The Day Peter Welsh Bought Midnight
The following is an excerpt from the story as Fred Kennedy told it on pages 110 – 115 in his book, “Alberta Was My Beat.”
(Midnight was) a spoiled saddle horse who later thrilled thousands of spectators all the way from Vancouver to Montreal, and south to Columbus, Ohio. He was to become the greatest bucking horse in Rodeo history and the greatest and in my opinion for what it is worth….the most durable Rodeo bronc that ever lived.
I saw him for the first time at the Fort Macleod Rodeo and two weeks later at the 1924 Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. He was declared the champion bucking horse of both shows and later that year my story on “Midnight, King of the Outlaws” was published in Macleans magazine out of Toronto.
On the way back from Fort Macleod, Guy Weadick and I sat in one corner of the private car and discussed the future of Rodeo. I expressed the view that other parts of Canada would be interested in top flight competitive rodeo, but only if the top cowboys and bucking stock were utilized….
The discussions were revived in the fall of that year (with the Welsh family)…..We discussed the future of a travelling competitive rodeo outfit. In this connection I said that the first thing which would have to be done was to corner the top bucking horses of the day…
A month later, the Welshes returned. With them was a cowboy named “Strawberry Red” Woll…. The upshot of this meeting was that Welsh and Woll would form a partnership, and if they could obtain some worthwhile contracts, they would launch Canada’s first travelling competitive Rodeo outfit.
They were back in a month with contract for shows at Winnipeg, the Edmonton Exhibition and New Westminster, B.C. Would I take time off and act as publicity manager, secretary and arena director?…..
I left the employ of the Alberta on March 1, 1925 on three months leave of absence. Three years elapsed before I was to return to Calgary and newspaper work…
Even before he owned one bucking horse or an association saddle, Mr. Welsh had contracted to feature the world’s top bucking horses and the nation’s top cowboys.
Welsh and Woll had little more going for them at this time except unmitigated nerve, but Peter Welsh had lots of friends in high places. We managed to borrow $10,000 from the Bank of Montreal…. We drove straight from the bank to Jim McNabb’s ranch at Fort Macleod where we bought Midnight for $500, an unheard of price for a bucking horse in those days. But before he would close the deal, we had to buy two other broncs at $125 each.
I can never recall, without shudder, an incident which occurred at the Jim McNabb ranch the day when we were finally successful in closing the deal for Midnight. McNabb revealed himself as a keen horse trader. When we finally agreed on a total purchase price of $750 for three head, Midnight, Charlie King and Weasel, and while the cash was still spread out on the kitchen table -$500 for the big black, and $125 apiece for the other two, I asked McNabb if they had any photographs of Midnight which could be used for publicity purposes.
He rummaged around for a couple of minutes and then produced a small snapshot. It was a picture of Midnight standing quietly in the corral, and high on his withers perched a little girl who could not have been any more than a year old. She was being supported on the horse by the father. It was McNabb’s first born, their daughter Grace.
I will never forget the expression on Mr. Welsh’s face as he gazed at the snapshot. It reflected something akin to horror.
Here was the great outlaw horse whom I had predicted would become the world’s greatest bucking horse, and a baby girl was perched on his back and smiling at the camera.
Welsh gazed at the snapshot and then at the $750 in cash on the kitchen table. For a horrified moment I thought that he was going to snatch up the money and run.
It should be explained that Peter Welsh had never seen the big black in action. He was on the west coast horse show circuit with his horse high jumping string while Midnight was performing at the Fort Macleod Rodeo and the Calgary Stampede. At these shows I had seen him dust off six of the country’s top bronc snappers with ridiculous ease. He was a rookie it was true, but in sports parlance, ‘he had the size and all the moves’.
What further complicated the picture was that we had visited the Laycock farm in North Calgary the previous day and had purchased Tumbleweed, the big pinto who had finished second to Midnight as championship bucking horse at the 1924 Calgary Stampede.
Tumbleweed was the accepted outlaw horse type. He was prepared to fight anyone who came within reach of his feet or his teeth. He would lay his ears back, bare his teeth and whistle at the approach of man. And he could pitch.
The deal for the horse was finally concluded but on the drive back to Calgary, I was compelled to listen to all the dire things which were in store for me if the ‘key’ brand gelding turned out to be a lemon. Five hundred dollars for a bucking horse and an unseasoned one at that, was unheard of when competitive rodeo in Canada was still in its swaddling clothes.
I discussed the incident with the widow of Jim McNabb, and his brother Joe, several months ago. The little snapshot with Grace perched on Midnight’s back, is still a treasured family possession.
In the years that followed, I watched Midnight buck his way across the North American continent, and although I have seen thousands of them perform in the past 50 years, in my opinion, Midnight was the daddy of them all.
With the purchase of Canada’s top two bucking horses completed, Welsh had accomplished his first big step toward cornering the bucking horse market.
Photo: Jim McNabb at the McNabb Cottonwood Ranch, Fort McLeod. The photograph was taken on the day that the horse (Midnight) was purchased by Peter Welsh of Calgary to head the world famous Welsh Bucking String. Page 114 ( At one point he owned the greatest string of bucking horses the world had ever seen.)
Note: Peter Welsh was one of the first to recognize that if Rodeo was going to be a major sport that audiences would support, they had to be sure there was an adequate supply of top bucking horses. His plan in forming the Alberta Stampede Company was to hire famous cowboys to ride his top-notch broncs to entertain audiences across the country. It would be real rodeo competition instead of the staged acts (bronc riding, trick riding and roping) in the Wild West Shows in the U.S. and Canada. The competitors would have their rail car transportation covered but they would be competing for prize money.
On page 148 Fred Kennedy says, “(Mr Welsh) had brought the west to the east in a big way. The shows tended to spark interest in championship rodeo, and many of the thousands of easterners who attended the Calgary Stampede in later years got their first taste of the sport when western Canadian cowboys packed their saddles and headed east to take part in Peter Welsh’s travelling but competitive rodeo venture.”
Source: Alberta Was my Beat, Memoirs of a Western Newspaperman by Fred Kennedy, The (Albertan, 1975 (971.23 KEN))
