The Gang: ranch of dreams

GANG RANCH — Larry Ramstad, now El Duano of the
great Gang Ranch, is located silting under a battered black
hat and running a big yellow earth mover to level some

ground.

This is not a ranch manager's
job, but he is reputed to be a man
who ean do anything that needs
doing on a ranch except having
babies.

He is a level man, level-spoken,
level-eyed and, his friends say,
level-headed,

if he dreams, he does it private-
ly,

He's been cowboying for 30 of
his 46 years but never went (o
enough movies to learn that black
hats are worn by the bad guys
who tie girls to railway tracks.

We sink some coffee and agree
that every article about the Gang
Ranch starts with at least one lic,
and he says he gets a bit sick of it
sometimes, but, what the hell.

The commonest li¢ is that the
Gang is the biggest ranch in the
world,

ft never was, even before it sold
off a lot of land in recent years.

It consists of 30,000 deeded
acres and vaguely defined grazing
rights over another 800,000.

‘tA lot of the 800 is rocks and
swamp,’* he says.

““Byen if you count in The
Queen's acres, it’s not much
compared to the Alexandria
Downs Ranch | cowboyed on in
northern Australia. They has 17
million acres."’

The Gang has always produced
more BS than the bulls drop.

When the Harper brothers from
Virginia founded it in the carly
1860s, the Union government in
Washington protested to London
about the activities of the
“notorious southern sym-
pathizers”’ in British Columbia.

Since Jerome and Thaddeus
Harper were only punching cows
and swattin’ mosquitoes in
Hungry Valley and other bits of
howling nothingness, one might
ask how their sympathies in-
terfered with Sherman’s march
through Georgia, but nobody ever
asked that question.

In myth, which is so much
larger than life, they remain
agents of the doomed Con-
federacy.

The Gang stirs imagination as
often as it stirs brains. One recent
owner imported prairie buffalo
which busted their fences and rac-
ed headlong into cookpots all over
Chilcotin.

No matter. There it is, the
mighty Gang.

It is one of the few private
enterprises in Canada with its own
post office and a@ right to its own
listing on the map of Canada,
where it appears more often than
such municipalities as Burnaby
and Surrey.

Population today is Larry, his
wife Beth, who was born into the
famous Twan ranching family of
Alkali Lake, their son who is
studying to be a professional golf
instructor and a daughter who is
at college just plain studying.

There is no longer any child of
school age on the place. The
school stands empty.

Twenty-eight men live in the
big bunkhouse and assorted other
buildings — a Cow Boss, a Farm
Boss, eight cowboys and 18 other

Paul
Si. Pierre

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

full~zime employees,

“A young Quebecer came in
just today looking for cowboying.
It was just the name Gang that
brought hita.””

The owner, the sole owner, for
a change after a series of consor-
tiums, is Sheik Ibrahim Afandi of
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He has
visited just twice since Larry took
over,

Most ranch policies are arrang-
ed via satellite by conference
phone cails among Jeddah,
Arabia, Houston, Texas and Gang
Ranch, British Columbia. The
Harper boys would be impressed.

Sheik Ibrahim has made it
known that he did not buy the
Gang as a speculation. He wants
to make a profit running it, a goal
that eluded all other owners of the
past few decades.

In ranching, everybody knows
your business (much better than
you do, they think), and what
everybody knew in recent years
was that the Gang was in such
desperate straits it might have to
be broken up and sold in frag-
ments.

Once the Gang had rights to
graze 13,000 head.

It’s pointless, as well as rude, to
ask a rancher how many animals

he’s running, but everybody
knows the Gang was down to
about !,300 when Larry took over
two years ago.

The other common wisdom
antony neighboring ranchers is
that Larry Ramstad was one man
who could turn the Gang around,
“provided they give him his
head."

So the first question is, has he
been given his head?

Well, he said, fairly. Yes.
Reasonably.

He's had enough new capital
for 18 miles of new fence and for
restoring the farm operation be-
tween Gaspard and Churn erecks.

Irrigation water is running 50
kilometres from Gaspard and
China lakes.

The equipment works again and
those damn buffalo are gone.

However, he says the Gang’s
scrubby breeding stock needs to
be revived.

“T still say the Hereford-Angus
range animal is right for this
country, with occasionally a third
interbreeding of Charolai or one
of the ¢xotics,"' he says,

If so expert, could Mr, Ramstad
explain why Canadian and Ameri-
can cattlemen keep raising fat
cows when the market wants lean
meat?

“No, F can’t explain that. | also
can’t explain why the public turns
up its nose at grass-fed beef,
which is by far the best, and in-
sists on grain fed with all the
marbling of fat that they claim
they don’t want. People say one
thing when they mean another."’

On this day summer lies like a
warm blanket over the old Home
Ranch of the mighty Gang.

All right, so it isn’t the biggest.
It is a place that dreams are made
from.

And Larry Ramstad, old Level
Larry, can't quite keep a trace of
awe from his voice when he uses
the words ‘‘The Gang.”’

(Because the subject ts sa big,
there will be more columns from
time to time about the efforts of
Larry, from the Peace River
country and the sheik of Araby to
save the Gang. In these I shall try
to separate fact from romance so
that facts can be thrown away and
the romance printed.)

Incoming framing
order min. $30

LONSDALE QUAY
NORTH VANCOUVER

988-6321

WELCOME
TO A NEW ERA
IN CUSTCMER
SATISFACTION

” Reeycle

i NC RECYCLING HOTLINE

732-9203 /
‘ é

‘Reduce, Reuse,

SEE PAGE 35

ON ALL 1993 COROLLA SEDANS & WAGONS

B 3.6 Lite DOHC, 16 valve, Electronic Fuel Injection, 105 hp. engine J Tinted glass & electric
rear window defroster @ Child protector reat door locks 3 Variable assist power stecring B
Optional 3-speed automatic transmission @ Dual rernote control mirrors B@ intermittent wipers

‘| Hf 60/46 split & fold-down rear seal.

FREE Air Conditioning

(WHILE STOCK LAST)
The “Unbeatables"

DOWNTOWN TOYOTA
1290 BURRARD (near Davie) 682-8881

Over 15,000 New Toyotas Sold Since 1970 Not to be used in conjunction with any other
Tyo promotions ‘.

The Witchita

950 sq.ft.

The Beaver Shell
Package

$17,999

° Custom design:

* Only construction ride
services

materials used

Collateral Mortgage and

Interim Financing now
available