Today’s Stampede Festival in Calgary is dominated by musical performances, with four stages and over 100 acts. The Midway features popular carnival rides and deep-fried food creations that always makes headlines. Stampede’s parade and rodeo shows, still popular but less of a draw, were the sole attractions when the event first got its start. Let’s kick it back to 1912 and talk about the year of the first Calgary Stampede…

The Organizing 💰

The idea for a festival dedicated to cowboys, ranch culture and the Old West was developed by a man named Guy Weadick. A Vaudeville New Yorker, Weadick was inspired by Western nostalgia and his previous visits to Calgary. As a showman, he pushed for a rodeo act in the growing city and was rejected multiple times before finding willing stakeholders. Nicknamed the Big Four, these generous Albertan ranchmen became backstoppers of the event, each contributing $25,000.

Newspapers advertisements soon promised a “Stampede”, successfully beckoning Canadians and Americans to travel into Calgary by train for the event. As intrigue and anticipation built, so too was an archway in the city– meant to welcome the royalty that would be in attendance.

The Crowd 🤠

The population of Calgary in 1912 is estimated to be around 45,000 to 65,000. That year, the Stampede brought in over 25,000 guests from out of town. 1,800 First Nations people attended, along with the Duke and Duchess of Connaught and their daughter. If that doesn’t mean much to you, the Duke was Queen Victoria’s son and the governor general of Canada at the time.

At the start of the Stampede excitement in the city was high, lodging was tight and merchants were making a big dollar. While today you might hear people in the crowd screaming “yahoo”, the original slogan back in the day was “Whoop- ee- ee -ee”… Yeah, we’re not sure what that sounds like either.

The Main Event 🐴

Rodeo events at Stampede 1912 did not have an eight second rule, meaning that cowboys mounted the horse and held on until it stopped bucking. Sometimes, this took up to ten minutes of brain rattling. Interestingly, the contestants were both men and women. Tom Threepersons, a Blood Tribe member, was praised for winning a championship ride against a horse called Cyclone. Needless to say, the event lived up to the the way it was advertised. The Stampede was meant to be a one-and-done, but seven years later Guy Weadick was asked to organize another, as a victory celebration at the closing of WWI. After that point Stampede became an annual event, making it the top event for Calgary tourism that it is today.

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