Jerry Potts: Métis warrior and police scout

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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)

Jerry Potts 1838 – 1896

Jerry Potts
1838 – 1896

Jerry Potts was a multilingual warrior of Blackfoot and Scottish parentage who bridged the cultural gap between aboriginals and white settlers, and helped the fledgling North West Mounted Police bring law and order to the Canadian West during the 1870s.

He was tough and fearless, and he brooked no criticism from anyone. He was proficient with rifle and revolver, and with bow and arrow, which enabled him to survive in a frontier region occupied by warring Natives and trigger-happy traders. He killed his first opponent in a gun duel when he was 23, and received the name Bear Child (Ky-yo-kosi) from his Blackfoot brothers as a testament to his bravery.

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Ruth Peacock Gorman: Social justice advocate

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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)

Ruth Gorman 1914 – 2002

Ruth Gorman
1914 – 2002

In the Victorian world that was the Alberta of the 1930s, it was conventionally agreed that a married woman’s place – especially if she came from the upper echelons of society – was in the home. She might join the Junior League, embrace volunteerism and do good works but, at the end of the day, her main job was to stay home and look after the needs of husband and children. Ruth Peacock knew this and accepted it. In fact, when her father encouraged her to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer, she intentionally failed her high school Latin exam to make herself ineligible for law school. Her ambition then was to marry well and become a debutante in Mount Royal, Calgary’s most exclusive residential district. She had never even met a woman lawyer, she said, so why would she want to become one?

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Florence Lassandro: Bootlegger’s moll and executed murderer

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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)

Florence Lassandro 1900 – 1923

Florence Lassandro
1900 – 1923

One of Alberta’s most notorious murder cases of the 1920s occurred in the Crowsnest Pass in 1921, when Prohibition was in full force. It involved the gunning down in broad daylight of a provincial police officer assigned to combat illicit liquor traffic in the towns of Blairmore, Bellevue and Coleman. Two suspects were convicted and sentenced to death. One was a rumrunner named Emilio Picariello who had vowed to kill the policeman for shooting at his son. The other was his female accomplice, Florence Lassandro, a Picariello family friend who became the only woman ever to be hanged in Alberta. Lassandro considered herself innocent yet still took the blame for the policeman’s killing because Picariello had told her that Canadian judicial authorities would never execute a woman.

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John Brownlee: Disgraced premier

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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)

John Brownlee 1883 – 1961

John Brownlee
1883 – 1961

As political sex scandals go, it seemed like pretty tame stuff at first. When a junior government stenographer named Vivian MacMillan accused Alberta premier John E. Brownlee of sexual misconduct, the province’s newspapers devoted less coverage to the civil lawsuit than they did to a juicy wife-swapping suit involving Brownlee’s public works minister, O.L. (Tony) McPherson. But when the stenographer’s charges stuck and the 50-year-old premier had to publicly defend himself in court, the newspapers broke out the big black headlines that they normally reserve for coverage of a world war. It was cheap entertainment for the Depression-battered masses, and they devoured it with prurient relish.

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Will James: Cowboy artist, author and masquerader

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(This story is one of a series entitled “One Person’s Journey” telling how people from all walks of life, including a few rogues and rebels, have left their marks upon the world. To see a list of others featured in the series, click here.)

Will James 1892 – 1942

Will James
1892 – 1942

Think of great cowboy novelists and the names Zane Grey and Louis L’Amour invariably spring to mind. Think of great cowboy artists, and the names Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington usually top the list. For Old West aficionados, however, the leader in both genres will always be a masquerader who called himself Will James.

His name is barely remembered today. During the 1920s and 1930s, Will James was as well known as Will Rogers or Tom Mix. He hobnobbed in Hollywood with celebrities such as Bing Crosby and Randolph Scott. Two of his books were made into major motion pictures during his lifetime, and his drawings were praised as masterpieces of western art.

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