National Network for Equitable Library Service

During a time of two world wars and a sluggish world economy, many Northern Europeans left their homelands to build the American and Canadian West with dreams of abundance and new life. Spanning a period from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, To Be a Cowboy recounts the dreams and realities of a father and a son. Otto Christensen came to North America in the early 1900s as an indentured farm worker from Denmark with a dream of becoming a successful farmer in Alberta. His son, Oliver, grew up on his father’s farm during the Dirty Thirties and soon realized his dream of becoming a cowboy in the mid-1940s. As a rider at the Bar U Ranch—the largest, most successful ranch in Canada at the time—Oliver discovered life as a cowboy could not be his for long. Based on oral history interviews and a treasure trove of family papers, To Be A Cowboy is a compelling memoir that paints a portrait of a dying way of life.