The first flash of red on the wing of a black bird is a welcome sign of spring. The red-winged blackbird is also the likely inspiration for the name of a historic ranch inside today’s Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park.
The Red Wing Ranch house was built under the direction of Dr. Dudley Henry Morris, a physician/surgeon from New York City. Dr. Morris bought the land in 1914, and hired local men to erect his ideal country residence.
Although the projected cost of the ranch house was $3000, Dr. Morris’s exacting tastes drove the final bill up to about $12,000. Considering a male farm labourer in Alberta at that time earned roughly $24 a month, this significant expenditure indicates the level of luxury Dr. Morris created.
By May 1917, however, Dr. Morris’s plans had changed, and he advertised Red Wing Ranch in The New Country Life, an American magazine:
A Bungalow in the Canadian Rockies — In the heart of the Big Game Country! Attractive home of a New York physician. Wonderfully bracing air, and out-of-door life of great variety and charm, 30 acres of improved land 22 miles from Calgary, a city of eighty thousand inhabitants. House of 12 rooms, only ten minutes from R.R. station, with an outlook on 200 miles of snow mountains. Barn, cottage, garage, and outbuildings. Several New York families in colony.
Whether Dr. Morris was trying to sell or just rent out the property is unclear. However, that same month, he mortgaged it to his friends, the de la Vergnes (Chester and his two sisters, Mary and Katherine).
A few years later, in October 1920, Dr. Morris put the furnishings of Red Wing Ranch up for sale through Turner’s Furniture Store in Calgary. By this time, all his New York friends had also left Glenbow’s Millionaire Hill.
The advertisement of the sale provides a detailed list of the “Magnificent Mahogany and Walnut Furniture,” which included a “Steinway Vertegrand Piano,” “Lovely Chime and Eight-Bell Clock,” and “Lady’s Mahogany Secretaire, beautifully inlaid.”
Dr. Morris lived the high life, with beautiful possessions, homes, and women (marrying three times). Sadly his life of excess, specifically chronic alcoholism, contributed to the broncho-pneumonia which caused his death in 1934, at the age of 49.
In 1938, Eric Harvie purchased the deserted Red Wing Ranch. He renovated the house, and it became the Harvie family’s beloved summer home. After an accidental fire in March 1977, only two chimneys remain. They now frame a picnic area located next to the Visitor Information Centre in Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park, on land donated to the people of Alberta by Harvie’s grandchildren.
While Dr. Morris’s bungalow was more like a mansion than a simple cottage, and may not have been located directly in the Canadian Rockies, today you can enjoy the attractive home of native plants and animals (and cattle). Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park consists of more than 3200 acres of protected land, and adjoins a park owned by Calgary, a city of 1.6 million inhabitants. At Glenbow, only a 13-minute drive from the city’s edge, you can find stunning mountain views and enjoy “wonderfully bracing air, and out-of-door life of great variety and charm.”