Calgary Stampede

The Calgary Stampede is called The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth for good reason. For 10 days every July we welcome the world to a spectacular celebration of western heritage and values. 

When the first Calgary Stampede was held in 1912, the era of the Canadian Old West had only just passed. Guy Weadick famously organized and promoted the original event, and grew the Calgary Stampede into what it is today: an annual 10 day event attracting more than one million visitors each July with rodeo competitions, chuckwagon races, a midway carnival, live music, festival events, arts and culture.

The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth remains a treasured link to the history and a celebration of rodeo and agriculture. With professional rodeo as its signature experience, the Calgary Stampede also features a vast array of arts and agricultural exhibits, musical performances, intriguing cuisine, shopping, and an extensive midway of rides and games. The captivating experience is unrivalled for variety and excitement. The Stampede spirit consumes the city.Each night’s rodeo event is followed by the TransAlta Grandstand Show starring musical performances and a spectacular fireworks show.As the official kick-off to the Calgary Stampede, the annual Stampede Parade is a Calgary tradition. The two-and-a-half mile parade features beautiful floats, bands, horses, celebrities and cultural performances.The Calgary Stampede celebrated its 100th Anniversary in 2012 and is the highest grossing festival in Canada . As a rodeo, exhibition, fairgrounds, and festival, the coming events officially 

run

In 1886 the Calgary District and Agricultural Society held the first Exhibition. There was little more to Calgary than a CPR station, a North West Mounted Police post and about 1000 people. The Exhibition was an opportunity to share knowledge about practicing agriculture in the West, have fun and showcase the best of the West. Though there were a few bumps in the road, the Exhibition became an annual event and attendance continued to grow. 

Guy Weadick visited Calgary while with a travelling western showcase in 1908. The city inspired him, and he thought it was on the brink of modernity but still firmly rooted in its "Old West" origins. He believed it would be the perfect place to stage a "Frontier Days and Cowboy Championship Contest." He talked about it with H.C. McMullen, general livestock agent for the CPR, but McMullen felt Calgary was not quite ready.Born and raised in Rochester, New York, Weadick had become captivated by the cowboy lifestyle when he was young. He headed west to learn from real cowboys. After working on various ranches, he signed on to the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Show where he learned "the ropes" of showmanship and became a popular trick roper.

Weadick's travels took him to Chicago, where he first met Flores La Due (born Grace Maud Bensell). LaDue was also a trick rider with a different Wild West Show and had left home as a teenager to join the circus. Weadick and La Due married after a five week courtship and began a lifelong partnership. They teamed up on stage for a trick roping show, and performed together on the vaudeville circuit into the 1930s.

The Exhibition’s growth attracted national attention. In 1908, the federal government awarded Calgary the  Dominion Exhibition, a travelling fair intended to highlight the country’s various regions. International entertainment came for the event, including Miller Brothers 101 Wild West Show, the troupe that Guy Weadick worked with.Guy Weadick returned to Calgary in the Spring of 1912 in search of financing for an event to celebrate the Old West. E.L. Richardson, manager of the Exhibition, introduced Weadick to prominent businessmen and local boosters George Lane, Pat Burns, A.J. McLean and A.E. Cross. The so-called Big Four gave Weadick money and tasked him with putting on the “greatest thing of its kind in the world.”  Their enthusiasm reflected Calgarians’ sense of optimism about the region’s future. 

Taking place in September, the first Stampede had mixed success. It rained for several days and the stands were not covered; due to program management difficulties the daily schedule was unreliable and many events started later than promised. There was no infield and no time limit, so riders often rode out of sight from spectators and sometimes took as much as ten minutes to ride broncs to a standstill. However, the event still had many highlights, the parade in particular was well received.

Drawing 80,000 people – double Calgary’s population at the time – the parade brought together Calgarians old and new to collectively celebrate the mythical Old West. The Duke of Connaught (who was the Governor General of Canada at the time), his wife the Duchess of Connaught (Princess Louise Margaret), as well as their daughter Princess Patricia attended the parade and rodeo events and were a huge draw. The rodeo also brought exciting action. Families from Treaty 7 Nations camped on Victoria Park, forming the original “Indian Village,” which remains a Stampede staple to this day. 

