With celebrations underway for Brandon’s 125th anniversary, history buffs might be interested to know that a reprinted version of Beecham Trotter’s book, A Horseman and the West is now available.
T. Keith Edmunds, publisher of Rosser Avenue Press and operator of Pennywise Books, found the tome in the local library and decided it was the hidden treasure needed to invoke the spirit of past times.
With the copyright lapsed, he transcribed the entire work and printed 500 copies.
“He’s the sort of guy who made Brandon what it is today,” said Edmunds. “I figured that if I’m going to do anything for the celebrations, then this is the kind of thing to do. It’s the perfect book for it.”
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In his preface, Edmunds noted that Trotter’s book, a collection of personal anecdotes and observations, offers a glimpse of local history that a mere compilation of names, places and dates cannot.
Written in 1925 when Trotter was 65 years old, the book begins with his father’s arrival in Canada in 1835 from Ireland.
The elder Trotter settled and raised a family near Kingston, Ont., where vast forests of pine and maple were the enemies of the farmer trying to carve a living from the soil.
The younger Trotter came west in 1882 in search of his fortune, and wound up working on a telegraph crew. Digging up to six kilometres of post holes a day, he noted in his memoir that “miles to the sock” was the topic of discussion among his workmates, much as miles to the gallon would be today.
Before the main Canadian Pacific Railway line came through, Grand Valley was expected to be the centre of commerce and trade in western Manitoba. Already settlers were trickling in, lured by the pamphleteers’ promises of agricultural bounty so rich that the land could be “tickled with a hoe and see it laugh with a harvest.”
John and Dougald McVicar had high hopes of reaping a fortune in real estate, especially after they landed the responsibility of maintaining the post office for the region.
However, a party led by Rev. George Roddick was the first to settle in the nearby Brandon Hills after getting lost on the trail to Prince Albert, Sask.
The rivalry grew until gen. Thomas Rosser, the CPR’s townsite expert, who Trotter wrote, “acquired his title, and nourished his profanity in the Civil War,” came to christen Brandon in 1881. He inspected the site at Grand Valley first.
With the name already drawn from the old Hudson’s Bay Co. post, Brandon House, the general offered McVicar $25,000 for his town site. McVicar countered with a demand for $50,000 down, and a half interest in all sales.
Rosser’s immediate response was, “I’ll be damned if a town of any kind is ever built here.” Turning on his heel, he promptly bought the homestead of J. B. Adamson, which lay three km west, and the city of Brandon was born.
Prone to flooding, Grand Valley eventually faded away. Trotter noted how a Mr. Coxe once received his mail from McVicar at the post office there through the upstairs window amid two-metre-deep floodwaters of the swollen Assiniboine River.
After quitting his job stringing wire for the telegraph at Gull Lake, Sask., Beecham Trotter returned to Brandon where, along with his cousin Alec, he eventually opened a livery stable and got into the horse-trading business.
Trotter first brought in stock from Iowa and Ontario. Later, he ventured to the wilderness of Montana, where guns “lined the walls as ornamental furniture” and westerners in wide-brimmed hats “sweared as if by rote.”
After buying 50 head of horses, he retired for the night, burdened with the thought of the rank mustangs breaking out of the corral and disappearing into the gloom.
His fears were increased when one of the locals told him: “Two or three days ago, my son was wanting to ride one of those horses you bought. I told him it would throw him so high that the birds would build nests in his pants as he came down.”
Later, as demand for better stock increased, Trotter began bringing horses in from France and Scotland. In 1883, many immigrants began arriving on the train “like a badly managed circus.”
Trotter died in 1934, but his book, full of insight, wit and humour, survives to tell the tales of his age and provide a new generation with a perspective on Brandon history.
