Al Oeming, Edmonton Household Name, Knew Power of Radio/TV

Radio news from Alberta

Al Oeming, Edmonton Household Name, Knew Power of Radio/TV

Postby jon » Sat Apr 12, 2014 12:01 pm

50 Years Ago, Al Oeming was a household name in Edmonton and most of Western Canada. In 1958, he had opened his "Wild Animal Park", as the Alberta Game Farm was commonly referred to, because it pioneered "Zoos without Bars", giving animals larger, more natural, display areas. When I came to Edmonton for a visit in 1967 with my parents and grandparents, Al Oeming's animals were Number One on our list of Attractions.

The Park was home to world’s largest private wildlife collection. It initially gained fame for being the first to breed Musk Ox in captivity. My grandfather was charged by an adult male Musk Ox during our visit. All the way from the back fence of the large paddock to the hitching post just before front fence, at full speed, stopping inches from the hitching post, and staring at my grandfather.

As the article below attests, Al really knew how to use Radio and Television for promotion.

What I didn't know was that, beginning in 1949, Al had been pro wrestler Nature Boy and fought the likes of Haystack Calhoun. He was also co-owner (50%) of the Northwestern Wrestling Alliance, the predecessor to Stampede Wrestling.

Image

Al died in the University hospital in Edmonton last month at age 88.

Wrestler turned wildlife farm founder ‘always lived life on his own terms’
Al Oeming (1925 — 2014): Zoologist ran game farm east of Edmonton for almost four decades
By Marty Klinkenberg, Edmonton Journal
April 11, 2014

EDMONTON - In the month before his death, Al Oeming banded great grey owls, fawned over his horses and Rhode Island Red chickens, cleared snowy trails with his beloved 1968 John Deere tractor, pumped iron in the basement and climbed aboard a stair stepper three nights a week.

Even with a pacemaker and another cardiac procedure looming, one of Alberta’s greatest adventurers and entrepreneurs refused to slow down.

“He was not the type of person to take it easy,” says his son, Thelon, a playwright in Toronto. “He always lived life on his own terms, and I think he went out that way.”

A zoologist, naturalist and filmmaker, Al Oeming died after undergoing an angioplasty in Edmonton on March 17. A barrel-chested pro wrestler who bench-pressed 505 pounds in his 20s, Oeming could still lift 140 pounds at the time of his death three weeks shy of his 89th birthday.

“He was just driven,” his son, Todd, 55, says during a tour of the family’s sprawling property in Strathcona County. “He never took a back seat to anybody.”Known best as the proprietor of the Alberta Game Farm, Al Oeming travelled from the Arctic to Africa on expeditions to capture animals displayed at his 560-hectare zoo 25 kilometres east of Edmonton. Opened Aug. 1, 1959, the park boasted the world’s largest private wildlife collection at the time and welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors before it shut down, then operating as Polar Park, in 1998.

An occasional guest on his friend Marlin Perkins’ popular television program Wild Kingdom, at one time Oeming had 166 species on exhibit at the game farm, including a bottle-fed grizzly bear named Big Dan, a Siberian tiger named Hector that walked on a leash, a cheetah that rode in the back of his station wagon and gorillas that routinely used treetops as a ladder to escape their compound and roam the countryside in Strathcona County.

“I told Dad that he should a write a book about his life, but he was always too busy writing the next chapter,” says Todd Oeming, who worked on the farm before embarking on a career selling commercial real estate.

Born in April 9, 1925 in Edmonton to parents who immigrated from Germany, Al Oeming enlisted in the Canadian Navy in 1943 and served as a gunner in the South Pacific during the Second World War. Discharged in 1946, he became a professional wrestler in the U.S. with his boyhood pal Stu Hart, with whom he later owned the Northwestern Wrestling Alliance, the predecessor to Stampede Wrestling.

Returning to Edmonton in 1949, Oeming wrestled under the pseudonym Nature Boy and studied ornithology at the University of Alberta. Climbing into the ring against the likes of Gorgeous George, Killer Kowalski, Haystack Calhoun and Al and Tiny Mills, he staged sold-out shows at the old Edmonton fairgrounds that often ended in donnybrooks with the spectators involved.

