Master of re-invention: How this American soldier and whisky trader became Alberta's first MP

This story was originally published on July 29, 2017

On a winter day in 1872, snow piles up against the palisades of Fort Whoop-up.

Inside the whisky post, a trader makes his rounds and checks the store room.

His bosses down in Montana will be pleased.

The room is jam-packed with buffalo robes, some 2,000 of them that havebeen traded for gallons and gallons of whisky.

Well, a boiled-down concoction they call whisky, at least.

To the Blackfoot people of the area,the trader is known asSpit-aynaor Tall Man.

He's an American hell bent on squeezing the frontier for profit.

Hecould beruthless.

And he would laterbecomeAlberta's first member of Parliament.

His name is D.W. Davis.

This is Episode 5ofHeroes, Hustlers and Horsemen, a five-partpodcastseriesfrom CBC Calgary about real people who lived in southern Alberta around the time of confederation and a few decades beyond.

The storiesaren't of the Heritage Minute variety. Theseare the whisky-soaked, down and dusty, gun-slinging kinds of stories they leave out in school.

We'll meet rogues and rebels, bold visionaries with big blind spots, the notorious and the opportunistic, thepeople who gave rein to their ambitions and passions and those whochose to buck the herd.