COMMUNITY SPIRIT ON DISPLAY AS STAMPEDE KICKS INTO GEAR
Residents respond to tough times with determination to celebrate
“When I see them come up, it’s going to be emotional — it makes me teary just thinking about it.”
An hour before the start of the 2017 Calgary Stampede, Genevieve Fox shares her feelings about the 10-day event that kicked off officially with the Stampede Parade on Friday morning.
“It’s pretty significant for us,” says the wife of Chief Roy Fox of the Kanai/Blood Tribe, one of the five chiefs of the Treaty 7 Nations serving as this year’s parade marshals.
Along with the chiefs having the honour on this 150th birthday year of Confederation, she and her family have some impressive personal ties: Chief Fox’s great uncle was a rodeo champion in the old days, while Genevieve’s Uncle Pete Bruised Head was a calf roping champ. “So many members of the Bruised Head clan have been involved with the Stampede,” she says.
As per her husband’s exalted role on this day, Genevieve Fox is getting the VIP treatment, sitting in the centre of the Friends of the Calgary Stampede seating bleachers at the start of the parade — a spot that includes volunteers serving coffee, treats and even squirts from water bottles to keep parade-goers hydrated as the morning sun shines down between the nearby skyscrapers.
It’s not hard, then, to find more than a few people in this coveted section holding the perception that while Calgary may be experiencing tough economic times, gloomy spirits have been at least temporarily supplanted by the giddy high of our city’s annual 10-day party.
“In tough times, we need the Stampede and parade more than ever,” says beloved songstress Jann Arden, who — after last year’s parade marshal role with country superstar Paul Brandt — performs in this year’s Grandstand Show. “We also need to remember, we live in one of the best places in the world.”
As far as the economic impacts on those who make a big part of their year’s earnings from Stampede, Tom Phillips isn’t feeling the pinch.
“I’ve got 17 gigs lined up over the next 10 days and Tim’s got 22,” says the well known local country crooner who performed Friday morning with fellow musician Tim Leacock.
“This is a resilient city, people here still put a lot into Stampede,” says Leacock.
When it comes to Calgary’s famed resiliency, historian Harry Sanders has a few reminders of Stampedes past that were a lot more challenging.
“Well, there was the 1931 Stampede during the Great Depression, when the exhibition building burned down,” says Sanders, who I meet at the annual Fairmont Palliser Hotel parade-day breakfast.
“They opened a soup kitchen and relief camp on the Stampede grounds that year,” says Sanders, who also refers to the resiliency shown after the 2013 flood covered the entire park. “These are proud moments from tough times in Calgary’s history.”
As always, the 2017 Stampede parade gives the tens of thousands of Calgarians lining the route plenty to be proud of, as they take in the morning with thousands of out-of-town guests.
It’s a visual and auditory spectacular of music played by people from around the globe, with participants in colourful costume, majestic horses and a wide variety of motorized vehicles, both antique and new.
Those lucky few who pony up some cash for bleacher seating — and the even fewer VIPs enjoying premium seating by invitation — are joined, as always, by the tens of thousands who stand, perch on the curb, or sit on camp chairs they brought out in the wee hours of the morning.
While the majority have to work a lot harder to take in the entertainment, they smile, laugh, hoot, holler and wave as the parade goes by.
“I can’t believe the energy of this city,” says 26-year-old Megan Howe, who has a standing-room-only spot with husband Ryan Broeckel and their baby boy Logan, who turned one July 3.
The couple moved here two years ago from Ontario and are taking in their first Calgary Stampede parade. “It’s so much fun,” says Broeckel. “Our baby’s loving it.”
So, how would she gauge the mood of her newly adopted city, on this day in particular?
“We can’t believe the feeling of community that’s here,” says Rowe, as she smiles from her post behind a wall of fellow parade-goers. “We’ll just get to the parade a little earlier next year.”