The Reins in Their Hands: Ranchwomen and the Horse in Southern Alberta 1880-1914‪.‬

Prior to the departure of newlywed Monica Hughes from England in 1909, to live on a ranch in southern Alberta, her mother had taken care to ensure her daughter acquired what she believed would be necessary and important skills for a wife in the Canadian West. Accordingly, she had enrolled Hughes in a domestic science school in order that she learn how to iron and gloss her future husband's dress shirts. Within a month of arriving at the ranch, however, Hughes admitted freely in a letter that the shirts and the glossing iron were packed away in a trunk and likely to remain there permanently. In the same letter she recounted the challenges she had experienced, and the pride she had felt, in learning a new skill since her arrival. She could now ride a horse. (1) Much has been written on the history of the men who ranched in early Alberta. Within that history the horse has been clearly depicted as a tool used to work those ranches, as a product of some of those ranches and as necessary recreational equipment for those men. Yet relatively unrecognized to date has been the vital role of the horse with regard to the women who lived on many of those same ranches. (2) From knowledgeable work-mate to gentle friend, the horse was an integral part of the successful adaptation of ranchwomen (3) to their new lives on ranches in southern Alberta from 1880 to 1914.