Annual Calgary Stampede posters have long, rich history
As the announcer’s voice blares through the speakers, Jorgia Montana holds her horse’s reins in one hand and a red Calgary Stampede flag in the other. Her horse begins galloping through the arena alongside her team for the grand entry. The rodeo is about to begin.
Montana works as a nurse at a health and preventive clinic in Calgary, but this year she’s also one of the faces on the colourful Stampede poster.
Every year since 2012, the 24-year-old has been a ranch girl at the Calgary Stampede, riding through the arena with sponsors’ flags and warming up the crowd.
Although she won’t be riding this year, she’s proud to represent Siksika Nation, of which she is a member, on the poster.
“Being from that community, I can be a role model for youth and expand their opportunities, to know that there’s more out there that they can do,” she said.
Montana’s parents got her involved in the western lifestyle and at a young age she was fully immersed in the rodeo culture through trick riding, barrel racing, steer riding and junior bull riding.
“My parents grew up with horses, but never rodeo. Maybe because they weren’t able to be involved in rodeo, they wanted to live their dreams through me,” Montana said.
The Calgary Stampede’s historical specialist, Cassandra Cummings, said the annual Stampede posters are part of a century-long tradition of art.
The posters began in 1908 with the Dominion Exhibition in Calgary, but the tradition really took off in 1912 with the first year of the Stampede, when art was introduced to the posters.
This year’s poster features a mosaic of images that can be seen during the Stampede and there’s even a video version of the poster that shows small clips of the rodeo.
To kick off this year’s Stampede, get to know more about the famous posters:
Around the 1920s, the Stampede posters were printed on long and narrow sheets of paper so they could be wrapped around telephone poles. This continued until the late 1960s.
The Calgary Stampede doesn’t have the full collection of posters. Since beginning their search to preserve each poster in 1999, they have been unable to locate the posters for 1922, 1926 and 1930. What the posters look like remains a mystery, but the Stampede team won’t stop their search just yet.
Cummings said many of the posters are returned to “where they belong” after people find them in their grandparent’s belongings or in a box in the garage and decide they should be on display at the Stampede where they can be appreciated.
The Calgary Stampede has an archival room where the posters are kept in the dark between sheets of acid-free tissue to preserve them.
There is a plan for a western interpretive museum called the SAM Centre, where all of the historical items will eventually be displayed and maintained. Cummings said it could become the “hub of western storytelling.”