Cowboy poet Mike Puhallo loved Western heritage

“They’re gonna heart attack them ponies,” Mike Puhallo said as he watched the greenhorns roaring around the grounds on their rented mounts.

It was the first time I’d ever met Mike — it was at one of the Kamloops Cattle Drives, the year it started from Hat Creek and wound its way above Kamloops Lake before coming into town a week later.

I think that was in 1995, and we were sitting in the shade under an awning watching the city folks enjoy playing cowboy.

Mike died last Friday after a long struggle with cancer. I knew him casually over the years, sometimes in connection with those Cattle Drives, sometimes with the annual Cowboy Festival he had so much to do with.

There will be a lot of stories told this week by folks who knew Mike.

He had a passion for Western culture, and could never figure out why Kamloops was hesitant to celebrate its cowboy origins. When I was in the mayor’s office, he wrote a letter strongly criticizing the Tournament Capital program.

Kamloops should focus on Western heritage, not on sport, he figured. The letter bothered me, and I let him know, because though I agree we should celebrate our heritage I’ve always believed a city can be more than one thing.

But Mike believed civic government didn’t do enough to promote the Western theme.

He and I shared another common interest — the infamous McLean Gang outlaws and their equally infamous father Donald. The elder McLean — who was my great-great-grandfather — worked for the Hudson’s Bay Company during the early 1800s. After his death in the Chilcotin War his sons formed a gang, killed the local police constable and were hanged in 1879.

Mike loved that story and wrote about the family quite often, as I did.

We didn’t share a love of cowboy poetry, however. In fact, it drives me a little nuts. But Mike was a cowboy poet’s poet. He used it to reflect that Western heritage he loved so much, to tell stories about history and about a special way of life.

I would come across him at fall fairs where he’d entertain, or when he had a new book of poems to publish.

I and my family live where we do because of Mike Puhallo. He was in my office at City Hall one day pitching his vision for a Western theme town when he mentioned that the old McLean homestead at Black Pines was probably going to come up for sale.

The home, a log and clapboard two-story farm house, was built by my great-grandparents in the early 1890s. I knew the house well, for my mom had spent several years of her childhood there.

Sure enough, it came up for sale and Syd and I bought it, becoming Mike’s neighbours in the process.

During the ensuing years, he’d take one of his horses for a ride from “downtown” Black Pines through our property and stop for a chat at the house. After the area got cross-fenced I’d pass him on Westsyde Road as he rode along.

A few years ago, we were doing a feature about him for Currents magazine, and shot a magnificent photo of Mike loping one of his horses through a snow-covered field.

That picture epitomizes so much about Mike Puhallo — it somehow captures what Western heritage and cowboy culture meant to him.

A little like one of those cowboy poems of his, without the words.