A rollercoaster ride of a life

HORATIO HAMILTON ROSS WASN’T YOUR NORMAL SORT OF HERO, BUT HE ESTABLISHED A MASSIVELY SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS, LEFT A TRAIL OF MARITIME DISASTER, AND WAS LOVED BY HIS FRIENDS. ANTHONY DALTON REPORTS

He arrived in Medicine Hat, Alberta, quietly enough aboard his prairie launch, a small vessel that had carried Horatio Ross from Calgary on the Bow River – a distance of some 200 miles. He had planned to continue across the vast prairies on the South Saskatchewan River to Winnipeg, but he liked the look of dusty Medicine Hat. Ross’s planned one-night stop turned into a long party and the beginnings of an impressive business. It also began an era of nautical mayhem for the young Scot.

Horatio Hamilton Ross was born a gentleman in 1869. His parents, Sir Charles and Lady Ross, of Rossie Castle, had no inkling that the chubby infant would make such a spectacular mark in a distant land.

Ross ran away to sea as a boy and experienced the terrible storms of the Southern Ocean rounding Cape Horn on a square-rigger. In booming San Francisco, he witnessed the results of the frenzy of the California goldrush: images which stayed with him.

The restless young man, however, could not yet be held by any one town. He trekked north into the Canadian Rockies with a wagon. The wide-open spaces apparently agreed with Ross – by the time he was 25 he’d been a cowboy, looking after cattle on huge ranges, and he’d shown his horsemanship playing polo in Calgary.

He had adopted Canada as his new home. Medicine Hat, a way-station for the Klondike gold rush of 1898, brought out the entrepreneur in him. As gold-seekers arrived in town, purchased supplies, and continued north, Ross invested $30,000 in .....

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By Anthony Dalton

Section : Scottish Heroes

Page number : 72