five children – Raymond, Melvin, Earl, Alice, and Weldon – ranging in age from 11 years to nine months. In 1913, Earl's father, who had cowboyed in Utah and Colorado and worked on ranches in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, went to Alberta, Canada, securing a job as a foreman on the Knight Ranch. In 1914, the Bascom family loaded their belongings into a covered wagon, traveled a week to the nearest railroad in Price, Utah, and rode the train to Canada. After working for the Knight Ranches headquartered on the Milk River Ridge in Alberta and managing Ray Knight's Butte Ranch north of the town of Raymond, Alberta, John W. Bascom and his sons began ranching on their own using the Bar-B-3 brand. Over the following years, the Bascom family lived at Welling Station and ranched along Pot Hole Creek, ran cattle on the open range at New Dayton on the Fort Whoop-up Trail near Deadman Coulee, and Milk River Ridge, and ranched east of Lethbridge on the Old Man River and near Stirling east of Nine Mile Lake. By Canadian law, all minor children who immigrated to Canada before 1915 and whose parent became a naturalized citizens, automatically became Canadian citizens. Earl Bascom's father became a naturalized Canadian citizen. Earl Bascom was an American Canadian. During the winter of 1916, the Bascom family moved back to Naples, Utah, returning to Canada in the spring of 1917. Schooled mostly in one-room schools, Bascom quit school while in grade three to work on the Hyssop 5H Ranch, east of Lethbridge. It was not long before a Canadian Mountie, who was visiting the Hyssop Ranch, thought that one of the cowboys was just too young looking to be a seasoned cowpuncher and bronc peeler. The Mountie asked Earl Bascom just how old he was – he was 13 years old. Earl was returned to school. Attending school felt better after Earl's father, who had a school district transportation contract, gave him the job of driving an old stagecoach pulled by a team of Bascom horses each day to the surrounding ranches transporting fellow students to and from school. In 1918, Bascom gained a stepmother and a stepbrother, Frank, when his father married Ada Romeril Dawley. The couple had five children, making a total of eleven children in the Bascom family. Charles was a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, who died