STAMPEDING TO CALGARY
The good folks of ‘Cowtown’ get their cowboy duds out every summer to make the Stampede a must-see event,
CALGARY— You’d be forgiven for thinking that the city of Calgary was populated almost entirely by cowboys if you were only there for Stampede. For 10 days, city streets are full of citizens in jeans and boots, cowboy hats and belt buckles the size of dessert plates.
They’re mostly just bankers and waiters, baristas and accountants, of course, but when they start line dancing and do-si-doing to square dance callers down on Stephen Ave. during the daily free pancake breakfast, you realize how seriously Calgary takes the nickname “Cowtown.”
Depending on who is telling the story, Stampede is either 131, 105 or 94 years old. In any case, it’s been around almost as long as the city, and folks ’round these parts take it very, very seriously.
Toronto has the CNE and Vancouver has the PNE, and almost every province from the Atlantic to the Pacific has their summer fair, but they all pale in the shadow of Stampede, thanks mostly to those citizens who get out their cowboy duds en masse.
Even more crucially, they volunteer to help run the massive organization behind the scenes that makes Stampede spread out from its home in the crook of the Elbow River into the rest of the city, a spontaneous annual eruption of civic pride that’s as big a show as the ones that go on at the Grandstand daily.
If Stampede has a single symbol that sums it up, it’s the cowboy hat. They come in all shapes and colours, but the archetype is the stiff white woven straw Smithbilt with the red ribbon band. The hat is given out in a White Hat Ceremony that can be booked through either Tourism Calgary or the Calgary Airport Authority, and recipients of the hat have ranged from Oprah Winfrey to the Dalai Lama to Ozzy Osbourne.
Every dude and greenhorn who ever walked through the gates at Stampede has probably wanted to wear the hat. If you’ve been hiding your inner cowboy in some place where a cowboy hat looks more like costume, it’s hard not to want to let it out in a city where everyone’s wearing one. I really wanted the hat. On the surface, Stampede is a summer fair, with a midway full of familiar rides such as the Polar Express, which will make its appearance at the CNE two months later, and the booths full of fair food in all of its deep-fried, supersized, high-calorie and stunt-treat variations. Stampede midway manager James Radke says, with obvious relief, that bugs are “finally over” after appearing everywhere for a few years, and that the trend this year seems to be gut-busting sweets such as the monster ice cream sandwich between two Rice Krispies patties or the unicorn white hot chocolate.
Beyond that is the agricultural fair, with animals on display and riding competitions going on all day at the Agrium and the Agriculture Building, right next to the Grandstand where the rodeo competitions and chuckwagon races pull in crowds under the midday sun and before the big evening show.
Then there’s the show. The finale of the 2017 production featured singer and Calgary native Jann Arden levitating off the stage over the audience on a platform while the cast sang and fireworks went off. With production values somewhere between Cirque du Soleil in Vegas and an Olympics opening ceremony, it’s monster show biz, and hardly something you see at the average summer fair.
Stampede’s Indian Village is another attraction unique to the fair.
Last year it moved to Enmax Park, just across the Elbow River from the Saddledome, with more space and better facilities. With the move, organizers asked if the families from the tribes that make up the Treaty 7 First Nations wanted to change the name, but they declined.
“They said that the name and the space had always been important to them,” explained Shannon Murray, Indian Village and Sweetgrass Lodge Coordinator for Stampede.
And so it remains, along with the annual Indian Princess and the Indian Relay horse race, a thrilling new grandstand event just added this year.
Stampede’s Indian Village was the only place where the Stoney Nakoda, Tsuut’ina, Siksika, Kainai and Piikani people had been able to openly practice their culture when Guy Weadick, founder of the modern Stampede, defied the Indian Act and asked them to participate in the fair in 1912.
Today, the circle of teepees are run by families who have been at Stampede for generations, and devoted guides give regular tours while the daily pow wows go on next door.
Stampede’s success comes from the army of volunteers that keep it going, and the desire of everyone there to do things right. Which is how, in the end, I got my hat.
With a VIP tour of the rodeo chutes scheduled, I’d be in full view of the grandstand crowds, and anyone close to the action had to look like they were supposed to be there, so I was given a new white Smithbilt to cowboy myself up.
I didn’t take it off for the rest of my time at the fair, and kept it on all the way home, from taxi to plane to taxi. I was still wearing it the next day at the breakfast table when my wife and oldest daughter gave me a pitying look and said it was time to take it off; after all, I wasn’t at Stampede any more. Rick McGinnis was hosted by the Calgary Stampede, which didn’t review or approve this story.