Published in Canadian Geographic, Spring

Meet me at the rodeo: 10 days of bull riding, benders and fearless carnies at the Calgary Stampede

The men’s dressing room below the grandstand at the Calgary Stampede feels a little like a hospital waiting room, but not nearly as clean. It’s a Thursday afternoon in July, toward the end of the 10-day rodeo competition, and cowboys wrapped in elastic bandages and ice packs are splayed out on a set of dingy couches, grinding mud into the fabric and trading raunchy bar stories from last night. Strewn across the carpet is a mess of well scuffed boots, spurs and chaps, frayed reins, blue jeans in various states of disrepair, tins of tobacco and spit cups: the telltale detritus of a rodeo.

On one couch, Tyler Thomson, in a bright purple dress shirt with Wrangler written across the back, is running through his hit-list for me. “Plenty of bumps, bruises, stitches, a broken thumb. But my knees, I guess you could say, have been my Kryptonite.” Thomson, 30 years old and from one of the most storied families of Calgary rodeo, has blue eyes, a million-dollar smile and one Canadian Professional Rodeo Association championship under his belt. “I think I’ve torn every ligament out of my right knee,” he says, “and I tore the ACL out of my left knee. Kept me out a year-and-a-half. But nothing too serious, knock on wood.” In an hour or so, for the third day in a row, Thomson will mount a nearly one-tonne bull and try to stay on for eight seconds.

The Calgary Stampede — Alberta’s yearly paean to cowboy culture; equal parts rodeo and country fair; beloved by fans as vehemently as it is maligned by critics — had its humble beginnings in 1912 as the Frontier Days and Cowboy Championship contest. Its founder, Guy Weadick, was both working cowboy and Vaudeville showman, which explains a lot. The seminal Stampede featured a parade of 2,000 “Indians” in full dress, a rodeo with a $16,000 jackpot (won by Blood Indian bronc rider Tom Three Persons) and bands of roving cowboys on horseback who would lasso pretty girls on Centre Street. The curious mix of choreographed spectacle and raw athletic competition, with real cowboys risking life and limb for a shot at prize money, proved a crowd pleaser. In the intervening century, that formula has changed little.

I leave Thomson to meditate on the day’s bull and plunge into the controlled chaos of Stampede Park. On a good day, upwards of 100,000 people pack the sprawling grounds: 193 acres of carnival rides, deep-fried Oreos, whackable moles, barnyard demos, tipi villages, country music stages and beer gardens. Heat and crowds and the flash of a million little coloured light bulbs trigger my carnival instincts. I gorge on something called a doughnut burger. I gawk at cowgirls in midriff-baring, bust-boosting flannels and cut-off shorts. I almost win a gorillasized stuffed gorilla at ring toss. On the midway, I brave the Orbiter, the Crazy Mouse and the fearsome Mega Drop. And I breathe in that heady carnival perfume: cotton candy, frying sausages, barnyard smells and just a hint of barf.

ON THE VERY EDGE OF THE MAELSTROM, I find Dave “The Bullet” Smith Jr., poking his head into the business end of a 10.5-metre-long canon. He asks me not to take any photos. “How the cannons work is kind of our family secret,” he says. “But I’ll tell you what: this gun here will sure get you moving.” 
Smith hardly cuts the figure of your typical daredevil. He’s balding and thick through the middle, with deep lines around his eyes. Three tow-headed kids scamper around his feet. “Their mom’s in real estate in Florida. We’re not together anymore. I get them in the summer,” he explains. In a few minutes, he’ll don what looks like a black bicycle helmet and be fired 45 metres across the midway into a small net, enduring, he says, “10 G” of force on lift-off, or roughly triple anything experienced by a space shuttle astronaut. In preparation, Smith does four toetouches, a few tummy twists and runs in place for about 10 seconds. Then his youngest daughter, who is hungry and has a sun-burned nose, begins crying. “OK. Let’s get you something to eat,” he says, gathering up his clan and dragging them to the nearest concession.

I stick around to watch the firing. Smith stays in the air for an ungodly long time — long enough to use his arm as a kind of airborne rudder, which guides him safely across the ether and into the waiting net. Two days later, he attempts the same flight and his net collapses upon impact, metal poles toppling to the ground with a sickening clang that silences the crowd. He shakes off his collision with the asphalt and is back in the air later that same afternoon. You can see it all on YouTube.

After watching the human cannonball bow to the crowd, I quickly make for the exit. The party which is Stampede long ago jumped Stampede Park and now consumes much of Calgary’s downtown, with the city going on more or less a collective, 10-day bender each July. Not far from the gates, Buzzards Restaurant & Bar, like most Calgary watering holes, has erected a wooden fence around its perimeter and put out bales of hay for Stampede. This is code for “come drink here.” I can’t resist.

On the sunny patio under a large awning, a group from the Pacer Corporation, a local construction company specializing in industrial projects such as oil wells, has assembled for a buffet dinner. Costume cowboys, they’re decked out in cheap straw hats, Wranglers still crisp from Walmart and mustaches grown expressly for the occasion. And they’re soused. Busy serving shave-topped sirloin at the buffet table is Buzzards’ Cory Hanline, a mountain of a man also clearly in Stampede spirit. He slaps a pair of metal tongs against the grill to the beat of the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Woman,” played by a cover band on the tiny patio stage. “Without a doubt, best party of the year,” Hanline says, unloading a spoon of baked beans onto a plate. “It’s like Christmas — as soon as it’s over, we all start counting the days until the next one.”

