 
|
Throughout his life, Grant MacEwan wore many hats. Farmer,
conservationist, lieutenant governor, historian, teacher, writer, editor,
journalist: he was all of them.
Following his tenure as Alberta lieutenant governor from 1966-74, it has
been as an educator and writer that his continuing influence was been
felt. His publishing career began in 1936, and his more than 50 books run
the range from agricultural texts, to Western Canadian history, to the
appreciation of the draft horse.
One of these books was Frederick Haultain: Frontier Statesman of the
Canadian Northwest, published in 1985, a biography of the lawyer who from
1897-1905 served as the first minister of a non-partisan administration in
the North-West Territories, which encompassed present-day Alberta and
Saskatchewan.
 |
||
 |
Arts Alberta #18 |
|
 | ||
The British-born Haultain had settled in southern Alberta in the frontier
town of Fort McLeod in 1884 to practise law. He became interested in
representing the concerns of the West, and was instrumental in securing
provincial status for Alberta and Saskatchewan - a region he had wanted to
name, Buffalo.
In her book Mavericks: An Incorrigible History of Alberta, published in
2001, Calgary author Aritha van Herk refers to Haultain as "the father of
Alberta."
"Through it all," writes van Herk, "Haultain acted as mouthpiece, pest,
and suave debater, the real leader of the Territories between 1890 and
1905."
After MacEwan's death in 2000, there was a resurgence of interest in his
writing, thanks to the publication by NeWest Press of Edmonton of
Watershed: Reflections on Water, a collection of essays on conservation he
had been writing in his final years. As well, in 2000, Fifth House of
Calgary published new editions of Blazing the Old Cattle Trail and The
Sodbusters, which until then, had fallen out of print. Fifth House has
continued its MacEwan reprint series with the release of Heavy Horses in
September 2001, and Our Equine Friends in August 2002.
Of the books in the MacEwan oeuvre, only 12 remain in print.
