Pat Burns: The Calgary Meatpacker Who Became the Beef King of the West

Who was Pat Burns?

Patrick Burns was the meatpacker who fed much of western Canada. Starting as a homesteader with a team of oxen, he built P. Burns and Company into a business with plants across the prairies and British Columbia, along with some of the biggest ranches in Alberta. Newspapers called him the beef king of the West.

The Dictionary of Canadian Biography records that he was born on 6 July 1856 near Oshawa, Upper Canada, to Irish Catholic immigrants. He died in Calgary on 24 February 1937, after a stroke in 1935, and his estate was assessed at $3,833,413.34.

Early life and the move west

The family moved to a farm near Kirkfield when Burns was a boy. He had only a basic education. In 1877 he and his brother John planned to homestead in Manitoba, and in 1878 they reached Winnipeg and filed on land at Tanner's Crossing, near Minnedosa.

He worked on the Canadian Pacific Railway survey for $24 a month, freighted supplies, dealt in cattle and, in 1886, shipped live hogs east by rail. By 1885 he had left homesteading to buy cattle full-time.

How did Burns start his meat business?

His break came in 1887, when William Mackenzie, Donald Mann and others hired him to supply meat to their railway construction camps. More contracts followed, including the CPR's Short Line across Maine, lines out of Calgary to Edmonton and Fort Macleod, and the Crowsnest Pass line. Mackenzie's backing let him buy and sell on a larger scale.

In 1890 he built his first slaughterhouse on the east side of the Elbow River in Calgary. During the Klondike gold rush in 1897 and 1898 he shipped beef to Dawson, and in 1902 he sent twelve carloads of frozen beef in refrigerated railway cars from Calgary to Vancouver.

The ranches and the cattle

Burns bought ranches as the packing business grew. In 1891 he and Cornelius Duggan bought a ranch southeast of Olds, and in 1902 he acquired the businesses of W.C.J.R. Hull, including the Bow Valley Ranche. Later purchases included the CK Ranch in 1905, the Ricardo Ranch in 1906, the Mackie lease on the Milk River of about 150,000 acres in 1910, and the Bar U and Flying E in 1927, bought from the estate of George Lane.

By World War I the Dictionary of Canadian Biography credits him with more than 400,000 acres and over 30,000 head of cattle. The CK Ranch became a dairy farm with purebred Holsteins. Sources differ on how many ranches he held at one time, and the numbers shifted as he bought and sold.

The Big Four and the first Calgary Stampede

Burns, Archibald James McLean, A. E. Cross and George Lane were known as the Big Four cattlemen who backed the first Calgary Stampede, held 2 to 5 September 1912. Their money and standing helped turn an exhibition idea into an annual event that still draws visitors to Calgary.

Business setbacks, the 1928 sale and public life

Not every venture paid. Mining investments in Mexico and British Columbia had mixed results, and Turner Valley oil was only sporadically profitable. In 1928 he sold P. Burns and Company Limited to Dominion Securities Corporation of Toronto for $9,613,837.31 and bought back about 300,000 acres of ranch land for $4,038,837.31.

He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Gregory the Great in 1914 and accepted a Senate seat in 1931, sitting as an independent. He gave generously, including food aid after the Frank Slide and the Fernie fire, and in a 1920 strike he refused the workers' terms at the Calgary plant.

Sources and further reading

The fullest account is the Dictionary of Canadian Biography entry. A shorter overview appears in the Canadian Encyclopedia article, and the Manitoba Historical Society profile covers his early years in the province. The ranching section of farm.FM follows similar stories, and a farm.FM story about Alberta ranching adds more on the region.