Heritage in the Hat: Medicine Hat’s local menagerie

By Medicine Hat News on February 17, 2018.

Aside from the exploding deer and Canada goose population and the odd rattler, Medicine Hat has been home to some iconic animals, not all of them alive today, or ever!

Arguably, the most famous animal was Nancy the Bear. This prairie grizzly cub was captured by Blackfoot hunters up on the Red Deer River in c.1887 and traded to James Hargrave, an early merchant, who kept her as a pet until it clawed up an inebriated remittance man. Nancy was then penned up beside the CPR station and became an attraction for transcontinental passengers during their stop in the Hat. During her time in captivity, she also managed to chew up a railway worker and an Indigenous girl.

A very patient lifesize fibreglass horse long graced the entrance to the Third Street western wear store Hutchings and Sharp. How many children had their first ride on that horse? This horse was “put out to pasture” at the Stampede Office when the store was recently renovated.

A concrete whale designed by local architect Jack Russell occupies a place of honour in the playground of Central Park. Recently repainted in the original blue, it was part of a playground development about 1960 sponsored by Kiwanis. Generations of Hatters have played on and in this whale out of water.

Lions cast in concrete once greeted visitors at the entrances to Lions Park, which was opened in 1956. They must have been too scary, since they were removed from their perches in the centre of the road some time later. Eyewitnesses claim they were dumped along the riverbank where they now lurk to prey on unwary joggersÉ.

Other service clubs had their symbolic synthetic animals too: the Moose moose is on the loose since he did not move to the new club location. We can imagine him chewing twigs on the Connaught Golf Course nearby. I don’t recall an Elks’ elk but could stand to be corrected.

There are also long resident “partial animals.” The Cypress Club has a collection of wild animal heads hung on its walls, notably a pair of wolves, perhaps the last ones seen around these parts, and a moose head that has observed more than 100 years of very social activities in the clubhouse. Willie the bison head of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes came to town from Vancouver Island and joined the Medicine Man Lodge in 1982 where he presides over solemn ceremonies.

Of course, the South Alberta Light Horse pronghorn antelope, mounted in the Officers’ Mess at the Patterson Armoury, symbolizes both the regiment’s local origins and the speed associated with this reconnaissance unit. It was presented to the SALH by the last commanding officer of the South Alberta Regiment, Lt-Col Bruce McKenzie DSO. The SAR amalgamated with two other units in 1954 to form the SALH.

Perhaps we should assemble all these critters in one place as a tourist attraction and call it the Medicine Hat Menagerie?