Hand me the baby, Bill Hamilton told his wife Ruth. As he perched six-month-old Isabella on his lap as he sat on his horse. From then on Isabella’s life was a world of horses.
Isabella Miller Haraga was described as the most active kid you’ve ever seen, and a beautiful little girl. Izzy was born in 1941 and grew up on her parent’s farm in the shadow of the Rockies near Dewinton. She became a dominant force in the sport of ladies barrel racing. At the age of 17 after helping establish a rodeo club for girls, Izzy stormed into meeting of Calgary Stampede organizers, demanding they include barrel racing as a permit event. The next year the Stampede did schedule the event and it has since become a regular event with purses equal to the other events. By 1969 she’d won the Canadian Barrel Racing Championship twice.
After a failed marriage, she was driving school bus and selling high end competition horses when the well known film wrangler John Scott recruited Izzy to do stunt work on the Hollywood productions being filmed near Calgary. Soon Izzy was coaching Charles Bronson in Buffalo Bill and looking after Paul Newman’s white stallion.
In 2002 she met Arnold Haraga, a guy she’d known as a girl. Arnold himself was a one time Canadian All Around Champion, and they were married in Las Vegas on their way to land Izzy owned in Arizona.
Arnold died of blood cancer in 2006; a year after Izzy was inducted into the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame.
On Jan 26, 2007, two days after falling off her horse and suffering an aneurism, Izzy died two days shorts of her 66th birthday.
