Buffalo Bill Cody

The other day, while surfing the TV, I came across a play about Bill Cody and his Wild West Show, - a popular event in the early part of the last century.

Memories came flooding back about stories my mother told us about this Show that she had seen in Toronto in the early teens. Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.



It included real Indians and Cowboys riding and roping, but what impressed my mother most was the extraordinary marksmanship of Annie Oakley.



What made the story even more interesting that one of mother's Irish relatives was related to Bill Cody, in a round about manner. I became good friends with my distant cousins, Lyle and Verne Cody.

Another story mother told us was undoubtedly true. She was born into a large family of Irish Catholics by the name of O'Callaghan, in Downeyville, Ontario.

They were farmers and had livestock, including a Jersey bull with a set of very sharp horns. A bad combination, - Jersey bulls are not noted for a gentle disposition.

My grandfather, William O'Callaghan,



got into a fracas with this Jersey bull.

He was knocked to the ground and gored. Fortunately the bull had been fitted with a nose ring and Bill got his fingers into the ring, holding the animal at bay while he whistled for his stock dog who drove the bull away.

Mother's first husband died of the Spanish Flu in the terrible epidemic of 1918. She was left with two young children, Hazel and Tom, so when her parents decided to move West to Vancouver she came with them.

Her father, Bill, found work as a teamster in the Vancouver train yards, but was killed shortly after when a switch engine struck his loaded freight wagon.

Mother moved to Penticton with her children to keep house for my father, who had also lost his first wife, Violet, and was orcharding on the Penticton benches. Their eventual marriage produced three more children, - my older brother, Gordon, myself and my sister Wenonah.

Which sets the stage for a a ton of 'growing up' tales and memories.....