On a cold winter day in 1931 Verne Darrel Franklin’s parents were passing by the neighbour’s house on their way to the hospital when his mom said, you better pull in here. Verne was born a short time later and years after that he would say he should have winter killed but he was way too tough.
From the time he was a youngster he loved rodeo rough stock events and the horses and bulls that challenged the cowboys. By 1968 he was supplying stock to the Meadow Lake Rodeo where his horses bucked off over 75 per cent of the riders.
By 1974 the inaugural Canadian Finals Rodeo selected 19 head of Verne’s bucking stock.
He earned the CPRA Bucking Stock of the Year award some fifteen times with legendary superstars like Summer Winds, Blue Ridge and a record six awards for the great Kingsway.
When Doug Vold scored a record 95 points on Transport in 1979 that mark stood unchallenged for 27 years until Glen O’Neill tied it on another Franklin horse in 1996—that horse was Airwolf.
As well as being in the Hall of Fame, Kingsway had his likeness emblazoned on a Canadian postage stamp.
Stories about Verne’s sense humour, his descriptive language and his charisma still abound behind the chutes today.
Verne Franklin died after a heroic battle with cancer in 1999, and his son Shane is carrying on the family business raising some of the best bucking stock in the world out where, as Bob Tallman described it, the north fence is the Arctic Circle.
