"I called him a standup comic,
my horse," says Alberta Slim, on
the horn from Surrey.

"My horse did about 20, 25 tricks. He told fortunes, answered questions, danced and said his prayers."

The singing cowboy, pictured here at the Kiwanis' Canada Day celebration in Prince Rupert in 1943, was a mainstay on Canadian fairgrounds and radio for decades. Along with contemporaries Wilf Carter and Hank Snow. Slim wrote the early chapters of Canadian country music.

Slim's voice is still strong - he'll perform at his 90^th birthday celebration, a Vancouver Folk Music Festival fund-raising event on Friday - and his memory clear as he rambles through the decades of stories that make up his entertainment career.

Slim's had a few trick horses in his day.

"The first one I bought back in 1940 back in Regina when I was singin' on the air back there. Fella called from Hillman, Saskatchewan, said 'Slim, you should have a trick horse.' I says, 'How much you want?' He says, 'Hundred bucks.' I says, 'Bring him down.'

"Anyway, the horse had to be put down because I put him out to pasture and another horse kicked him in the hip. You don't patch up a horse when he breaks his hip. So I called the fella in Hillman and asked him to train me another horse. We bought one at the livery barn in Saskatoon, a 12-year-old I called Kitten - I called all my horses Kitten because that's the name of the horse I rode to school. So I learned to train horses. The last horse I had was born right here in the basement of our house here in Surrey and I trained him as he grew up. I took the back seat out of the car and wherever I went - well, not everywhere - I give him a ride!"

But the training of Susie, the harmonica-playing elephant that Slim bought from the wild animal compound in New York for the Alberta Slim Circus in the early '50s, required a specialist.

"The folks from New York delivered the elephant to Hamilton where I started my show. The first year we just had him in the tent and kiddies could go up and feed him. In the fall when we got back to headquarters there at Edmonds and Kingsway, I put an ad in the American Amusement magazine - where they sell everything - for elephant trainers to come up and train (Susie). A couple came up from the States and we trained the elephant over the winter. "He could balance on his back legs and on his front legs, using his truck so he wouldn't fall over."

The circus, which was on the road until about 1960, would expand to include Slim's wife Pearl, the Bar X Ranch Boys, Bobo the Clown, a high-diving dog Blackie, a chimp, two donkeys and a bear Slim did the two-step with.

He was born in England and moved with his parents and six siblings to a ranch just west of Lloydminster, Alberta in 1920. That would make him 10 at the time. "We were there three years, but dad lost all his money, so we took our cattle and machinery and homesteaded by Loon Lake, just outside St. Walberg in Saskatchewan. I started singing in halls about that time - London songs mainly, that my dad taught me."

Eric Edwards is the second and most famous Alberta Slim. "I got the name in 1939 when the war began. I'd been travelling back and forth across Canada with my guitar and playing concerts on the street corners passing the hat - it was the hungry '30s, eh? I was playing with a fella from Alberta who called himself Alberta Slim and I called myself Canada's Yodeling Cowboy. He joined up in '39 and said 'Eric, do you want my silk shirts?' So I took the name and went on singing in cafes and theatres and anywhere at all, until the cops told me to move on. I'd play until I had enough for a room and something to eat, then get on a freight and move to the next town. I never heard from the fella, my pal, never heard if he made it back from the war."

Alberta Slim is still singing and recording. "I'll be playing a new one I just composed, The Phantom of Whistler Mountain. I'm making a new cassette and it will be on that. And there's I'd Like to Be Back Home Again, about helping mom and dad bring in the harvest back on the Prairies. I'll do a few of my standards - Beautiful British Columbia, Vancouver By the Sea, and When It's Apple Blossom Time in the Annapolis Valley, my biggest seller, which I wrote in 1949 when I lived in Nova Scotia for a few years."

Old fans still stop him on the street and say, "Slim, your horse once told my fortune. These people are usually in their 70s or 90s now. I usually picked a young lady, usually 15, 16, in the audience and the horse would stamp out how many years til she got married and how many kiddies she was going to have.

"I can make any horse do that. I can train any horse, in about two hours, to pick up a hat and bring it back to me."

Joining Alberta Slim for his 90^th Birthday Celebration at the WISE Hall on Friday will be Susan Crowe, Danny Mack, Linda McRae and Zubot & Dawson. See music listings for more information.

"I called him a standup comic, my horse," says Alberta Slim, on the horn from Surrey.

"I called him a standup comic,
my horse," says Alberta Slim, on
the horn from Surrey.