|
PEOPLE |
Cowboy Culture
|
LINKS |
| Max Foran
Jake Peters Raleigh Perry The Big Four Brewsters Dirty Packers Guy Weadick |
Interview with Max Foran, for Dreamers and Doers. Q: Tell me about the origins of the Stampede. A: The first Calgary stampede was held in 1912 and grew out of a
popular tradition at the time, the Wild West Shows and also the
agricultural exhibition. Calgary
had an exhibition from 1886 which was a chance for people to, for farmers
to meet, to interact, to show their products, to showcase their wares and
most towns had an exhibition every year. At the same time
you had these Wild West shows going on which were pageants and spectacles
and trick riding and trick roping. Buffalo
Bill Cody was the original founder of the Wild West shows. In 1908 you had
a Dominion Exhibition which was an agricultural exhibition but was funded
by the federal government. The
federal government gave land and money every year for a Canadian city to
hold an exhibition and Calgary held this one.
Well as part of
the exhibition you had a Wild West show and with it a young trick roper
named Guy Weadick. Weadick
was a cowboy American entrepreneur. He
looked around and saw the potential in a growing city like Calgary for a
spectacle based on the history of the west and based on rodeo.
His idea was brilliant because Wild West shows were under contract
to people and they performed just for exhibition.
He had a notion of having a rodeo that was competitive, wide open
and he had the idea of authenticity. He had the idea
of a rodeo and a celebration of the past in one event.
And he rooted it to one of the local agriculturists here in town
and he was told that, 1908, maybe not just yet.
Maybe you come back in a couple of years. Calgary is still growing rapidly. So the spark
plug for the stampede was this guy Weadick.
That is one side of the story.
The second side of the story is that Calgary was a city that was
growing very rapidly from 4000 in 1900 to about 50,000 in 1913, so it was
growing rapidly, and it was growing in response to the settlement boom.
Farming settlement boom, farming, farming, farming and in becoming
a diversified distribution centre for a farming hinterland.
Calgary even
then saw itself with a pretty big future ahead of it.
And so in terms of the city, from 1908 on it was a good time.
People were flooding in so the guy who told Weadick wait a couple
of years, he was right. The city
was growing so it would be right for holding a big time event. The third prong
of this argument was the beginnings of the open range industry in Alberta
in the 1880’s where you have the beginnings of open range ranching. This open range ranching was very important to Calgary.
Ranching money provided all of the sandstone buildings in the 1890’s. The
cattle industry provided Calgary with its first industrial manufacturing
base soap works, leather works, and things like that.
But the ranching industry fell into decline. Mainly because we lost the British market for our cattle to
Argentina, because the farming hinterland was taking up land used for
ranching and so you got the gradual weakening of a very strong ranching
frontier after about 1900 with barbed wire fences, collapse of cattle
prices. Then in 1906-07
you had a terrible winter, which virtually wiped out the open range
industry. So at the same time
Weadick comes in 1908, you’ve got the end of the open range as cattlemen
believed it to be the end and there was already nostalgia for this dying
way of life. And so when
Weadick comes back in 1912 and tries to say ok I want to put this show on,
he needs money. And he’s
got four ranchers who said to him we’ll guarantee you 25,000 each for a
total of 100,000 dollars. Now
that’s a lot of money in 1912. And
these four ranchers are known as the big four now.
There was George Lane, Alfred Earnest Cross, Pat Burns and
Archie McLean. They said we’ll
put up money for you to hold this show as a farewell tribute to a dying
way of life. One shot. So
the Calgary Stampede was going to be a one shot affair to celebrate
history, to celebrate heritage, and to have a last farewell party for a
dying way of life. And those three
things came together. You
needed a Weadick, you needed a city that was ready for it and you needed a
reason to hold it and the money to put it on and they all came together. The first
stampede was held in September of 1912.
The weather was bad but it was a great success.
Don’t forget it was a one shot deal, it had nothing to do with
the exhibition, which went on in July of that year anyway.
Nothing happens
for seven years and Weadick comes back after the first world war and said
we should have a victory stampede. The
big four said done, put the money up again.
This one was held in August to celebrate the end of WWI.
Again, very, very successful.
They had rodeo competitions, nothing to do with the exhibition,
just a one shot to celebrate the war. Well after the
war, prices rose everywhere during WWI and then collapsed and you went
into a massive depression in the early 1920’s and the Calgary Exhibition
was really hurting. And their
manager who was an astute man named Ernie Richardson realizes the future
of the exhibition was very, very bleak.
Weadick on the other hand, he’s still around, he realizes he’s
not going to be able to hold another stampede so the idea was mooted.
Richardson comes
to Weadick and says why don’t we put these both together.
It’s a win-win situation. The
rodeo part, which is a stampede, that part and all the exciting things you’re
going to do will complement the exhibition, we’ve got the permanent
venue, let’s try them both together. And so they held
the stampede with the exhibition for the first time in July of 1923, threw
in the chuck wagon races in a time of economic decline. Great success. So you’ve got
this brilliant idea of grafting an agricultural exhibition stampede with
an exhibition. They did it
every year after that, brought Weadick back to organize the stampede part
for the next seven or eight years. By
1932 they realized they should change their name to the Calgary Stampede
and Exhibition and run them both all the time. And so the real
stampede owes its beginnings to 1923.
The idea of the first stampede was in 1912. Couple of points
I could add, I think Weadick, people don’t appreciate the brilliance of
Guy Weadick, but his idea of having the first stampede parade in 1912 as a
recreation of Alberta history began this heritage thing we’ve got to
this day. So you can’t talk
about the Calgary Stampede without talking about Guy Weadick and Ernie
Richardson, as much as the big four who put up the money.
Q: Talk about the identity link to Cowboy Culture. A: I think that in many ways the cowboy culture is an American
invention. Even though ‘cowboys’,
it is hemispheric, it is all over the Western Hemisphere. But the romanticized notion of the cowboy belongs to the
American. It is an American
invention, that you’d take this herder, lowly laborer and imparts all
sorts of iconoclastic dimensions to this person.
I think that the
Calgary Stampede did and has perpetuated the myth of the cowboy.
But by locating him in Canada and by giving Canadian dimension in
terms of the sort of individuals that we recognize through the heritage of
the stampede, we have in a way give a Canadian face to this American
cowboy. The myth has
been perpetuated. It is a
metaphor. It stands for lots
of things. Ideally I would
argue that Calgary’s cow town image, I think we got the right hat in the
Stetson, I think we got the wrong head under it.
I think what you’re looking even in the stampede is the rancher.
It is the rancher that provided the money for the first stampede.
Ranching background people worked on the stampede over the years.
The ideology of the ranching community is very compatible with the
oil and gas community that’s in Calgary.
|
Stony Plain
Cowboy Poetry
Calgary Stampede Stampede Archives |
|
Max Foran on Stanford Perrot |
