The Sundance Kid in Calgary

The legendary member of the Wild Bunch, and Butch Cassidy's lieutenant, spent the better part of 3 years in the Canadian Old West, in and around Calgary, Alberta. 1891 Police records show that a Harry Longabaugh was charged with cruelty to animals. This was at the time he was working as a wrangler at the Bar U Ranch (currently a national historic site), about 50 miles south of Calgary.

After spending more than a year as a cow hand, the Kid decided it wasn't for him and with Frank Hamilton as a partner opened a bar in the Grand Central Hotel in Calgary, then part of the Northwest Territories of Canada. (Today it's the province of Alberta.)

Frank Hamilton had a reputation as an under handed business man who liked to bully and intimitate his partners to get his way. He tried that with Harry Longabaugh (The Sundance Kid) and prompty had a six-shooter shoved in his ribs. Sundance took his share of the saloon and left for south of the border.

From Calgary the Kid headed south through Montana and on to Wyoming where he met Butch Cassidy and together with other members of the Wild Bunch went busily about their outlaw business.

Oddly enough just a year or so after Sundance left Calgary the Grand Central Hotel and all it's contents burned down. Coincidence? Perhaps. . .or perhaps the Kid never forgot Hamilton's behaviour and snuck back to even the score.

More about the Canadian Old West

Wild Bunch Poster | Sundance and Etta Poster | More about Etta Place