The 1919 Exhibition celebrated both the end of the First World War and the economic success of wartime Alberta, which had supplied agricultural products for the war effort. Manager Ernie Richardson hired Pilots Fred McCall and "Wop" May to perform aerial tricks. McCall opened the Exhibition by landing his plane on the infield with his passenger, Brigadier General H.F. McDonald.

On July 5, McCall took Exhibition Manager Ernie Richardson's two sons on an aerial tour of Victoria Park, when his plane stalled. Faced with the choice between crash-landing in the Infield, where events were taking place, or on top of a merry-go-round, McCall chose the merry-go-round. Amazingly, no one was injured in the landing. 

Calgary Flying Ace Fed McCall shot down 37 German planes during the First World War. McCall joined the 175th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in 1916, but transferred into the Royal Flying Corps in 1917. Flying a slow two-seater plane, he shot down his first enemy aircraft only a month after reaching the front. When McCall came back to Canada after the war, he and Wilfrid “Wop” May leased two U.S. Army plans and began stunt flying at fairs, including the 1919 Calgary Exhibition. McCall went on to establish a number of other civil aviation ventures and fought again in the Second World War. An entrepreneur and life-long adventure seeker, McCall was memorialized in 1959 when the Calgary municipal airport was named in his honour. He died in January, 1949.        

Edmonton native Wilfrid “Wop” May was a First World War Flying Ace with 13 recorded kills. In April 1918 he narrowly escaped being the last recorded kill by the notorious “Red Baron,” Baron von Richthofen. While in a dog fight with the Red Baron, May drew him towards ground forces who managed to take him down. After the war, May took up stunt flying with Fred McCall, including at the 1919 Calgary Exhibition. He was the first person to deliver air mail above the Arctic Circle. In 1929, he transported medicine to treat a diphtheria outbreak in Fort Vermillion. He died in 1952 on a hike in Utah at the age of 57, and is remembered in a song by Stomping Tom Connors. NASA has named a rock on Mars after him

In early 1919, the manager of the Calgary Exhibition, Ernie Richardson, decided that the city needed a one-off extravaganza to celebrate the end of the First World War. He met with the Big Four, and proposed that they hold another Stampede. Weadick was brought back to Calgary to organize it.Just like in 1912, the 1919 Victory Stampede brought the world's best cowboys to Calgary to compete for prize money and prestige. Unfortunately, the September event came at the peak of wartime inflation and a poor crop yield. Weadick did everything we could to spur turnout, including convincing the city to make one afternoon a civic holiday so people could attend the rodeo. Despite his best efforts, the Stampede only broke even, and there were no profits left to distribute to the Great War Veterans' Association, the Salvation Army and the YMCA, who were supposed to be the event's beneficiaries. 

An economic downturn hit Calgary in the 1920s, and the Exhibition was losing money. They had invested in significant additions to Stampede Park in 1919, including a new, fireproof, Grandstand. However, postwar labour troubles and the high cost of building materials meant that improving the grounds was much more expensive than anticipated. These costs were compounded by a failed crop that fall. By 1920, Western Canada was in recession. To save the Exhibition, Ernie Richardson looked to offer better entertainment by incorporating the Stampede in it, so he hired Guy Weadick as an arena manager. 

With Weadick’s encouragement, the entire city participated in celebrating the event. Merchants decorated their storefronts, everyone was encouraged to dress western and there was a daily 2-hour parade downtown featuring First Nations in full regalia.  There was also a cowboys and old timers street dance (which, by 1928, took up an entire city block). Weadick also decided that he needed to come up a new and exciting event to mark the first year that the Stampede and Calgary Exhibition were joining forces in a single event. He came up with the chuckwagon races, which were inspired by his time on the range watching wagons compete to be the first unit to set up camp at each new stop along the trail.