Interesting Stories

"Ode to Annie"
Recollections of Maude Bannister living at the Bow Valley Ranche

Maude Bannister's eyes sparkle like sunbeams reflecting off the nearby creek when she talks of her mother, Annie.

"She had beautiful auburn hair - it was almost a bronze color - with beautiful green eyes, flecked with brown," says Bannister. "My mother was a wonderful rider. Oh, she loved to ride and we had a beautiful black horse that Mr. (Pat) Burns gave to her. And she loved to dance, she was a beautiful dancer."  

Bannister is sitting in a sunny corner of Annie's Bakery Cafe, named for her mother, who was the wife of Billy Bannister, foreman of the historic Bow Valley Ranche.

Annie's Bakery Cafe, a new spot for coffee and light meals, opened just a few weeks ago in the old ranch house nestled in the Fish Creek Valley where Maude Bannister spent a good part of her early childhood.

Today, behind the broken windows and beneath the sculpted wall-to-wall carpet, there are glimpses of those heady years. Wandering the former parlor and dining rooms that flank the central staircase, Maude Bannister remembers the house she was born in back in 1900.

	CHRONOLOGY The history behind the Bow Valley Ranche is rich and colourful.  Read more here. PIONEERS Learn more about pioneers connected to the Bow Valley Ranch.  Read more here. SITE RESTORATION From landscaping, renovations and restoration The Ranche House was restored to its turn of the century grandeur. All the details are here. STORIES Three interesting stories surrounding the Bow Valley Ranche.  Read them here. PHOTOS See the latest museum photos from the Glenbow Archives on Page 3 and Page 4 of our photo gallery...

I was born here in the Hull house," says Maude, describing the small room up the back stairs where Billy and Annie Bannister first lived with their young family after their marriage in 1899. Billy and Annie had three children, including the eldest Maude, and were expecting a fourth when a new bungalow was moved to a spot west of the main house, by then owner Patrick Burns. "I was three or four when we left the big house," says Maude. "Mr. Burns decided the family was growing too big and he brought this house in." The foreman's house, moved to the property in 1905 from the M. Patterson ranch at Bayfield, is changed only slightly from those times, despite its new life as a café. Inside the front door is the old parlor where Maude remembers dark green velvet draperies encircling a space where children were not allowed. "Every room had (wall)paper and in the parlor where we weren't supposed to go, I remember a mass of green velvet," she says. "We had quite a collection of really nice dolls that people use to bring to us, but we weren't allowed to play with them. They were displayed in the parlor, on those curtains."

Her father, Billy Bannister, was the ranch foreman, first hired by Hull in 1886. He remained at the helm of the ranch after Burns purchased the property in 1902. Billy, who left his home in Collingwood, Ont. at the age of 15, was 34 when he married Annie Louise Birney a 19-year-old woman whose family lived on a farm near what is now MacLeod Trail and Heritage Drive.

He became a very good cattle man, with a reputation for being honest," says Maude. "He used to take cattle back and forth along MacLeod Trail and at that time my mother lived at Heritage station. That's where they used to stop, for a drink of water or whatever, They married in 1899."

One of the other ranch employees was Yuen Chow, or Charlie Yuen, the Chinese cook, gardener and caretaker who kept the house and fed the ranch hands there for more than 50 years. Charlie cooked for Annie and her family when the Bannisters lived in the main house, and planted the ranch's large vegetable and pretty perennial gardens. He kept the house a showpiece for visitors and was always in the kitchen, as comfortable cooking for dignitaries as he was for the ranch hands. Still, Charlie stayed on as cook and gardener. Even after the Bannisters moved to Inglewood in 1910 when Billy took a new job as head of the Burns stockyards. Annie often brought her children out to visit their friend, the Chinese cook.

She used to bring us all out for a piece of his pie - we always looked forward to Charlie's pie," says Maude, remembering the gazebo down by the deep swimming hole on the creek's edge, where they came for summer picnics. "Whenever he returned from trips to China, he would bring my mother bolts of silk. We had a beautiful silk table cloth in the parlor, with tassels all around, from Charlie."

One of the few original items left in the ranch house is a dining table, constructed by Billy Bannister, presumably with design help from Charlie. Like the tables common in Chinese restaurants, with a rotating central area, Bannister built the legendary round table, where ranch hands passed the pickles and roast beef by spinning the wagon wheel at its centre.

My dad built this but he must have got the idea from Charlie," says Maude, fingering the table's rough edges. "When we came out to visit Charlie, we always sat around this table."

(Parts of article reprinted from Calgary Herald, September 21, 1997)