To ask a Texas writer to describe foothills rancher Winston Parker, she would say he is the kind of person communities can ' t live without.
Originally from the foothills, Elaine Taylor Thomas has known Parker since she was six years old and said she always knew he had an inspirational story to share especially about how much he did for the community.
The two came together three years ago to write Parker ' s recently published memoir, “ Saddles and Service: Winston Parker ' s Story,” which describes everything from his childhood memories, to meeting Winston Churchill, to leading stock down Macleod Trail for the Calgary Stampede with Clem Gardner, the first Stampede ' s “ Best All Around Cowboy.”
At 93 years of age, Parker said he was eager to share his memories for the book.
“ At my age, I know I ' ve missed a lot of things in there,” he said. “ But we ' ve done pretty good I think.”
Taylor Thomas said Parker ' s memoir is significant because it captures a substantial piece of history.
“ He ' s painted a picture that shows us where this community has come from, where it ' s grown from and the strength of the community too because he talks about what people have done and how they have worked together to achieve things, like bringing electricity in. That just seems so foreign to us now.”
Parker reflected on other significant changes over the years, such as travelling on wagon trails that weren ' t graded and riding a pony to school, while some children rode buggies and others walked three or four miles.
He said winters were much tougher when he was younger, with temperatures regularly below – 50 degrees C and tall snow drifts frozen from chinooks.
Sometimes the snowdrifts were helpful though, such as the time he travelled 12 or 13 miles for the mail.
“ I rode all the way to Midnapore and back, never got off my horse to open a gate,” he recalled. “ You could just pick a place where the snow was so deep you go over the fences and that ' s hard for young people to believe. They think you ' re stringing them a story.”
When he was growing up, Parker said people mostly travelled by horse and would always stop to greet a neighbour on the side of the road. Today, people lead faster lives, fly down the road in a truck and don ' t have as much contact with their neighbours, he remarked.
For people interested in the old days, the book will be appealing, said Taylor Thomas and readers will get to look at the community through Parker ' s eyes. She said it can be hard to believe he would ride from Red Deer Lake to Cochrane at night, guided by the moon, as there were no lights then.
She said people can relate to the stories in the memoir, which are appealing to older people with a rural background, whether they are from Alberta or Texas.
As 328 different families are mentioned in the stories, Taylor Thomas said it is nice for people whose family members are referenced in the book and their connections to the community. Parker didn ' t want the book to be just about him, she explained.
“ He wanted it to be a story of the people of the foothills because he loves the foothills with all his heart and he loves the way of life and the people and he wanted to share those memories because he is one of the few men of his generation that ' s left,” she said. “ When those people are all gone, those memories that haven ' t been written down – we ' ve lost them.”
Parker grew up around horses, as it was his family ' s mainstay and by the age of five, he was already competing in the show ring. One of the stories in the book tells of how his father sold his thoroughbred stallion for $4,000 in the 1930s, an unheard of price back then, he said.
The book also describes Parker ' s experience as a prisoner during the Second World War.
Parker was 21 years old when he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force with his friend Bill Wallace in 1939.
“ Bill and I, we decided as soon as the war came we were going to fly together, but those things changed,” he explained. “ When you get in to the Air Force you go where you ' re told. I went on the bombers and he went on the fighters. He got killed fairly early in the war.”
In 1942, while on a bombing raid to Hamburg, Parker ' s plane was fired upon and caught fire.
“ We dumped everything out of our aircraft that we could, tried to get home on one motor, but we couldn ' t make it so we had to bail out, finished up as a guest of Hitler for three years,” he explained.
One of the members of the six-man crew didn ' t survive the attack, while the other five bailed out and were captured.
Parker spent three years in harsh conditions at the German reprisal prisoner camp Stalag VIIIB. When he first arrived, there were between 120 and 130 other Air Force prisoners, which later grew to 1,000.
“ Air crew weren ' t allowed out because they figured we might steal a plane,” he said. “ That had happened earlier before I was in there, some fellows had made an escape and stolen a plane, got to Sweden.”
In the story, Parker described how sometimes they would switch uniforms with other prisoners so they could go on a work detail to escape boredom.
In 1945, when Russian armies advanced on the camp, the prisoners were forced out on what would become march of more than 1,000km, one of war ' s longest forced marches.
Aside from his Air Force service, Parker has lived in the foothills his whole life and said he always appreciated it whenever he left home.
A memory not captured in the book Parker said should have been was about his friends, Linda and Gary Schaal. He said he once admiring one of Linda ' s colts and had asked her what she thought it was worth. She said about $125. They didn ' t discuss the issue any further, but Parker went home and wrote her a cheque for $125, knowing well the colt wasn ' t for sale.
“ Gary, he figured I was playing a trick so he said, ‘ Lets cash the cheque and have a party on Parker. ' ”
The joke was on him, as Parker wrote on the back of the cheque that cashing it acted as a bill of sale for the colt, so the Schaals never cashed it.
Taylor Thomas said she enjoyed working with Parker on the novel and creating something together that would last. She has helped other people record their memoirs, and said it is important for people to write down their memories, even if it ' s just one.
“ Put them somewhere where in years to come, when their family will really appreciate that, their words will live on.”
