Douglas Lake Ranch: Empire of Grass

Review By Colin Osmond

December 20, 2024

Given the fanfare surrounding Paramount’s TV Series Yellowstone, it is inspiring to see that the rise in popularity surrounding ranching and ‘cowboy’ culture has reached the ‘British Columbia’ section of the bookshelf. Donna (Yoshitake) Wuest’s Douglas Lake Ranch: Empire of Grass documents the history of Canada’s largest cattle ranch – the Douglas Lake Ranch in the Thompson Okanagan region of Canada’s Pacific province. In the pages of this visually impressive book, readers will learn the history of the Ranch – the history of its growth and expansion, and the history of the people who called this ranch home over the last century and a half.

The Douglas Lake Ranch began as a modest 320-acre pre-emption by John Douglas – the namesake of the historic ranch. From its humble beginnings, the Ranch grew to over 8000 acres and 8500 head of cattle by 1884. By 1905, it was 100,000 acres with a herd of 14,000. At the end of the Great War in 1918, the Ranch ballooned to 121,000 acres. This trend continued over the 20^th century, and by 2008 the “Home Ranch” was 164,000 acres with access to an additional half a million in grazing licences on Crown Lands. Added to this were the recent acquisitions of the Alkali Lake Ranch (Canada’s oldest) and several other ranches from 2008 to 2015. The Ranch changed hands several times, being owned by figures such as Charles ‘Chunky’ Woodward of the Woodward retail family in the 1950s. Wuest outlines the challenges the Ranch faced as the ranching game became enveloped in new technologies that threatened to change the fabric of ranching life, doing a remarkable job showing the human side of ranching – the deep connection that living and working on the land required. Indeed, this is the strength of her book: it is not a history of the Ranch – it is a history of the people who called the Ranch home.

It is on this point that I would like to highlight this book’s very problematic omission. Wuest almost completely fails to engage with the Syilx (Okanagan) people who have lived on this land since time immemorial. Conscientious readers will notice that there is more discussion of indigenous grasses and wildlife than there is of Indigenous people. When Wuest does mention Indigenous people near the end of the book, she draws on former ranch manager Joe Gardner’s observation that many of the ranch employees were members of the nearby Upper Nicola Band. Local Indigenous people provided “a significant portion of the total workforce of the Douglas Lake Ranches and operating without them would be difficult.”[1] Such a notable contribution should warrant more than a scant reference buried in the back of the book.

The lack of discussion of Indigenous people is highly problematic in a book about how a settler from Scotland came to British Columbia to pre-empt land that had not been surrendered by Treaty, nor had been surveyed by Indian Reserve Commissioners – a process which began in earnest in 1876, four years after Douglas claimed his pre-emption. From this base, generations of ranchers built intergenerational wealth on lands that are to this day not settled by any Treaty with the Crown. To not engage with this is a problem. But tighten the strap on your Stetson. It gets worse.

Readers will not learn of the dispute the erupted between the Upper Nicola Indians (to refer to them as they are presented in the historical documents) and the Douglas family over disputed lands around Douglas Lake. Peter O’Reilly, then a local magistrate and Gold Commissioner, claimed that he surveyed reserves for the Upper Nicola Indians in 1868, but when Indian Reserve Commissioner Gilbert Malcolm Sproat met with Chief Chilliheetsa of the Upper Nicola Band in the fall of 1878, he claimed that he personally had never met O’Reilly and had never agreed to reserve boundaries with the government. According to Sproat, Chilliheetsa’s son had met with O’Reilly and asked for the land around Douglas Lake and Chapperon Lake to be reserved for them, but O’Reilly replied that these lands were “comparatively remote” and would be dealt with later when settlers sought land in the region. While meeting with the Upper Nicola Band in 1878, Sproat tried to find out if Chilliheetsa – or any Indigenous persons at all – accompanied O’Reilly when he surveyed the reserves in 1868.[2]

