cheese, and with his gun for protection, walked the rest of the way to Winnipeg. He and John, impressed by reports of good lands to the west, decided to take advantage of the Canadian Dominion Lands Act of 1872. The brothers set out on foot to locate their homesteads and walked until they found land to their liking just east of Minnedosa, Manitoba. Burns continued to homestead in Manitoba until after the Louis Riel rebellion but gradually became involved in buying cattle and selling meat. He began his meat packing career with a cow bought on credit and sold for $4. He began freighting goods from Winnipeg and driving his neighbours' cattle to the Winnipeg market. By 1885, he was buying and selling his own cattle. As a contractor from railway construction, that Burns transitioned from being a small-time broker to a successful entrepreneur. In 1887, William Mackenzie and his partners Donald Mann, James Ross, and Herbert Holt secured a railway construction contract to drive a line from Quebec through Maine to the Eastern Seaboard. Mackenzie had grown up in Kirkfield and remembered Burns from their briefly-shared school days and time spent working in their fields. Aware of Burns' experience in the livestock business, Mackenzie gave him the opportunity to provision the labourers who were to construct the line. Burns learned to establish a mobile slaughtering facility, which could move easily as the railhead was extended. The success of the contract in Maine led to whole succession of other contracts with Mackenzie and Mann. Alberta Burns moved to Calgary in 1890 and established his first substantial slaughterhouse. In 1898, he built a packing house in Calgary followed by others in Vancouver, Edmonton, Prince Albert, and Regina. He then turned to ranching on a large scale and acquired large tracts of land. His company, P. Burns & Co. (later Burns Foods) became western Canada's largest meatpacking company. At the grand opening of his second abattoir in 1899 (the first had burned down), the Calgary Herald described the event as "the passing of yet another milestone on the road to Calgary's full measure of prosperity." In 1901 he married Eileen Ellis of Penticton in a small ceremony in London, England. Back in Calgary, Burns was building a house for him and his new bride. Burns Manor, on the corner of 4th Street and 13th Avenue SW, designed by Pat's friend, the famed