Ride 'em Cowboy

. . . or maybe not. At the Calgary Stampede, Will Ferguson tries to unleash his inner cowpoke.

Will Ferguson

Personally, I blame Madonna. If it weren't for her and her baby-blue cowboy hat and the shiny rhinestone shirt she wore on the cover of her Music CD, I wouldn't be here at Riley & McCormick Western Store in downtown Calgary trying on various cowboy gear.

Madonna, you see, was responsible for reviving western fare for non-western folk, a trend that had lain mercifully dormant since John Travolta duded himself up as an Urban Cowboy 20 years earlier.

I am at Riley & McCormick with my wife, Terumi, and my young son, Alex. Alex is four and he thinks cowboy hats are a terrific idea. I am not four and, though I was raised in small-town Alberta, I had--until this very moment--managed to get through my 30-odd years as an Albertan without ever once putting on a Stetson. Or cowboy boots. Or spurs. Heck, I can't even spit properly.

But my wife and son and I are off to the Calgary Stampede, the immodestly self-anointed "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth," and western wear is de rigueur.

My wife is from Japan, where the cowboy culture is as strange and exotic as samurai warriors are to Canadians. I plop a cowboy hat on her head. "There you go," I say. But the clerk intervenes.

"Don't push it back on her head like that," she says, giving me a sidelong disapproving look. "Only tourists do that. A cowboy hat should sit straight."

"But that's how Madonna wears it," I say. Not the wisest comment.

"Madonna," says the clerk, "does not represent true western culture."

Calgary, on the other hand, does represent western culture. Or at least a commodified, simplified, commercialized version of it. This is a city that adopted the white cowboy hat as its symbol. And during the 10 days of the Stampede every July, the city comes perilously close to self-caricature, with office lobbies -- everything from banks to law offices --adorned with bales of hay and lined with rough wooden fences. People "dress western" and cartoon cowboys are painted on storefront windows. It's all part of local lore.

The Stampede itself dates back to 1912, when an American-born trick roper and one-trine vaudeville performer named Guy Weadick arrived with a traveling rodeo. He saw in Calgary a city ripe for spectacle and he managed to sweet-talk four of Calgary's wealthy ranchers (now known as "The Big Four") into providing financial backing for a show.

The Calgary. Stampede, Weadick bragged, would "make Buffalo Bill's Wild West Extravaganza look like a sideshow."

It was Weadick who first convinced Calgarians to adopt a western theme during the Stampede, cajoling local merchants into decorating their shops--a tradition that has continued to this day, though not to everyone's approval.

To cite just one example, when photographer Don Denton first moved to Calgary from Vancouver in 1989, he was put off by the western "theme park" atmosphere that invades the city during Stampede, and in protest, he and a colleague began wearing florid Hawaiian shirts to work. Another colleague eventually pulled him aside and said, "Don, you may think it's silly, but it is a part of this city's history. You need to respect that." It was a minor epiphany about how seriously people take this event. Denton put away his Hawaiian shirts and now "wears western" during the Stampede.

My wife and I moved to Calgary three years ago. Our bedroom window looks out across Stampede Park, giving us front-row seats to the fireworks displays that are held nightly throughout Stampede week. We thought this was wonderful. At first. But by the time the first Stampede was over, our nerves had become frazzled as the rockets burst into the sky. "Boom. Boom. Boom." (And let me say that, as a man, having to compete in the marital bed with exploding fireworks outside did nothing to ease my performance anxiety.)

Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. On the last Saturday of the Stampede, we decided to go whole hog. Literally. We started the day off with a Stampede-sized "Belly Buster" breakfast at Nellie's on 4th, big breakfasts being something of a Calgary tradition. It was Death by Sausage and, by the end of it, we were cramming food into our mouths with both hands until, jaws sore and cheeks bulging hamster-style, we ceded defeat.

Hoo - boy! There ain't nothin' like a stomach bloated on sausage and pancakes to make you really enjoy a Tilt a Whirl and a roller coaster. And if that weren't bad enough, my son wanted to go on the Drop of Fear, a ride designed specifically for teenagers who are--let's face it--expendable.

"You're too little for the Drop of Fear," I said. "How about a ride on the Wacky Worm instead? Or maybe the Lollipop Swing?" But no. He was pulling me toward rides with names such as Kamikaze and Cliff Hanger.

It was a sweltering day and, in my infinite wisdom, I had--overcome with Clint Eastwood fantasies--chosen a black felt hat and a heavy denim shirt with faux-leather shoulders. It was just the sort of thing paramedics warn you about in dehydration seminars. The sun inched its way up, with nary a cloud in the sky or a breeze for reprieve.

