In case you hadn’t heard (which I can’t imagine for anyone living in southern Alberta, but you never know), this July marks the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede.
In my teenage years, growing up in a small town an hour south of the city, Stampede was this fantastic, exciting summer party I was never able to go to. Then when my sister and her husband took me for the first time when I was 14, it appeared to be thousands upon thousands of people swirling about on midway rides, eating carnival food, drinking in the beer gardens, dancing and singing along with the artists at the Coca Cola Stage, and cheering on their favourite rodeo contestants and chuckwagon racers.
From the age of 15 to 17, it became 10 days of cheap concerts and an excuse to go stay with family in the city and get out of Vulcan.
Once I turned 18 and moved to Calgary, the appeal remained the fact that the Coke Stage shows were free with the price of admission. The next summer, the appeal faded and I found myself irritated with a large percentage of the people who attend Stampede and spend the day drinking and making advances on the opposite sex, so I stopped going.
But in the past two years, I have begun to realize a different appeal in Stampede, one which was meant to be the point all along - the rodeo.
Having attended nearly a dozen rodeos in the past 24 months, I have found a new appreciation in celebrating our Western heritage and the way of life that shaped this province into what it is today.
This is a heritage in which the histories of countless families living in Airdrie and Rocky View County are deeply rooted, and therefore the centennial Stampede celebration is also a celebration of the land and its people, not simply an event.
This is the kind of celebration I can get behind, unlike another event which is taking place in my hometown this weekend.
Vulcan’s annual Spock Days/Galaxyfest convention takes place this weekend, June 8 to 10.
This year’s Hollywood guests include Walter Koenig (Star Trek’s Pavel Chekov), Garrett Wang (Star Trek: Voyager’s Ensign Harry Kim), Connor Trinneer (Star Trek: Enterprise’s Trip Tucker) and Star Trek guest stars/extras Arlene Martel, John Paladin and Crystal Allen, and Canadian alt-rockers 54-40 will headline the Saturday night cabaret.
The event has grown into something most longtime Vulcan residents barely recognize. When I was a kid, Spock Days had barely any Star Trek content. It was a rodeo, parade, fireworks and baseball tournament - much like any other small-town festival. Not long after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to construct the gaudy Tourism & Trek Station, the Town’s tourism society introduced a separate event known as Galaxyfest. Over the years, the two events have morphed into one and now draw hundreds of Trekkies to town every June.
When people used to ask me where I was from, I would tell them and then have to explain where in the province it was located. Since the event has started to gain traction and attract more and more tourists, I no longer have that issue, and I’m not that excited about it.
Of course, I think it’s awesome that the town has found a way to increase tourism and bring a little extra money in every summer. But I am a fan of communities that utilize their cultural and industrial histories in order to cultivate a tourism industry, as opposed to cashing in on a coincidence such as sharing a name with a fictional planet on a television series.
So basically what I’m attempting to communicate with this long-winded diatribe is that I am happy to take part in events that celebrate the real history of our province, such as Stampede, and hope we will continue to do so, well into the future.
