Freddie Matthews of Barriere was admitted to Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops on November 12, 2011, suffering from esophagial hemorrhaging precipitated by liver failure. He passed away on December 7, 2011.
Freddie was born in Vancouver, B.C., on July 24, 1952. He attended school in Ladner through grade 12, then UBC where he majored in business administration; he was a good athlete playing football, baseball, and hockey to Junior A level, while living on the family farm in Delta.
Freddie and his younger brothers Marty, Carey, and little sister Lori had registered Welsh Ponies, showing them at the PNE, and also ran chariots and chuckwagons at Pony Association events throughout B.C. and Washington State.
In his travels Freddie enjoyed Alaska, Africa, the United States and Mexico.
His favourite songwas ‘Mothers Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys’, and favourite hymn ‘Amazing Grace’.
Through the years that followed Freddie drove the stage coach at Barkerville, was a big game guide in Northern B.C. and the Yukon, was an instructor at a camp in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta training British Army soldiers to ride horses, plus packing and gun use while finding their way around in the wilderness.
Freddie owned and operated a Kenworth highway truck coast to coast hauling general cargo for a few years, and operated a grain farm in Neville, Saskatchewan, from 1993 to 1997 for a family friend who was disabled by a heart attack.
Then he bought a ranch in the Peace Country at Sunset House, Alberta, where he had a bison herd of up to 400 head in partnership with his father.
The ranch was sold for health reasons in 2005 and Freddie returned to Barriere.
Freddie is survived by Aunt Margaret Gidinski of Kamloops, brothers Martin (Robin) and nieces Jaclyn, Krista, Melanie, of Surrey, B.C., Carey (Kathy) and Jesse (son of Lorie, predeceased) of Edmonton, Alberta, step-sister Arlene Ladd (Stephen) and step-brother Richard Woods (Heather) of Chilliwack, B.C.
“God Speed and all our Love Cowboy,” The Matthews Family.
There will be no service.