Only in Cowtown
Is the Stampede a celebration of western traditions or just an excuse to party?
By Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan
Photography By Bryce Meyer
Costume Styling by Marianne Holt, The Costume shop
Urban Optimist: Can you feel it? Stampede is in the air. That once-a-year event that puts Calgary front and centre on Canada’s cultural map.
City Cynic: Front and centre? Hardly. There aren’t many other cities in this country that envy the Stampede’s drunken urban cowboy image. The Stampede is a wonderful opportunity to take a 10-day vacation and wait for the city to return to normal.
Urban Optimist: Surely you must be joking. The Stampede is the hallmark event of Calgary culture, a wonderful — and genuine — celebration of our western traditions, culture and heritage. And I have to tell you Canadians do envy the Stampede. Why else would they pack the city’s hotels and visit in ever-swelling numbers each year?
City Cynic: Well, maybe to catch sight of otherwise-staid businessmen stumbling around the Business District at seven in the morning, drink in one hand, pancake in the other. That’s not something you can see everywhere. But let’s face it; it’s the kitsch value of the Stampede that sells more than any authentic Western experience.
Urban Optimist: The Stampede is hardly kitsch. It is a major cultural and sporting event. The rodeo is one of the world’s largest and richest, attracting the superstars of the sport every year and featuring an incredibly high level of competition in a wide range of disciplines.
City Cynic: It’s true that Calgary is a leader in a sport that is only slightly more marginal than hockey is these days. To many, however, the rodeo is an exercise in animal cruelty — one that has even been condemned by the Humane Society of Canada as “a brutal violent spectacle.”
Three horses died last year, two the year prior, and nine in 2005. Is this really the sort of thing that the city wants to be known for?
Urban Optimist: You talk like the Stampede is encouraging cruelty to animals — nothing could be further from the truth. Those who do participate in the rodeo truly love and care for their animals each and every year. Further, the Stampede works with the Calgary Humane Society and the Alberta SPCA to enhance safety measures for competitors and livestock. You won’t find people more interested in animal welfare than the professionals who come each year for the agricultural fair.
City Cynic: Do you really think that the chance to talk animal husbandry is a main attraction of the Stampede? If that were the big draw, Toronto’s Royal Agricultural Winter Fair would be a hallmark event as well. The fact is that the Stampede is just a collection of standard urban spectacles compressed into one 10-day debauch: a parade, a carnival, sporting events, concerts — and don’t forget the public drinking.
Urban Optimist: But 350,000 people line the streets for the parade each year, making it the city’s largest annual public event; how can that be a bad thing?
City Cynic: Sure, everyone loves a parade, and given that the City cancelled the Santa Claus Parade last year, this is the only big one we’ve got. But that doesn’t make it culturally important. The whole thing lacks distinction and has a real sameness to it. Even the midway is virtually identical to that of Toronto’s Canadian National Exhibition, which is, as you know, the largest annual fair in the country.
Urban Optimist: You sure seem hung up on comparing the Stampede to events in Toronto . . .
City Cynic: Only because they’re so similar. Calgarians like to pretend that the Stampede is a unique example of their culture, but in actuality it’s no different from the CNE or Vancouver’s PNE. Visitors come to eat bad food, spin around on some nauseating rides and maybe pet an animal or two. No matter how much rhetoric may be floated about the “culture and heritage,” in this booming city of immigrants, I bet you only a fraction of the people at Stampede have ever set foot on a working farm.
Urban Optimist: What you’re overlooking, however, is the way that the Stampede is integrated into the heart of Calgary during its duration. It is a time of parties and celebration in a way that just isn’t associated with the CNE or PNE. Calgary and the Stampede go hand-in-hand in such a way as to see excitement in this city peak for those 10 days. Certainly you’re not going to see pancake breakfasts in the streets of any other Canadian city during the course of their summer fairs.
City Cynic: Nor will you see otherwise normal people playing make-believe cowboys for 10 days.
Urban Optimist: Exactly! The Stampede is a great civic party where people let their hair down and pretend to be something other than what they are in day-to-day life. It’s Mardi Gras with a twang.
City Cynic: Well, they do both share a culture of drunken excess.
Urban Optimist: See, now you’re getting into the spirit of the thing!
City Cynic: Okay then, giddy-up and bottoms-up! Bart Beaty and Rebecca Sullivan teach film and media studies at the University of Calgary.