It is Hanline who kindly points out that Buzzards is in the midst of its 18th annual Testicle Festival (tagline: “I had a ball.”). During the month of July, in honour of Stampede, prairie oysters, i.e. the castrated testicles of young male calves, are added to the menu. Beer-battered and deep-fried, they’re evidently a hit, with around 80 orders on any given day. “A lot of people have no idea what they’re eating,” Hanline says, which may explain their popularity. Even though the presentation is uncommonly elegant — gonads arranged delicately with salad greens and macerated Saskatoon berries — I can’t eat more than a couple of bites. My waitress, in halter top and cowboy boots, looks disappointed in me as she clears the plate.

BUT THERE’S MORE TO DOWNTOWN CALGARY than beer batter and tipsy cow folk. Two blocks north along Stephen Avenue, an upscale pedestrian drag, a haute-Stampede air prevails. Street buskers play jazz standards and patios of tony restaurants overflow with patrons, not all of whom are wearing cowboy duds. I find a seat inside Divino Wine & Cheese Bistro, which has exposed brick walls, a stylishly scuffed wood floor and a 31-page wine list. My Alberta striploin ($34) comes with truffled pomme puree, not cheese fries. And, for tonight at least, I trade my Stampede-issue Budweiser for a glass of Argentine malbec. 
After dinner, I follow a trickle of Stampeders to a nearby concert in Calgary’s Olympic Plaza. Medals were handed out here during the 1988 Winter Games, whose success augured the city’s morph from cowtown to modern city on the prairies. Tonight, I’m surprised to find a group of mop-topped teens on stage playing angst-ridden rock, with nary a hint of country twang. Goth girls and dour emo types look on, swaying lifelessly to the beat. Watching at a safe distance is Bob Slocombe, volunteer chair of Calgary’s Downtown Attractions Committee. I find out he’s an ambassador of sorts, charged with winning over Stampede holdouts and skeptics.

“There will always be people who are repulsed by rodeo,” says Slocombe, who looks like a cowboy Santa Claus, with a puffy white beard, suspenders, ample belly and weathered hat. “We’re reaching out to a new demographic tonight.” In the morning, Slocombe also proffers free pancake breakfasts, buggy rides and shoot-‘em-up Wild West shows, all to woo newcomers. (Tomorrow, in fact, I’ll be treated to the surreal sight of a woman in full hijab posing here for a photo with a troupe of grizzled, old-timey gunfighters, while her two little sons paw antique revolvers.) “A lot of immigrants have no idea what Stampede is,” Slocombe says. “The whole thing can be a little overwhelming.” I can relate.

The Stampedification of Calgary is not for the faint of heart. Crowded, corporate, fuelled in part by cheap beer and trans fats, Stampede toes — and often crosses — the line between charmingly rustic and just plain tawdry. “This is Calgary in a nutshell,” explains David Mcalorum, an internet marketing specialist and prodigal son who moved away to Vancouver before returning home to Calgary. I meet Mcalorum at a beer garden inside the Stampede where he’s double-fisting cans of Budweiser with a friend (actually, he’s holding three cans in total). “Big, in your face and over the top — the drinking, the girls, everything. Just one big party,” he says. He’s drunk, but he does have a point. In fact, it could be easy to get cynical about Stampede, if not for one thing. At its heart, as pure and incorruptible as it is controversial, remains the rodeo.

For 10 straight days, competitors face off each afternoon in a series of primal, brutal and, in their way, beautiful contests. Bull riders mount the backs of car-sized mounds of muscle. Steer wrestlers fling themselves off sprinting horses and onto the horns of angry animals. Bareback riders are launched like dolls from bucking broncos, landing face down in the dirt. While the ethics of rodeo may be dubious, the mettle of its riders isn’t. Injuries are common, safeguards are few and a culture of genuine, reckless bravado prevails, which makes hockey look almost effete by comparison. “Your career is just from one ride to the next,” says Mike Duncan, a one-time bull rider from Texas whose 24-year-old son, Douglas, is competing in the Stampede with broken ribs after being hooked and stomped by a bull in his last event. “It can end at any minute, at any time.”

IT’S WILDCARD SATURDAY NOW, the eve of the big Sunday finale, and Tyler Thomson, still in his purple Wrangler shirt, is about to get back on a bull called White Knight. The buzz in the stands attenuates as he climbs the metal rails of the bucking chute and slips his legs around the animal’s enormous back. In the relative silence, you can hear the ominous clang of horn and hoof on steel as the bull rears and bucks in the tight confines of the chute. Thomson wraps his hand into the bull rope, grips hard and takes a breath.

Then he nods. The gate flings out and the bull launches a foot or more off the ground in an apoplexy of rage and fear, its eyes wild and foam jetting from its mouth. Back legs rocket up and the animal’s back bends so far it looks like it will snap. Then the bull plunges into a frantic spin — around and around and around, launching clods of mud across the infield while its muscled neck whips side to side. Each buck convulses Thomson’s body, sending a shudder rippling through his frame. Then the horn blows — his eight seconds are up — and Thomson is diving head first for the dirt. Now he’s on his feet, brushing off, raising both arms. Somewhere underneath his helmet and mask, he’s smiling.

A half-hour later, Thomson is seated at a folding table with the other riders, signing autographs with a Sharpie. The long lines — of teen girls in braces and cut-off shorts, little kids and bashful old cowboys — are mainly for him. In the hot sun, he signs programs, cowboy hats and even big stuffed gorillas. Tomorrow, Thomson will be back on a bull, this time riding for the championship and $100,000 prize. “It’s been a long time since a Thomson won a Stampede,” he says. “I wanna be in them record books, with my name in there next to my grandfather’s and great uncle’s and stuff.”

Back in the locker room, when he strips off dusty jeans, I notice a pair of bulky knee braces, the kind worn by people recovering from major surgery. Another cowboy comes in and inquires about some fresh stitches above Thomson’s left eye. “You get those from the bull or the bar?” he asks. Thomson is quick with an answer: “At least if it was from the bar, I’d have a good story.”