page_title: Patrick Burns (businessman)
section_title: Alberta
hierarchical_section_title: Patrick Burns (businessman) / Alberta
caption_attribution_description: English: Program for 1912 Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, front cover
context_page_description: Patrick Burns was a Canadian rancher, meat packer, businessperson, senator, and philanthropist. A self-made man of wealth, he built one of the world's largest integrated meat-packing empires, P. Burns & Co., becoming one of the wealthiest Canadians of his time. He is honoured as one of the Big Four western cattle kings who started the Calgary Stampede in Alberta in 1912.
  He made his fortune in the meat industry, but ranching was his true passion. Burns' 700,000 acres of cattle ranches covered so vast an area of Southern Alberta that he boasted about being able to travel from Cochrane to the US border without ever leaving his land.
  In 1931, he was appointed to the Canadian Senate as a representative for Alberta. On October 16, 2008, the Calgary Herald named Burns as Alberta's Greatest Citizen.
context_section_description: Burns moved to Calgary in 1890 and established his first substantial slaughterhouse. In 1898, he built a packing house in Calgary followed by others in Vancouver, Edmonton, Prince Albert, and Regina. He then turned to ranching on a large scale and acquired large tracts of land. His company, P. Burns & Co. (later Burns Foods) became western Canada's largest meatpacking company. At the grand opening of his second abattoir in 1899 (the first had burned down), the Calgary Herald described the event as "the passing of yet another milestone on the road to Calgary's full measure of prosperity."
  In 1901 he married Eileen Ellis of Penticton in a small ceremony in London, England. Back in Calgary, Burns was building a house for him and his new bride. Burns Manor, on the corner of 4th Street and 13th Avenue SW, designed by Pat's friend, the famed 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.
caption: The Program for 1912 Calgary Stampede featuring the Big 4: Burns, Lane, Cross, and McLean
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