Sir Sam Steele

Sam Steele Days gives Cranbrook reason to celebrate

For the sports enthusiasts or athletic competitors, there are event tournaments for watching or participating in such as the Alpine Toyota Ball or Bocce Tournaments, the Junior Babe Baseball Tournament, the Youth Soccer Tournament, Disc Golf Tournament at the College of the Rockies, Strongman Competition, Free Ride Bike Competition, or the Cross Country Bike Race.

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The Sir Samuel Steele Collection » Blog Archive » Horses! Horses ...

Sir Samuel Benfield Steele was a skilled horseman who had enormous respect for these animals and the valuable role they played in his career with the N.W.M.P., his subsequent military experiences in South Africa, and with the South African Constabulary after the Boer War of 1900. In his early years with the Mounted Police, Steele trained recruits in both horsemanship and weaponry, and rode and trained horses regularly during his policing years. Horses continued to be extremely important to Steele and his Lord Strathcona’s Horse Unit as they assembled as a cavalry force bound for South Africa. Steele’s diary accounts and letters often contain narrative about the horses, especially during the rough sea crossing from Halifax to Cape Town when Steele worried continuously about the well-being of his animals and the often dire effects the ocean-crossing had on them. Steele wrote a contributing article, “Conduct of Irregular Horse” about the care of horses for his friend Roger Pocock’s book: The Frontiersman’s Pocketbook, and reference to horses is a familiar theme in Steele’s correspondence. His early courtship with his wife Marie appears to have been sparked by their mutual enjoyment of horseback riding in the countryside around Fort Macleod.