architect Francis Rattenbury, was a grand, 18-room sandstone mansion, visited by the likes of Prime Ministers and Royalty. Construction took two years, and the couple meanwhile lived at the Alberta Hotel, on Stephen Avenue. The Burnses had one son, Patrick Michael Burns, born in Calgary in 1906. In 1912, he was one of the Big Four, who started the Calgary Stampede. With A.E. Cross, A.J. McLean, and George Lane, they arranged $100,000 worth of financing and billed the event as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth." Burns then personally owned six ranches with 38,000 head of cattle, 1,500 horses and 20,000 sheep. His company, Burns Foods, had abattoirs in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver, Prince Albert, and Regina with an overall daily capacity of 1,070 cattle, 6,000 pigs, and 3,000 sheep. Burns' facilities were of the utmost sanitation and technically advanced to a level previously unseen in Western Canada. Facilities were eventually opened in Winnipeg, Seattle, Australia, and Great Britain. Burns was able to revolutionize the slaughterhouse industry by emphasizing efficiency in the use of byproducts. Traditionally, much of the animals had been lost to waste, but with his advanced abattoirs, Burns could expand the list of recoverable products, which included leather, fats for soap, bone for bone meal and manufactured articles, fertilizers, glycerine, hair for brushes, and even an array of pharmaceuticals. Burns joked that the only product not recovered were the pigs' squeals, which could have been sold to politicians. Burns played a crucial role in World War I by supplying meat to troops overseas. For example, he shipped over 2,000 tons of pork shipped to troops in France during the first half of 1917. After the war, Belgium was looking to secure a meat supply from a North American company. With no American distributors able to meet the call, Burns stepped in to help the devastated nation. British Columbia From the early 1900s to 1914, he was the principal meat supplier for the workers during the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. One of the Foley, Welch and Stewart, sternwheelers, the Skeena was used for the express purpose of delivering Burns' beef to the railway construction camps in British Columbia. As part of his western expansion, Burns purchased several thousand acres of land south of Vancouver with the intent of using it for grazing cattle. The property included a significant amount of wetland that was not ideal terrain