Thanks for posting the pic of Irish Mist. This picture was taken shortly after he was imported from Ireland. Back in that day, animals imported from Britain were isolated for 60 days on an island in the St Lawrence River near Montreal, and then taken to a quarantine station near the Edmonton, AB airport where they had to stay another 60 days. They literally starved these cattle during this 4 months of quarantine, thinking that this stress would help any disease they were carrying show up. I will never forget when we went to Edmonton to pick up our imported cattle. It was a pretty quiet trip for several miles and my partners and myself were all thinking the same thing... just what had we been thinking when we decided to import these cattle.
Fortunately, Irish Mist and the two females we brought in this importation totally changed in a few short weeks after hitting the grass.
Mist was used in our herds for 12 years and he consistently bred over 100 cows naturally each breeding season. One of my partners moved to Northern BC which was over 1000 miles from my place. Mist would make the trip and start breeding cows as soon as he arrived at his next place. At age 14 he could still out walk most men I know and unlike most other cattle from the Irish lines, he never had his feet trimmed and never needed them trimmed. He sired great females that had flawless udders and I always said you could breed an Irish Mist daughter to most any bull and still get a calf that was saleable. I doubt if there is another bull that can be found in the background of Canadian Shorthorn pedigrees than Irish Mist. Sometimes if you go back far enough, you will find Mist 10-12 times in an extended pedigree.