WESTLOCK – Sitting in John Meston’s kitchen, it’s tough to imagine that anyone would want to live life in any other fashion; the 73-year-old farmer and rancher still lives in his childhood home, although he now shares the property with his son and daughter-in-law, who are over every morning to discuss the day’s work.
Over the last year however, the Meston’s have been dealing with a problem that they hoped they wouldn’t have to deal with again; when they went to bring their cattle back from pasture last October hey found that 79 calves, four cows and two bulls had been taken from three of their rented and owned pastures in Athabasca County.
It’s a loss that Meston says cost the family almost $2,000 per calf, not counting the other six cattle.
“It’s devastating financially. I mean $175,000 is a lot of money,” said Meston in a July 29 interview. “It’s devastating stress-wise, and it’s devastating more so for the industry, because it’s broken. You have one corporal looking over 50 cases (of cattle theft) in the province right now, it’s a joke.”
This isn’t the first time that the Meston’s had been victimized by cattle “rustlers” as 20 bred heifers and a bull were stolen from one of the same pastures back in 2014, and a neighbour lost 100 head of cattle to thieves in 2018. But this one from last fall was the biggest theft, and as such, it was the first time that the RCMP Livestock Investigations Unit got involved, a two-man team that covers the 50 or so cattle theft cases each year.
In a July interview with CBC News, Cpl. Lindsey Anderson said that the quantity of stolen cattle made the Meston case unusual, noting that the unit recovers livestock “two or three times a year.”
“In order to steal a large quantity of cattle you have to know what you’re doing,” said Anderson. “You have to have the ability to go out and round them up, and you have to have the ability to transport them.
The Meston family first realized the animals were missing Oct. 19, 2022, when they pushed the cattle out of their first pasture that they rent/own, which is just off Highway 663 near Ring Lake.
“We put 150 pairs (cow and calves) on that first pasture, which means we need five cattle liners to move them back,” said Meston. “By the time we got them all counted, we realized we were missing 45 calves and we started to think, ‘OK, what’s going on here?’”
The Meston’s also rent or own nine quarter-parcel (160 acres or so) lots directly south, and they initially thought that some might have gone through the fence into the other fields. Seven days later, the Meston’s pushed out that pasture, only to discover that not only were their cattle gone, an additional 17 calves were missing and a further 17 were gone from 480 acres of pasture further south. By the time an RCMP constable was able to make it up to take a statement, it was Dec. 14, and his next visit wouldn’t be for another 106 days.
“At this point, our expectation for getting our cattle back is rather low,” said Meston. “The fact of the matter remains that, going back to when this started, the process is broken. Going back to Dec. 14, when we made our statement, there were two RCMP staff members (at the unit.) June 30, one guy transfers to a new division and that just leaves Anderson. There’s just absolutely no one there.”
