The life of the lonesome cowboy out West is a fantasy for others living in their ‘urban Levi-lands of blue denim,’ writes Alan Road in the Observer Magazine of 29 January 1978. They long for ‘the freedom of the ranch’ and eye up the cattlemen and ranch hands of Western Canada, dressed in stetson and ‘sweat-stained shirt, jeans, boots, spurs and leather chaps’. They may look like heroes and ‘film extras’, but the reality, cowpokes working the old Cariboo Trail in British Columbia tell Road, is down and dirty.
