By Jim Farber
For 10 days in July everyone in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, is a cowboy or cowgirl. Business suits and executive wear give way to 10-gallon white hats, blue jeans, boots and big flashy belt buckles. Why? Because it's time for the Calgary Stampede, the self-proclaimed "greatest outdoor show on earth."
It's rodeo with a capital R that attracts more than a million visitors each year to the city on the banks of the Elbow River. They come to watch the best professional cowboys there are compete for big prize money in barrel-racing, calf-roping, bareback bronc and bull-riding, and the stampede's signature event, the chuck-wagon races. Decked out in their best Western finery, they pack Victoria Park's 70,000-seat grandstand. They also enjoy the thrill rides, funnel cakes, candied apples and cotton candy of the midway and shop for native crafts at the First Nations Indian village. And when the competition ends for the night, it's time to wheel in the giant stage with its flashing lights for the famous musical concerts and stage show with its elaborately costumed cast of hundreds. It's a spectacle of the first order, one of which Buffalo Bill Cody, the founder of America's premier Wild West Show, would be proud.
The Calgary Stampede's roots date back as far as 1889, when the land that became known as Victoria Park was set aside for a combination agricultural fair and rodeo. But it wasn't until 1923 that the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede gained the level of prominence and civic pride that it maintains today.
One of the stampede's most influential proponents was an old cowhand named Guy Weadick, a former trick roper who had dazzled crowds with his skill as a member of the famous Miller Bros. 101 Ranch Wild West Show. It was Weadick who urged the residents of Calgary to "go Western" during the stampede, to dress in those 10-gallon hats and transform their businesses into outposts of the Wild West. It was also in 1923 that the first chuck-wagon races were introduced and immediately caught on as a unique combination of range life and high-speed horse-racing.
According to an old cowhand and bareback bronc-rider with whom I talked, the original chuck-wagon racers had to propel their team of horses around the track with an old cast-iron cook-stove in the back of the wagon. Once they had circled the track, he said, they had to bring the wagon to a dust-raising halt, heft the cook-stove out, set it down and build a fire in it. The first racer to get smoke to rise out of his stove was deemed the winner.
The original contestants in 1923 competed for around $275 in prize money. Today the chuck-wagon races are the spotlight event of the stampede, and they produce the biggest cheers as teams of outriders and drivers compete for a share of the more than $2 million in total prize money. The old cook-stove has been replaced by a plastic barrel, and campfire-building is no longer required.
Unlike other rodeo traditions, chuck-wagon racing is a team event. Each team is led by a driver who commands a team of four horses. The man at the reins is supported by four outriders (representing the cowboys of old) who follow the chuck-wagon around the course. Each race typically involves three or four teams and begins with the outriders "breaking camp" by tossing two tent poles and the plastic barrel representing the stove into the back of their wagon.
Then the outriders leap into their saddles, spur their horses and follow the wagon as it completes a figure eight around two barrels before taking off at a full gallop to circle the track. It's a wild beginning with horses bolting, dust flying and wheels spinning. The first wagon to cross the finish line usually wins, but there are various penalties that can be handed out for knocking over barrels, losing tent poles or interfering with another team.
As the Willie Nelson song goes, "I grew up dreamin' of bein' a cowboy." My hero was Clint Eastwood (Rowdy Yates), the smart-alecky ramrod on "Rawhide." So making my way to the grandstand at the Calgary Stampede decked out in my official white cowboy hat, jeans and boots was a bit of a fantasy come true — along with having a chance to get really close to all the hoof-pounding action, go behind the chutes and watch the riders mount those tempestuous bucking broncos, and meet the chuck-wagon racers (and their horses) back in the paddocks.
Not everyone in Calgary, however, is a proponent of the stampede and rodeos in general. As a result, one of the most contentious topics of conversation around the paddocks had to do with the treatment of the horses, most of whom had previous careers as professional thoroughbred racehorses.
"Chuck-wagon racing gives these horses a second chance. They are superbly treated," one professional racer told me. "Chuck-wagon racing is far less stressful on them physically because they race as a team."
Nevertheless, upward of 50 horses have died as a direct result of chuck-wagon racing in Calgary since 2013, causing animal rights groups to call for the elimination of the event.
Rodeos evolved out of the rough-and-tumble life of cattle-ranching and the necessity of breaking horses, branding calves and — in the case of chuck-wagons — racing to get to the best campsite when they were on the trail. It's a past we have celebrated and made part of the myth of the West. Is it dangerous? Yes. Is it unnecessarily cruel to animals? Possibly, but not by choice. Is it an exciting spectacle to take part in? Unquestionably.
In his book "Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede," Maxwell Foran perceptively summed up the paradoxical nature of the event.
"At its best," he wrote, "the Stampede rodeo is an unequaled western spectacle of cowboys, cowgirls, horses, bulls, calves, and steers. Regarded as a novelty by visitors and as a historical souvenir by many Calgarians, the rodeo is a ranchland curiosity. To its proponents, the rodeo is misinterpreted; to its detractors it is brutal, elitist, and anachronistic."
WHEN YOU GO
This year's Calgary Stampede will take place from July 3-12. The best source for overall information is the Calgary Stampede's website: www.cs.calgarystampede.com. To discover the other attractions Calgary has to offer, visit www.visitcalgary.com/summer..
Jim Farber is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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