The Legend of Cowboy John Ware
– Bob MacKenzie
John Ware, John Ware
who’d a thought we’d care?
But now that you’re gone
you’re a legend, John Ware
Let me tell you a tale of the cowboy John Ware
master of longhorns and wild bucking broncs
his fame was legend from Brooks to High River
sixty years on this earth and his name lives forever
A slave and a legend in South Carolina
a fighter for sport in the master’s ring
no man could beat him when forced to fight
no man could own him this man called John Ware
They say you couldn’t find a man
who wasn’t John Ware’s friend
He had a heart as big and warm
as that old chinook wind
The cowboys said he was the best
the legend of the west:
the Cowboy John Ware
When freedom came down with the armies of Lincoln
John Ware understood he’d always been free
None could own him and none could beat him
And no man could tell him what he had to do
He went down to Texas to a ranch near Fort Worth
To learn to be a cowboy and follow the herds
till none was better with horse or with rope
than the man and the legend of Cowboy John Ware
John was too big for the Lone Star to hold him
so he followed the north star to Canada’s west
drove three thousand head to the Bar U Ranch
first man to bring longhorns to the northwest
When the longhorns went wild and the cowboys had run
John grabbed the lead’s horns and pulled back its head
flipped over that steer with its legs treading air
steer wrestling was born thanks to Cowboy John Ware
The horses were panicked and set to stampede
but John climbed the fence and he walked on their backs
and he found the lead stallion and calmed it right down
the horse is not running which John cannot ride
They say you couldn’t find a man
who wasn’t John Ware’s friend
He had a heart as big and warm
as that old chinook wind
The cowboys said he was the best
the legend of the west:
the Cowboy John Ware
Mildred Lewis and John took the buggy one day
but lightning shot down and the horses were lost
so John took the traces and hauled the rig home
and young Mildred Lewis soon married John Ware
When pneumonia took Mildred in nineteen-ought-five
the woman was gone but John’s love never died
and when a hoof in a gopher hole took his horse down
John went at last to be with his true love
John’s saddle was silver and a steer wrestler’s prize
and it shone near as bright as his young Mildred’s eyes
and when he fell to the ground thrown by his horse
his heart it was pierced by that fine silver horn
They say you couldn’t find a man
who wasn’t John Ware’s friend
He had a heart as big and warm
as that old chinook wind
The cowboys said he was the best
the legend of the west:
the Cowboy John Ware
Bob MacKenzie
Raised in southern Alberta farming communities, Bob MacKenzie spent much of his childhood travelling and camping with his artist parents in the foothills of the province and in the mountains to the west. Having lived briefly on Calgary’s North Hill and in Bowness, when Bob was in Grade 8 the family moved back to Calgary, where he attended Fairview Junior High and Henry Wise Wood High School. In the early Sixties, his class studied the life of John Ware, based on Grant MacEwan’s 1960 book John Ware’s Cow Country. Bob began his professional writing career at The Calgary Herald and his career as a poet in Calgary’s downtown café scene. Although he lives and writes in Kingston, Ontario now, Bob remains a proud Calgarian.