After completing his master’s degree at the U of A under renowned zoologist William Rowan, Oeming sold half of his share in the wrestling circuit and used the proceeds to fund the game farm on Highway 14 for which he grew famous.

In 1964, chairman Mao Zedong invited him to China to study breeding programs for rare and exotic species; later, Oeming bred the first muskoxen born in captivity, a pair of calves the City of Edmonton presented as a gift to the Moscow Zoo.

Over the years, a handful of feature films were made by or about him, and a miniseries about him called Man of the North aired in 1980 on CBC.

“He was from not of this era,” Thelon Oeming, 34, says of his father, who was married twice and divorced once. “He was in love with another world.”

A master promoter, Al Oeming travelled the country in winter with his cheetah, Tawana, in the back of a station wagon. Pulling into small towns, he would call police to report a maniac with a cheetah on the loose — and then call the local radio station and grant an interview.

“He was doing guerrilla marketing at a time guerrilla marketing wasn’t common,” Thelon says. “He was a great salesman.”

Over the years, thousands of schoolchildren in Edmonton got to meet Tawana during classroom visits, and his animals regularly appeared on local TV.

Once, Oeming sent Todd to a television studio with Hector riding in the back of a van.

Eventually, the 135-kilogram tiger pushed its way to the front and squeezed its head out the driver’s side window.

“I’ll never forget the look on people’s faces as we drove past,” Todd says.

In recent years, Oeming had become an auctioneer and accumulated a collection of hundreds of carriages and thousands of sleigh bells.

On the night he died, Todd Oeming held his father’s hand and kissed him on the forehead in his room at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute. Sometime this summer, Oeming’s family will gather at the former game park and spread his ashes in a spruce bog.

Al Oeming’s wrestling mat still sits in the basement of his house off Range Road 223 a short drive from his former game farm. His books on draft horses and horse-drawn vehicles are scattered in an office that overlooks the feeder where Oeming watched grosbeaks, blue jays and pileated and hoary woodpeckers.

At night, he fell asleep, dreaming of the howls from packs of coyotes and timberwolves and the roaring of lions.

“The phone has been ringing every five minutes since the night he died,” Todd Oeming says. “Some people are sobbing and others want to tell me stories.

“I listen for them, and for Dad, too. It is almost like he has never left this house.”
User avatar
jon
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 9256
Joined: Mon May 08, 2006 10:15 am
Location: Edmonton

Re: Al Oeming, Edmonton Household Name, Knew Power of Radio/

Postby Mike Cleaver » Sat Apr 12, 2014 5:57 pm

I had the great pleasure of doing many interviews with Al when he came to Lethbridge in the late '60s.
I have a great picture of me with his cheetah in the production control room of CJOC radio.
We also did a few interviews on CJOC TV.
Sad to hear of his passing.
Thanks for this piece.
Even though we talked a lot, there was a lot I never knew about him.
He primarily was focussed on his work with animals.
RIP, Al.
Mike Cleaver Broadcast Services
Engineering, News, Voice work and Consulting
Vancouver, BC, Canada

54 years experience at some of Canada's Premier Broadcasting Stations
User avatar
Mike Cleaver
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 2085
Joined: Sat Apr 29, 2006 6:56 pm
Location: Vancouver

Re: Al Oeming, Edmonton Household Name, Knew Power of Radio/

Postby BossRadio » Sat Apr 12, 2014 6:25 pm

My Dad was a huge wrasslin' fan,so it was only natural that our family took a day trip to Al's preserve outside of Edmonton when were in town for the 67' celebrations. In my 13 yr old mind,the highlight was being on hand for the birth of what keepers were saying was the first tapir born there,but Dad really dug those bison. RIP Mr Oeming.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum
BossRadio
Advanced Member
 
Posts: 361
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 9:09 am
Location: the outskirts of the edge of the fringe of the centre of the universe


Return to Alberta

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 93 guests