Well the Calgary Stampede finally kicked off on Friday and the town is awash with big hats, big boots and even bigger belt buckles. My instinctive British reserve means that I refuse to join in...


On Sunday I went to the Exhibition grounds where the Stampede proper takes place with my friend Colleen. Turns out the Stampede is more than just an excuse for day time drinking and free pancakes: it's part rodeo, part agricultural show, part fun fair all with the irresistible aroma of deep-friend foodstuffs in the background. Yum!

I really really enjoyed the whole thing but the aggie stuff was the best. I saw the most extraordinary horse going through it's paces in one tent. Standing a mere 19 hands high (vide-printer moment: NINETEEN!) it was the most magnificent animal I have ever seen in my life. He was beautifully groomed and just radiated immense physical power but with a mild and gentle demeanour. Continuing the horsey theme we went into the Saddledome and caught the middle of the the team cattle penning. This was a brilliant event a bit like One Man and a his Dog, only with three people on horseback, a herd of cattle and no dogs. You get the point. I was in absolute awe at the skill of the riders and their ability to change direction while riding into a herd of cattle at full speed. The idea is that they had to separate 3 numbered cows from a herd of 30 and drive them into the pen at the far end while keeping the rest of the herd at a distance. Watching it reminded me of one my favourite passages in the Subtle Knife where Will is watching Iorek repair the broken blade and the narration describes the pleasure you get from watching something done well. I don't know a thing about riding a horse but I could tell those folks were fantastic. And now I want to learn. Will you buy me a pony?

The main attraction however was the Chuckwagon racing. These races recreate the pioneer spirit by racing a wagon and a team of four horses around the track. As well as the wagon each team has 4 outriders whose job it is to break camp by chucking the tent poles and stove (racing tent poles, racing stove bien sur) into the back of the wagon before jumping onto their horses and trying to catch up with their wagon. Apparently the wagon can't finish too far ahead of the outriders or there is some kind of penalty - to be honest I'm fuzzy on the rules. All I know is that the start is absolute mayhem as the teams have to do a figure 8 round some barrels before heading out around the track. Whoever gets to the first corner first seems to win so it's a bit like Formula 1 in that respect (except interesting).


Once the Chuckwagon racing was over it was time for the evening show. This was an extraordinary spectacle with a cast that could open a small Olympic Games: dancers, singers, aerial acrobats, a Las Vegas ventriloquist and a motorbike stunt team! I was a little apprehensive beforehand especially as the cast largely seemed to comprise smiley-faced stage-school types from "The Young Canadians" who I feared were the flesh-and-blood equivalent of Hooray For Everything from the Simpsons (
a group of "clean-cut youngsters" who sing songs about "the dancingest hemisphere, the Western Hemisphere."). In fact they weren't too far off that but the whole thing was done with such energy and brio that I was powerless to resist and now just I'm worried that there may be a world shortage of brio while the Stampede is on. I mean have you seen Gordon Brown recently?

What I really don't understand was why at the end of the magnificent fireworks that rounded off this crazy over-the-top show I had tears gently rolling down my cheeks. It wasn't the show itself but really what it represented. The theme was "The Spirit of 1912", when the Stampede began. The message was basically "Yay wild west, Yay Calgary and Yay Canada" (so yes - Hooray for Everything) but I think what I found so moving was that people could actually take time to unabashedly celebrate their region, their city or their country like that. Nobody was saying it was the best, they were just saying they liked it. For a middle-class white boy from the Thames valley it's hard to put into words just how inconceivable something like that would be at home. Case in point - the celebrations to mark 1000 years of Oxfordshire that I went to earlier this year. The fire festival was brilliant and though designed by the French it was a British kind of event - "marking" or "recognising" the milestone in an abstract way rather than trying to celebrate it head on. And quite right too - that's who we are and that's how we do things: the thought of a big song-and-dance spectacular themed "Yay Oxfordshire" makes my skin crawl. That's why I'm still to be convinced about a new national day at home- is it really us? Maybe it wasn't but now it is... or could be.. I don't know.

Anyhow I think the sheer novelty of this celebration of place plus the ability I inherited from my dad to blub at the drop of a hat probably explains it all. And the fireworks were great!