Alberta Slim's the name He's Surrey's own yodeling cowboy. Tom ZYTARUK STAFF REPORTER They call him Slim. Alberta, that is. (June 3, 2000)

When you think of the wild prairie, li'l dogies and geetar-pickin' cowboy-yodelin', Whalley probably isn't the first place that comes to mind.

That is, if you don't know about Surrey's legendary resident Alberta Slim.

Slim - also known as Eric C. Edwards - is featured in Surrey Museum's latest exhibit, "Cowboy Culture: A Rodeo Retrospective," which runs to Aug. 26.

"He is one of Surrey's cultural treasures for sure," says curator Lana Panko. "You can't get much more Canadian than that."

Albera Slim, 90, will be the subject of a CBC documentary expected to be aired at the end of June. But it won't be a first for the Canadian icon.

So far, during his interesting life, Slim has written more than 150 songs, cut a dozen albums with RCA, Gavotte and Aragon, recorded with the CBC Happy Gang Orchestra and toured back and forth across Canada about 15 times, playing his tunes.

Today, the spry old guy with young blue eyes is getting ready to release another CD, which includes a tune called Surrey's Birthday Song, wherein he sings about the "Old Yale Road from Days of Old …"

His singing career, he says with a chuckle, "seems to be getting better to me all the time."

Slim says he found his name in 1939, while riding the rails with a fellow at the tail end of the Great Depression. His buddy joined up for the war, and left him with a bunch of old shirts with the name Alberta Slim stitched on the back. As he went around wearing them, people got o calling him by that name.

"Most people call me Slim Edwards, or Alberta. How ya doin' Alberta, you know.

"People just called me Alberta Slim. That's how I got it."

Born in 1910 to the son of an innkeeper, in a little town in the south of England, Slim and family immigrated to Canada when he was 10 years old, settling in Lloydminster on the border of Saskatchewan and Alberta. There, they set up a farm on a half-section of CPR land.

Encouraged by his dad, he started singing at about that time and can remember his first gig.

"It was in the Alberta Hall. They got me to go in there, I don't know how they got me to go in."

"He got me out singing, around the country, at dances when I was 10 years old."

But like everybody else, Slim's family was hit hard by the Great Depression. There was no work at home, so he sold his pony for $25 and struck out alone.

"I hit the road when I was about 22 years old," he recalled, "I left home looking for work."

The $25, which he'd stuffed in his boot, got him to North Battleford by passenger train, and there he hopped on a freight bound for Edmonton. Once there, he took three lessons on a steel guitar, then "went up to the radio station to see if they had a job for me. "Well, I didn't have a phone number, I was on the bum, eh. And so I asked them to phone the rooming house I had for a couple of nights."

The radio station had him on call. At about this time, he linked up with a couple from the Peace River District who were entertainers and had a 12-year old son. Together they bought a car for $25 and drove between Edmonton and Calgary, putting up posters announcing that they'd play on a percentage basis at local schools, with 20 per cent going to the school. They'd do an hour and a half show, he recalled.

"He was a tap dancer, and she was nothing extra, but she was the pupil, and he would put her in school - a little skit like that, and I would sing, and the boy would come out in school and tell jokes, and so that was our concert," he recalled. "And I was called Canada's Yodeling Cowboy at that time. There was no money to it.

"The way we lived was, we'd live in the halls sometimes, on the blankets and pillows we took. They'd let us sleep in the hall after the show was over.

"If we didn't sleep in the hall, we would go out of town, and on the way out me and the kid would steal vegetables, and put them in a bucket or bag, and that's what we'd have for breakfast.

"So we'd all go to sleep. Me and the kid would sleep underneath the car. They were high you know, these Model T cars.

"After we'd been out on the road a couple months, I guess I didn't look after the buck, I was 23. So they looked up, said they couldn't make the payment on the car."

And so they parted ways.

He was on the road a long time before he started making records, and remembers singing on street corners. "Ask for a meal, and tell 'em you'll entertain 'em for a half an hour for a meal," he recalled.

He met Pearl, his wife of 57 years, at a tea party at her friend's house in Saskatchewan in 1940. After all these years, she still hasn't figured out what drives her husband.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't keep up with him. He's going to play Campbell River in August at the folk festival."

Even these days, he gets up at 5:30 a.m. and is ready to go.

"Nothing worries Eric too much," she notes.

After paying his dues, so to speak, Slim hit success in 1948, at age 38. The height of his career spanned decades, from the 1950s through the '70s.

He worked with fair boards across Canada, and toured from coast to coast numerous times, playing at the CNE, PNE and Stampedes. He never played in bars or legions, though.

He and Pearl moved to Surrey in 1956 and lived on two acres on Scott Road for a while before settling down in Whalley and raising their children, Carey and Betty-Lou.

They owned a motel on King George Highway for about two years, which Slim dubbed the Bar X Motel.

"When we first moved here, King George Highway was gravel," Pearl recalled.

The couple bought an elephant from New York, called it "Suzie" and went on tour as a singing circus. Pearl became "The Elephant Girl." It must have been quite a show, with Suzie playing the harmonica accompanied by chimpanzees, bears, and Blackie the high-diving dog.

Not to mention Kitten. Every cowboy needs a faithful horse, and Slim was no exception.

He raised his horse "Kitten," believe it or not, in his Whalley basement. It toured with him, and he taught it tricks.

Slim remembers he took the back seat out of his car so the horse could ride with him.

He says he's never been tempted to go down to Nashville or elsewhere in the U. S. to sing.

"I always made a good living up here in Canada. My songs are all about Canada."

A good living indeed. Today, he and Pearl own their own mortgage company and at one time owned a good chunk of land in Bridgeview.

"We owned 20 houses there at one time," Slim said. "Well, you could buy 'em for $3,000 each.

"I made money in show business."

Still, after all these years, success has not gone to his head. Every once in a while he yodels on his street for neighbours.

"I'd put a concert on for 'em," he smiles.

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