Kamloops has lost a leading voice and an energetic hand close to its heart and western heritage.

Mike Puhallo, 58, died peacefully in his sleep Friday after a six-month struggle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.

A rancher-turned-cowboy poet and impressario, Puhallo was a founder of the B.C. Cowboy Heritage Society (BCCHS), the B.C. Cowboy of Fame and the Kamloops Cowboy Festival.

A public service will be held Thursday at 1 p.m. at Calvary Community Church, the church where Puhallo corralled all things western in the annual celebration of a proud but fading history.

There would be no festival without the Westsyde resident, who handled every aspect of Canada’s largest cowboy festival for 15 years until health sidelined him after his diagnosis in January. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of cowboy history in the B.C. Interior.

“That’s where Mike will be so sadly missed by so many,” said Mark McMillan, vice-president of BCCHS. “He not only worked the cowboy life and lived it, but his head was full of cowboy heritage. He could take you back to the first white man in Kamloops 200 years ago. He just remembered story after story and, of course, that’s where a lot of his poetry came from.”

He published six poetry books and recorded three CDs, the latter as collaborations with his friends, local singer/songwriters Butch Falk and Matt Johnson.

Puhallo didn’t have to search far for words, having cut his teeth as a cowboy, straight out of high school, riding for Douglas Lake Cattle Co. in the late ’60s. He later partnered with his brother in a Chilcotin ranching operation, but in more recent years had focused solely on his writing and entrepreneurial work.

“I first met him in the very early ’80s at the Summerland Rodeo,” recalled local wrangler/actor Larry Foss. “He was riding that day and I was riding. That was my last rodeo.

“What he did for Kamloops, he was a pretty amazing guy. He had that vision of what to do with the cowboy festival … I’m going to miss that man.”

Puhallo leaves to mourn his passing his wife Linda, grown children Shar and Paul, as well as his brothers Gord and Pete.

Preserving western heritage was his passion, said Linda, who met her husband at the Kamloops Indoor Rodeo in the mid-‘70s.

“It’s so hard for ranchers nowadays,” she said. “That nobody forgot the oldtimers was important to him. That way of life was so important … I don’t think he ever realized when he started it how far it would go.”

“I remember him as a big, strong man who taught us to follow our dreams and believe in ourselves,” Shar said Monday. “He was the man who taught, be what the silver lining was and how to look for it.”

The community of heritage enthusiasts — artists, cowboys and ranchers — gathered from across Western Canada last month for a benefit concert in Kamloops, lending moral and financial support to the family.

“It was a tremendous help,” Shar said. “It was a real blessing for the family.”

Pastors Don Maione and Brent Theissen, who is a cowboy poet like Puhallo, will lead Thursday’s memorial service. McMillan said it’s fortunate the service will be held at the large church because hundreds of mourners are expected.