COCHRANE— Following in the footsteps of his larger-than-life grandfather, a London-based author will be sharing tales from his journey with the Cochrane community this Friday (Feb. 26).
The Stockmen's Memorial Foundation will be hosting Robert Nurden via Zoom on Friday at 1:30 p.m., to share a part of his newly published book, Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey With My Grandfather.
The book, as the title explains, is the story of Nurden’s grandfather, Stanley James.
Nurden was born in 1951, the same year Stanley James died. Their lives overlapped by a short seven months.
Growing up, all Nurden had of his grandfather were the stories others told of him, some of which seemed to be almost mythical.
“He was sort of this mythological figure,” Nurden said.
Stanley was a man of many titles— Cowboy, shepherd, navvy, hobo, newspaper reporter, soldier, poet, playwright, minister and actor.
Although he cast a long shadow, he did not leave an easy trail to track here in Canada.
Stanley had written extensively about his time in Canada in the two autobiographies he wrote, but always referred to the area in which he resided as Two Rivers.
Nurden visited Canada in the summers of 2018 and 2019, hoping to find clues that would confirm his granfather’s location.
Upon his arrival in Canada, Nurden said, he struggled to find the area.
He first believed the region to be to a confluence of two rivers closer to Banff, but was unable to confirm those details.
“It really was a bit of detective work, and I finally cracked it, because in one book he refers to the area where he was as Two Rivers,” he said. “It took me a while to get there because he never uses the word Jumping Pound in his books. Only in a speech to some people in New York in 1927 does he use Jumping Pound and I happen to have a record of that.”
The clue that led to his confirming where Stanley had worked was a chance encounter just south of Cochrane.
Nurden had been put up by the prominent pioneer family, the Copithorne’s, during his visit to Canada while he hunted for his grandfather’s footsteps.
He spent days meeting with ranchers and farmers in the area, some he met through the Copithorne’s, and some through the Stockmens Memorial Foundation.
One day, when he had no meeting scheduled, Nurden decided to drive south of town, and explore the Jumping Pound area.
While looking around the area, he came across a rancher coming in off his field where he had been tending to his cattle.
The rancher was a man called Jim Bateman.
Bateman, Nurden said, had heard of his arrival and knew who he was immediately.
After a brief discussion, Nurden accompanied Bateman back to his home, where he had a framed photo hanging on his wall.
In the photo was Bateman’s grandfather, John, who worked in the Jumping Pound area in the 1890s.
“There was the same raw-faced youth,” Nurden said. “Our grandfathers had both worked alongside each other in the 1890s.”
Stanley had arrived in Canada by boat in 1893, alongside his brother Norman James.
He quickly made his way out west and found employment under a rancher named W.W. Stuart.
By all accounts, Stuart was not very fond of men from “the old country” coming abroad to find work, but employed Stanley regardless, Nurden explained.
“It must have been only a few weeks after his arrival,” he said. “It was purely by chance that W.W. Stuart, during the branding season in May, had hired a photographer from Calgary to take some shots on the ranch, and Stanley was there. He’s a bit of a poser. He’s sitting on a horse with his hands on his hips in the foreground, right in the middle, and he’s making sure he gets in every photo. He was quite full of himself, that’s why he wrote two autobiographies, not one.”
A member of the Copithorne family was able to take Nurden to the exact location where the photo was taken, and Nurden knew that the Two Rivers were the Jumping Pound Creek and the Little Jumping Pound Creek.
During his downtime, Nurden said, his grandfather was a prolific reader and writer, and would often submit his stories and poems to local papers.
“We might call him a literary cowboy because he was always sort of reading and writing even when he was sort of off duty from the ranch,” Nurden said.
Stanley worked as the Jumping Pound correspondent for the Calgary Herald under false titles like Vagabond, or Tramp— A habit Stanley continued late into his life.
The topics of his reports covered the hot topic of the day— Whether or not the Jumping Pound area should be irrigated for farming. Occasionally, Nurden said, they contained some embellishments on Stanley’s part.
“Sometimes he was a little gung-ho with the truth and a bit of fake news crept in. Once he was describing a meeting where the ranchers were discussing irrigation and he said ‘the chair was occupied to overflowing by this rather rotund gentleman.’ After that point, the chairman, whoever it was, was after him,” Nurden said. “Nobody knew that he was a cowboy. He was penning this stuff after work and putting them in the post and they were appearing in the Calgary Herald, and nobody knew who was writing them.”
In 1897, Stanley delivered one of his reports in person to the editor of the Calgary Herald, J.J. Young. Upon meeting the anonymous Cowboy, Young offered him a job.
Stanley said goodbye to his ranching days and took up the mantle of deputy editor for the Calgary Herald.
Stanley was eventually fired by the editor of the Herald and decided to walk from Calgary to Lethbridge following the railway track.
His plan was to meet a cattle train that was taking the cattle back to England, but he arrived too late. The cattle train had left without him.
His brother, Norman, had opened a shop in Lethbridge where Stanley worked for a time before opening a shop of his own in the Crowsnest Pass.
Staying true to his restless character, Stanley eventually left that post as well, train hopping from Calgary to Toronto, where he decided to leave the country all together, and joined the American military to fight in the Spanish-American War.
Stanley eventually returned to England where he lived out the rest of his life, writing books and preaching to his late-father’s ministry.
Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey With My Grandfather is available for purchase on Amazon.ca/.
