The award is given annually to someone who is influential in promotion or preservation of cowboy heritage in BC in any number of ways, but often a cowboy craftsman, an author, a poet/story teller, an artist, western promoter, or historian, are honoured.
This year the recipient fits in a few of these categories; Diana French was the curator of the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin in Williams Lake for close to 30 years, she has written three ranch related books, and she was the push behind the Museum partnering the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame and making the Museum the home to its memorabilia as well as swinging the Museum's focus to cowboys, ranching and rodeo.
All of these accomplishments make Diana French a very deserving recipient but she's also lived the life, too. She started her ranching experiences in the little community of Chezacut where she took her first teaching job in 1951. Here she met and married Bob French, the son of a pioneer ranching family in the area. Over the years they lived in a few different Cariboo/Chilcotin communities before finally settling, with their family of five boys, in Williams Lake in 1970.
Diana taught school for their first year in Williams Lake but after that she became a reporter, and later the editor, of the Williams Lake Tribune. She still writes a weekly column for the paper.
Diana has always been active in community activities, too. She was a trustee for School District #27 for two terms, and has served on numerous municipal, provincial and federal boards ranging from the Salmonid Enhancement Commission to the Knowledge Network. After Bob retired in 1987, the couple were caretakers at the Williams Lake Stampede grounds for two years.
In the early 1980s, Diana became involved in the city operated museum and in 1986, when it became a non-profit society, she was on the board of directors.
Because of Williams Lake's ranching history, (the Stampede, the stockyards, and many of BC's original ranches are in the Cariboo Chilcotin) the directors of the museum adopted a ranching and rodeo theme for the museum. Diana was the curator, a volunteer position, for almost 30 years.
In 1997 she heard of the newly formed BC Cowboy Heritage Society and contacted founding member and president Mike Puhallo, indicating her interest. This led to the MCC becoming partners in the Cowboy Hall of Fame and the home for the Hall of Fame collection.
Diana has published three books. Ranchland, partnered with photographer Rick Blacklaws, is all about the history of ranching and cowboys in BC. Both the Road Runs West and Women of Fine Mettle, include stories of well known, and not so well known, women involved in ranching.
As an author of three ranch related books, the years as a curator of the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin, and as the push to give the BC Cowboy Hall of Fame an ongoing home for inductee's information and memorabilia, Diana French definitely deserves to be added to the list of recipients for the Annual Joe Marten Memorial Award for the Preservation of Cowboy Heritage in BC.
The BC Cowboy Heritage Society will present Diana French with the Joe Marten Memorial Award during the evening feature show at the Kamloops Cowboy Festival on Saturday, March 18.