Vold, Jones & Vold - 'A Look Back In Time'
(parts taken from Darrell Stonehouse of Alberta Beef)
The Vold Brothers (early 1900's)
The year was 1896. The great prairie land rush was in its early beginnings.
Only around 2,000 people a year in the previous five years had taken the federal government's bait and traveled west to take
advantage of its offer of free land. This was the Alberta Andrew Vold and his family left their home near Oaks, North
Dakota to settle in during 1896. The Vold's chose to homestead on a piece of ground around 15 miles east of Ponoka.
"My grandfather set himself up in the cattle and horse business." recalls Ralph Vold. "He was also an auctioneer.
He held sales on the farms in the in the surrounding area. He got killed in 1903. He was cutting logs to build a
house and a branch broke and hit him in the head. He died before they could reach the hospital in Lacombe. "
While Andrew only lived on the Canadian prairies for seven years, he began what has become a family tradition of selling
cattle in Alberta. Over 100 years and four generations later, the Vold's are still at it, marketing livestock raised in the
province as well as across North America. Along the way they've grown and changed as the province's beef industry has matured.
Today, Vold, Jones & Vold Auction Co. at Ponoka is one of the premiere markets in the country, selling live cattle in three
rings simultaneously every Wednesday and moving thousands of head more through the Canadian Satellite Livestock Auction they
co-founded with the Fort Macleod-Highwood Auction Co. and Schetzsle Livestock at Veteran. Getting to where they are today has
been quite a trip.
"When my grandfather died my dad Nansen, became head of the household," says Ralph. "He was 14 years - old and there were
eight kids." Aside from his duties of running the family's horse and cattle business, Nansen followed his fathers footsteps
as an auctioneer, again holding sales in the countryside. Like Andrew, Nansen was a self-taught auctioneer without any formal
training.
Nansen and is wife Kirsten had four boys over the years - Norman, Cliff, Ralph and Harry. All were raised on the ranch east
of Ponoka. When they came of age, both Norman and Cliff chose to go into the ranching business. Ralph Vold chose to pursue
athletics, first playing hockey and then playing baseball in the USA. It was left to Harry to carry on the family tradition
of auctioneering.
In 1957 Ralph was playing baseball at Arizona in the Pacific Coast League when he received a phone call from his brother
Harry that marked the beginnings of the modern era in cattle marketing for the Volds. "I was 27-years-old and didn't think I
could make the major leagues," says Ralph. "Harry was an auctioneer at the Calgary Stockyards. He called me and wanted to know
if I was interested in partnering in this market. I said I'm about done with ball and came back." At the time there was a
market that had been up and running in Ponoka for about a year that was owned by a partnership of Henry Channon, Charles
Palechek and Gordon Stretch.
The Original Market
Local banks wouldn't support the purchase so Ralph and Harry had to get the money privately. They partnered up with
Bill and Shorty Jones - their job was to run the office.
Early years of the market were tough slugging. The first sale they sold only 17 cows and four pens of hogs.
"The local market was a tough sell," comments Ralph." We had to pound the country. After three years I talked them into
buying an airplane so we could get to more places. That really helped. The biggest thing however was getting
buyers to come out here. We hustled and got a lot of good orders in Ontario and the US that proved to be as strong as Edmonton and Calgary."
The late 1950s and 1960s were a time of major change in Alberta's Cattle business. The arrival of cattle liners
lessened the industry's reliance on the railway for transportation.
"In the 10 years Harry was here the market really started to take off, "recalls Ralph. "He moved to Colorado in 1967 to be
in the rodeo business and I bought his shares out. Things just kept going from there."
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