The issue was a piece of land at the foot of Douglas Lake – a place where there was an “Indian Village” but had been included in John Douglas’s pre-emption (which was then being managed by John Douglas Jr.). Chief Chilliheetsa said he wanted this included in the reserve, but the Douglases claimed that they had the right to land based on their pre-emption. When Sproat wrote to Douglas Sr. to ask about the issue, he claimed that he had never heard of the issue, and had received no complaints from Chilliheetsa in the six years he had been living on the land. Sproat was quick to call him out on this lie – stating that Douglas himself had discussed it with him a year prior when they met on a steamboat going from New Westminster to Yale. Douglas Sr. had also sent a signed letter to Sproat’s camp containing all of the details of the dispute earlier that year. Douglas Sr. – the namesake of the Ranch – attempted to mislead a government official to protect the Douglas claims to land.

Neither side was willing to abandon their claim to the land – and Sproat was forced to make a decision. Sproat made a deal with Douglas Jr. where the immediate land at the foot of Douglas Lake would be taken from the Douglas claim and made part of the reserve. In lieu, the Douglas Ranch would receive 400 acres of land north of Douglas Lake. However, Chilliheetsa insisted that they wanted land “all around Douglas Lake.” Sproat outright refused this, and Chilliheetsa protested by leaving the meeting and refusing to talk to Sproat until he would meet his demands. It wasn’t until Sproat began to pack up his camp two days later that Chilliheetsa agreed to continue negotiations. In the end, Sproat decided that the Upper Nicola Band would have its main village at the “foot” of the lake, and the Douglas Lake Ranch would keep their land at the “head” of the lake. This would, in Sproat’s estimation reduce “the risk of trouble between the two races.”[3]Sproat’s notes do not indicate if Chilliheetsa was on board with the plan.

Thirty-five years later, in 1913, Chilliheetsa’s son, Chief Johnny Chilliheetsa, gave testimony to the Royal Commission on Indian Affairs for the Province of British Columbia – a commission meant to hear complaints about Indian Reserves in the province. Chief Johnny Chilliheetsa told the Commissioners that his father agreed to the reserve boundaries because O’Reilly and Sproat had warned him about “lots of bad whitemen” who would soon come and take their land from them. Johnny Chilliheetsa explained that his father only agreed to move onto the reserve because the Commissioners had agreed that they would “talk about the big outside lands” off the reserve at a later date. Johnny Chilliheetsa claimed that the only reason why his father was willing to accept the reserve boundaries was because Sproat promised him that they would be compensated for the lands they lost outside of the reserve boundaries. Despite these claims, the Royal Commission did not act on them – they simply confirmed the size of the Upper Nicola reserves in their final report.[4]

None of this history is discussed in Wuest’s book on the history of Douglas Lake Ranch. Nor do we learn from Wuest that Peter O’Reilly (the one who had incorrectly surveyed the original reserve) later became an investor with the Douglas Lake Ranch as they gained a lucrative contract to sell beef to the Canadian Pacific Railway to feed labourers building the tracks through the region.[5] As we live firmly in the “Truth” part of our current struggles to embrace Truth and Reconciliation, a book that presents an unblemished settler success story is beyond problematic. On lands that were taken from the Syilx, the Douglas Lake Ranch exploded into Canada’s largest cattle ranch. Books like this, though well-meaning, contribute to the settler colonial erasure of Indigenous people from their lands and resources, despite the fact that the Syilx sought to protect this land from the very moment John Douglas set foot on their lands at Douglas Lake.

[1] Donna (Yoshitake) Wuest, Douglas Lake Ranch: Empire of Grass (Madeira Park, Harbour Publishing: 2023), 167.

[2] “Materials produced by the Joint Indian Reserve Commission and the Indian Reserve Commission, 1876-1910”, Volume 1, Federal Collection, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, 259-60, 271.

[3] “Materials produced by the Joint Indian Reserve Commission and the Indian Reserve Commission, 1876-1910”, Volume 4(11), Federal Collection, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, 21-22.

[4] “Meeting with the Douglas Lake Band of Indians, At Douglas Lake on the 18^th October 1913,” Royal Commission on Aboriginal Affairs for the Province of British Columbia, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, 216-217.

[5] Wuest, Douglas Lake Ranch, 17.