This Kananaskis Ranch Helped Its Founder Heal. Now She’s Opening Its Gates to the Community

On June 4, 2021, Fiona Mactaggart’s horse Gandalf returned to the barn at Star 6 Ranch without her.

Mactaggart does not know exactly what happened that evening. Her last memory is lifting her left foot to the stirrup. The next thing she remembers seeing is the fluorescent lights and speckled ceiling tiles at Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary, where she spent the next six weeks recovering from a traumatic brain injury.

The injury left Mactaggart unsure who she was or where she was. As she began relearning how to walk and speak, however, she kept thinking about Star 6.

“When I was finally able to use my walker, I would go down to the end of my ward, where there were these big windows,” Mactaggart said. “I’d look at the mountains and I’d say, ‘Star 6 Ranch is going to help people just like me recover.’” 

After leaving the hospital, Mactaggart’s eldest daughter brought her back to the ranch. She remembers sitting on the deck of her cabin, crying and overwhelmed by the recovery ahead.

“The land held me. The horses held me,” Mactaggart wrote.

She had bought Star 6 six years earlier after spotting its for-sale sign from the highway, fulfilling a much older dream. Mactaggart had worked with cattle and horses in Alberta, Montana and Australia and had, in her words, “always wanted to be a cowboy.”

“When I bought it, I knew it was a place that needed to be protected and saved,” Mactaggart said. “Once it was protected and saved, then it needed to be shared.”

The idea of giving the ranch a wider community purpose began taking shape around 2019. Executive Director Emily Morgan-Eriksson, who has been involved with Star 6 since 2020, said Mactaggart’s recovery showed those around her what the property could offer.

“It took it from being this idea into something very tangible that we all went through in our own ways,” Morgan-Eriksson said of Mactaggart’s recovery and the foundation’s development.

The Star 6 Ranch Foundation became a registered charity in November 2023. It works with community organizations, Indigenous partners and wellness practitioners to offer free or subsidized programs at the ranch.

Star 6 Ranch Enterprises Ltd. operates the 80-acre property along the Kananaskis River and makes it available to the foundation at a reduced rate. The foundation funds and supports community-led programming there.

Morgan-Eriksson described the approach as “community-led and foundation-supported.”

“The organizations who can best serve their own individual communities should lead the work that we do, and we’re really there to provide space for it and fund it and help them in any way that we can,” she said.

For Mactaggart, making the ranch available to others is central to its purpose.

“Everybody deserves to have access to land and wilderness that is as beautiful and magical as I believe the Star 6 Ranch is,” she said. “There must be no barriers for anybody.”

For Raven’s Nest, a seasonal camp for girls led by Mînî Thnî knowledge keepers, that promise has a practical meaning. Stoney Nakoda Knowledge Keeper Tracey Stevens grew up camping throughout Kananaskis with her family. She said private property and provincial park rules now make that kind of informal camping more difficult.

She said that, other than her home, Star 6 is the only place she can readily access to take her grandchildren and Raven’s Nest participants camping.

Star 6 gives Raven’s Nest a place to carry knowledge across generations. The camp is rooted in the traditional teachings of Îyethka women.

Stevens learned many of those teachings from her parents, both residential school survivors who maintained their cultural practices and ceremonies. Her mother was a traditional plant healer.

“It’s not written. You won’t see it in books, but it’s in us,” Stevens said.

At a June camp, Stevens saw that knowledge taking hold when a Star 6 worker asked one participant about a rattle the girls were making.

“We’re making this rattle. It’s made out of rawhide. There are pebbles inside, pebbles we call grandfather rocks. The handle is made from a willow stick,” Stevens recalled the girl explaining. “When we rattle it during our ceremonies, that’s how we call on the spirits.”

“I was proud of her, because that’s what I teach,” Stevens said.

Stevens also shared one of her community’s stories about why horses are respected. In the story, the Creator tells the horse it will carry people and their belongings. The horse cries at the thought of the burden, but the Creator assures it that the people will be “as light as a feather.”

“So we respect the horse,” Stevens said.

That relationship with horses is also reflected in equine-assisted learning held at Star 6. Mountain Stone Equine’s programs are created by youth, for youth and rooted in Indigenous tradition, along with one-to-one Equine Connection sessions.

In 2025, its first full year of programming, the foundation delivered 46 program days and engaged more than 1,000 participants, with 39 percent of its program dollars supporting Indigenous programs.

Bow Valley residents can experience that work on Saturday, Sept. 12, when Life on the Land returns to Star 6 Ranch for its second year.

The free community day brings together horses, cultural programming, hands-on workshops and wellness activities led by partners from across Treaty 7 and the Bow Valley.

“We really just open the gates and want community members who may not have taken part in a program this year to come up for the day and really see the space,” Morgan-Eriksson said.

The event begins at 10:30 a.m. with a welcome and opening prayer from an Indigenous Elder. Women from Raven’s Nest will guide traditional Îyethka craftwork, alongside Indigenous storytelling, drumming and traditional games with Spirit North.

Visitors can also try yoga, a cold plunge, soapstone carving, a sound bath and Pilates, or meet the ranch’s donkeys and join them for a walk.

Advance registration is recommended for some activities, and several sessions, including those offered by Mountain Stone Equine, are already fully booked. Other activities will remain open throughout the day.

More than 150 people attended the first Life on the Land event in September 2025.

Parking is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Visitors are encouraged to carpool and arrive early.

“I want people to come away with a real understanding of what the Star 6 Ranch Foundation and the ranch exist to do: to make nature-based learning and wilderness available to everybody,” Mactaggart said. “If we’re willing to put down our screens, interact with each other, try new things and be still and joyful, there’s so much to learn from the land.”

Morgan-Eriksson echoed that hope.

“We want to create a space where people can try something new and it feels safe and interesting and exciting,” she said. She hopes visitors leave “a little bit more connected” to the community and to themselves.

Life on the Land runs from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 12, at Star 6 Ranch in Kananaskis, about 15 minutes east of Canmore. Admission is free. The full schedule and registration information are available at star6ranchfoundation.com/life-on-the-land.