Stampede rodeo a stale myth
Author:
Peter Fricker
Publication:
The Calgary Herald
Publication Date:
June 21, 2010
Re: "Stampede forms animal care body," June 17.
It's no surprise that two American cowboys, best known as contestants on the reality TV show Amazing Race, are this year's Calgary Stampede parade marshals. They epitomize the Stampede's American show business roots.
Promoters of the Calgary Stampede often play the "heritage card" when animal welfare advocates criticize the treatment of rodeo animals. The Stampede rodeo, they say, represents ranch life, the history of the Old West and western Canadian culture. But the facts show otherwise.
The truth is the Stampede is a transplanted piece of American mythology parading as Canadian culture. It doesn't represent ranch life, historical or modern, and its depiction of western heritage is rooted in Wild West shows, dime-store novels and Hollywood hype. Every year the Stampede rodeo is promoted as a "Canadian cultural icon" yet a close inspection of both the modern Stampede and its historical record reveals it is about as Canadian as George Washington, Uncle Sam and John Wayne.
Consider, for example, who competes in the Stampede rodeo. In 2009, only 36 per cent of the rodeo's professional competitors were Canadian. What's more, every single rodeo event was won by an American -- and each one received a big, fat $100,000 cheque to take home and spend in the U.S. It's nice to know that "the richest ride in rodeo" ensures that most of the $2 million in Stampede prize money is headed south to do its bit for the American economy.
Some people might complain that the $10 million annual subsidy the Stampede gets from the provincial government would best be kept in Canada. But don't worry, there's lots more public money available for the Stampede -- like the $2 million provided by the federal government in 2009 to help the Stampede with its marketing strategy (and another $1 million this year).
But never mind that to-day's American rodeo cowboys dominate the Stampede and take home Canadian cash. It's yesterday that counts if you appreciate the Stampede's glorious, Canadian, "Old West" origins. That would be 1912, when the famous Guy Weadick created the Stampede. That would be Guy Weadick, the American vaudevillian and Wild West show performer who invented the popular chuckwagon race in 1923 (a bit late for the Old West).
Other rodeo inventions continued to be added to the Stampede -- like steer-wrestling, which was introduced to rodeo in the 1930s by yet another American vaudevillian, Bill Pickett. Of course, real cowboys didn't race chuckwagons or wrestle steers. The same is true of bull riding -- real cowboys never rode bulls because, well, it would be a pointless waste of time. Yet these events, mainstays of the Stampede, are sold as historic examples of western Canadian ranch life.
You can't blame the Stampede for importing the romanticized idea of the American cowboy -- it has a powerful appeal. But it's about as authentic as Disneyland.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and other westerns, is a student of the true Old West -- and no rodeo fan: "No one on a working ranch would ever have any reason (or desire) to ride a bull, Brahma or otherwise," he wrote in 1994. As for rodeo's legitimacy as western heritage, he's clear: "Cowboys, sensing -- like gorillas -- that their time has passed, cling ever more desperately to anachronistic styles, not willing to admit that the myth has degenerated, the traditions eroded to a point where attempting to sustain them falls somewhere between silliness and the outright ridiculous."
Nevertheless, the public seems endlessly attracted to the Stampede's western mythology. Or is it? Stampede attendance has dropped each year since 2006 and in addition to this absolute decline there has been a steep relative decline compared to population growth. Between 1976 and 2009, Stampede attendance grew by just 17 per cent. During the same period Calgary's population grew 127 per cent and Alberta's population grew 90 per cent.
While the Stampede's attendance has declined, smaller summer festivals in Calgary have grown. For example, the Sled Island festival attracted only 6,000 people in 2007 but this grew to 25,000 in 2009. Other festivals have shown similar growth since 2006. Clearly, Calgarians and visitors are looking for alternative forms of entertainment.
Maybe people are getting tired of the western heritage hype or maybe people in the 21st century think it's about time we stopped tormenting animals for entertainment. After all, even the Stampede's own marketing data suggests most people enjoy activities other than the rodeo when they attend the Stampede. When visitors were surveyed about what they did at the Stampede in 2009, only 16 per cent cited attending the rodeo. When asked what they enjoyed most, only 13 per cent said rodeo.
Maybe it's time the Stampede stopped selling stale myths about Canada's past and started providing the fresh entertainment people want today and will expect in the future.
