"Calgary Revisited"

[VO #23]

A great article by The Walrus. A bit longer, but worth the read, and some beautiful pictures. I moved to Calgary in 2000 and moved away in 2004, but still love the city and always enjoy coming back to visit.

http://walrusmagazine.com/printerFri...y-reconsidered

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by The Walrus

CALGARY WAS NEVER actually the Wild West, at least not in the gunslinging sense. For all the romantic nostalgia surrounding that first handful of pioneering ranchers, it was settled primarily by the North West Mounted Police and the Canadian Pacific Railway. Until the Mounties and the trains came, there was no town to speak of...

THE STAMPEDE as we now know it — and the Cowtown mono-myth it reiterates and reinforces each summer — codified itself only in the ’50s and ’60s, against the backdrop of a cartoonish Western revival on television and movie screens across North America. Hollywood cowboys became the preferred Stampede parade marshals in those years (Tonto, the Cisco Kid, and the Virginian all played the role), and the more varied traditions and symbols of earlier Stampedes were mostly buried under a kitschy flood of six-guns and spurs and frontier town facades. “Since the 1960s,” historian Max Foran writes, “the Stampede has focused primarily on the generic western myth…

The controversy over the renewal of the restaurant’s temporary tent licence hit the press, and former alderman Ric McIver used his Calgary Herald column to explain why my neighbourhood’s distaste for Stampede rowdiness was downright un-Calgarian. “Calgary’s history is marked strikingly by her pioneers,” he wrote. “They were the people who farmed, ranched and homesteaded during difficult times on the Prairies. They worked hard and they played hard. With no ballet to attend or white-table-cloth restaurant to while away the evening hours at, those pioneers made their own fun…Sometimes, the pioneers would compete to see who could stay on wild horses for the longest. Sometimes, they would see who could catch the calves and tie them down for branding in the least time. Sometimes, they would see who could pack up the wagons and get back home the fastest at the end of a long work day. Over time, these competitions developed standard rules, and as a group, were referred to as rodeo. The pleasures available included enjoying a drink of whiskey at the end of the day and listening to music played by whoever was available to sing and play the piano or guitar. These roots of our city are celebrated all year long, but particularly during the Calgary Stampede. The biggest and rowdiest of celebrations often take place in tents.”

This is a particularly fervent defence of Calgary’s mono-myth (a few sentences in, you can practically hear the loping notes of “Happy Trails” on some cowpuncher’s guitar), but it is far from historically accurate. Aside from a few enterprising homesteaders and land speculators, the first Calgarians were mounted police and railway workers. Samuel Shaw, one of the most prominent ranchers of Calgary’s founding era, was an English gentleman of means who arrived on the prairie with a prefab woollen mill ready to be assembled, and tethered his ranch house to the newborn municipality by telegraph wire so he could play chess with colleagues far afield. The chuckwagon races McIver alludes to were a whole-cloth creation of the nimble mind of Guy Weadick (reportedly inspired by then novel car races he’d seen), and the inaugural Stampede was the first rodeo ever staged in these parts. Yes, there were cowboys on those first Alberta ranches, but their lives bore only a passing resemblance to the Old West campfire scene McIver describes. Even noted Alberta storyteller Grant MacEwan, who loved a good yarn more than the dull, unvarnished truth, could say only that local cowboys “rode to the sprawling settlement built around Fort Calgary and spent their wages on supplies and such entertainment as a community under the watchful gaze of the Mounted Police would afford.”...

I love the thoughtful denunciation of the Stampede and the bull#### that surrounds it. It captures the hollowness and smarmyness I have always felt about the event and articulates it in a much more straightforward and factual manner than I can muster up in my frothing hatred of it.

[Bigtime]

Chris Turner is an excellent writer and it is great to have him in our city. Plus if you are a Simpsons fan you should check out his book "Planet Simpson".

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by TurnedTheCorner

I love the thoughtful denunciation of the Stampede and the bull#### that surrounds it. It captures the hollowness and smarmyness I have always felt about the event and articulates it in a much more straightforward and factual manner than I can muster up in my frothing hatred of it.

Oh?

[Bigtime]

He's not really ripping on the Stampede, just giving it some perspective grounded in the reality of Calgary's past.

[Frank MetaMusil]

Originally Posted by TurnedTheCorner

I love the thoughtful denunciation of the Stampede and the bull#### that surrounds it. It captures the hollowness and smarmyness I have always felt about the event and articulates it in a much more straightforward and factual manner than I can muster up in my frothing hatred of it.

Where's the Cee-Lo pic? I am disappoint TTC.....

[TurnedTheCorner]

Originally Posted by Frank MetaMusil

Where's the Cee-Lo pic? I am disappoint TTC.....

Originally Posted by Bigtime

He's not really ripping on the Stampede, just giving it some perspective grounded in the reality of Calgary's past.

I guess I see it since I was looking for it.

[nik-]

How, they wondered, had a Muslim academic of Indian ancestry captured the top political office in Cowtown? The answer, in truth, was because it never occurred to Calgarians to wonder what any of that had to do with the guy’s ability to be a good mayor.

This pretty much sums up the Calgary I know. The East thinks it's progressive because it elects people from minority check boxes. Calgary is progressive because it doesn't even consider it noteworthy.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by nik-

This pretty much sums up the Calgary I know. The East thinks it's progressive because it elects people from minority check boxes. Calgary is progressive because it doesn't even consider it noteworthy.

Remember when Iginla was named captain in the fall of 2003?

Everyone in Calgary just thought yup, that makes sense. A day or two later media out east started churning out stories about him being the first black captain, and that was their story.

[WesternCanadaKing]

Originally Posted by nik-

This pretty much sums up the Calgary I know. The East thinks it's progressive because it elects people from minority check boxes. Calgary is progressive because it doesn't even consider it noteworthy.

Nenshi talks about this a bit in this interview with the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18067650

I like how he refuses to let the conversation be about him. Which really embodies the uniqueness of that mayoral election, and this city, because it wasn't ever about him then either. His popularity stemmed from his ideas and vision for Calgary, it was never about him as an individual at all.

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by WesternCanadaKing

Nenshi talks about this a bit in this interview with the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18067650

I like how he refuses to let the conversation be about him. Which really embodies the uniqueness of that mayoral election, and this city, because it wasn't ever about him then either. His popularity stemmed from his ideas and vision for Calgary, it was never about him as an individual at all.

What an awesome and genuine guy Nenshi is. We couldn't have gotten a better mayor.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Bertuzzied

What an awesome and genuine guy Nenshi is. We couldn't have gotten a better mayor.

He lives in his parents basement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[KTrain]

Originally Posted by Bertuzzied

What an awesome and genuine guy Nenshi is. We couldn't have gotten a better mayor.

Where's pylon...

[Bertuzzied]

Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm

He lives in his parents basement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder if we put Rob Anders back into his parents basement will he become a better politician?

[SebC]

I, for one, welcome our basement-dwelling overlord.

[MrMastodonFarm]

Originally Posted by Bertuzzied

I wonder if we put Rob Anders back into his parents basement will he become a better politician?

He'd be well rested.

[Cowperson]

Great shot . . . .