My wife was starting to frown. (Not a good sign, trust me.) "Not so many other people are dressed like cowboys," she noted. It was true. Everyone else was in shorts and halter tops. We were wearing wool and denim.

"They're a bunch of wusses," I said. "The heat makes you tough. It's supposed to be hot. It's part of the cowboy culture. Now then, how about a `yee haw?' Just to get in the spirit of things."

Memo to any men out there who might be reading this: when it's really, really hot out and your wife is cranky and the lines are long and the sun is beating down, do not--I repeat, do not--try to cajole your spouse into shouting "yee haw."

My young son, jacked up on cotton candy and mini-doughnuts (tiny fried doughnuts are apparently, the Official Food of the Calgary Stampede), wanted to see the cowboys, so we filed into the stadium to watch the rodeo.

I had purchased the best tickets money could buy, which is to say, directly under the sun in the "slow roast" section. We were melting. My wife fanned herself with a program and my son dribbled ice cream over the people in front of us.

Then, the calf roping began and that's when things started to go really bad.

My wife was appalled. My son was aghast. As for me, being an Albertan and, thus, somehow tangentially responsible, I was frantically apologetic.

"Why are they doing that to the baby cows?" my son demanded, a look of panic on his face. "It's hurting them."

"No, no," I said. "The calves enjoy that. Being snapped off their feet by a lasso around their necks--it's fun. Hey, who's up for more ice cream?"

It was no use. No diversionary tactic would save me and Alex began to cry. "Make them stop," he pleaded, as yet another calf was choked, lifted and flipped on its side with its legs tied together. "Make them stop."

The steer tossing was no better. "It's fun for the steers," I lied, as the cowboys leaped from horseback and manhandled the steers onto the ground. "They're just play-wrestling."

Fortunately, the saddle bronc event was next, which didn't involve any livestock being flipped onto its side. I don't know how bronc riders do it, being bounced around like that--and with one hand in the air, no less. It is, as they say, the longest eight seconds in professional sport. My wife, disconcertingly, was intrigued by the sheer manliness of the bronc riders. After all, when you're married to a writer, where the biggest worry is a finger spasm as you hunt and peck, seeing a manly man climb aboard 2,000 pounds of steak--well, it gets a girl all tingly.

"The cowboys," she said. "They must be very ... strong."

The only women's event at the Calgary Stampede is barrel racing, which is less about brawn and balance than it is about precision and control, with the horses circling three barrels in a figure eight cloverleaf pattern before bolting for home. A top-notch barrel racer can do very well for herself. Sherry Cervi, a contestant from the U.S., had already surpassed $1 million in career earnings by the time she arrived at last year's Stampede.

The sun had just cleared the bandstands, giving us some much-needed shade, when a loud rock `n' roll anthem started up. It signaled the start of the ultimate extreme-rodeo event: bull riding. This is, without a doubt, the single most macho sport on earth. I learned something interesting from watching the bull riding: cowboys are pretty much indestructible. A bull can step on a cowboy's head and the cowboy will get up, dust himself off and lope back to the chutes--usually with a wave to the crowds as he goes. One bull rider was ground down by a bull and flipped upside down, cartwheeling through the air like a rag doll. He landed on his neck.

I leaped to my feet and was just about to yell, "My God! Somebody call an ambulance!" when the he got up, dusted himself off and loped back to the chutes, waving to the crowd as he went.

My wife was baffled by the bull riders. "Why do they do this?" she asked.

"Because they are insane," I explained.

With the bull riding, the rodeo events came to a close but, that evening, we returned for the chuck-wagon races and grandstand show. The chuck-wagon race is a thunderous event, with hats flying and outriders at full gallop and a loud tumultuous race to the finish. Very exciting. Very cinematic. But by this point, my wife had had enough.

"I'm all cowboyed out," she said.

Alex was exhausted as well, which is how I came to watch the grandstand show alone. I was determined to have a good time, even if it killed me, so I sent my wife and son home and sat waiting for the big finale in sullen silence.

The razzamatazz began with Calgary's relentlessly upbeat Stampede Showband. As a toe-tappin', down-home jamboree extravaganza, the grandstand show was pure kitsch. But it was expensive kitsch. There were pyrotechnics, acrobats, BMX-bike riders, high-leaping Ukrainian dancers, fireworks galore and a musical tribute to Stevie Wonder. (Huh?)

As the sun set, the winds began to pick up and I felt the first drop of rain. An ominous roll of thunder drowned out the onstage explosions. My wife and son were back home, snug and dry, watching the fireworks from our bedroom window, but I refused to retreat.

Instead, I pulled my cowboy hat down tighter and braced myself for the inevitable downpour. And all I could think, as the last of the fireworks went off and the rain started to fall, was "yee haw."

Flare Magazine
July 2002