Paul Recreation Centre last Monday to celebrate the life of their friend and colorful local legend, Les Trach.
