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| - Hey, I like fairs my self. As a life long Calgarian, what's not to like? Well..
When it is a fair with a certain dress and moral code that doesn't (and never really did) reflect the culture and diversity of this city, when it's some fair in a C list city that sincerely claims (with a straight face) that it is the "greatest outdoor show on earth" (take THAT, Oktoberfest and Rio Carnival!) I start to get peeved.
Stampede is an excuse for suburban occupying oil executives to dress like something that they are not (perpetuating the urban romanticism/unawareness with the rural). It's an excuse for university students that have no interest in country music to go to Nashville North (the fact that a Canadian rodeo has to name their country spot after a city in the United States speaks loudly about our fucked up identity) to pick up women wearing jean skirts AND cowboy boots. This is why women from Toronto and Montreal laugh at our women. But Toronto men LOVE stampede so much that they pay $200 to get 3 days admittance to cowboys. That place is crawling with non-Calgarians. Although free breakfasts are nice, the hay bales and western/frontier theming prevalent in every store in some suburban strip mall sitting on once fertile farm land since expropriated by the city seems kind of, um, backwards? In other words, the Stampede is some festival that (very effectively) forms suburbanites into believing that they are something that they are not.
A Montrealer visiting Calgaree once asked (anglophone accent added): "I hear this stampede is lots of fun! I know it's not happening right now, but can I at least see the grounds?" I took her, and her face sunk (which means, yes: a Montreal girl was actually smiling at one point). The fair itself occupies a massive plot that is nothing more than a vacant parking lot for the other 51 weeks of the year. I think this is called: "ineffective land use". Regardless, during that week when the World's Greatest outdoor parking lot on Earth comes to life, things get even more irritating and contrived. How much more can we appreciate the cowboy/frontier social construct can than by attending a show on the Coca Cola(R)(TM)(SM)(C) Stage (where stampede security, donning binoculars, watches the crowd from an adjacent roof, oh, and bands get fined thousands of dollars for every swear that they dare unleash), attend the beer gardens which is hilariously sponsored not by a local beer company, but by Budweiser(R)(TM)(SM)(C), enjoy deep fried carnival food which, while good, has absolutely nothing to do with our culture and geography, but best of all, the cowboy in all of us is free to drop $100 on the craps table (but sorry, no comped drinks). Oh, but don't forget the suburban home you can win (cowboys don't need no dense housing in an environmentally conscious matter! they need a mcmansion with space for 2 of their massive trucks located in some neighbourhood called "The New Discovery" or "Ass pen", right?!), don't forget the massive pavilion of useless crap you can buy, and that the official bank of the Stampede isn't First Calgary or Alberta Treasury, but.... BANK OF MONTREAL(R)(TM)(SM)(C)! All the sponsors are either oil companies (that destroy the land the cowboy construct survives off of) or non Albertan companies. Yes, the stampede has the agriculture section building and even a corner off to the side that has the "Indian Village" (ohhh the symbolism), but all of these are in the periphery. The selling points are the things that can be consumed, the midway, the food, the lights. Look at any picture a gringo takes of the stampede. Except maybe a Dutch gringo, 'cause those people consistently like going off the beaten path.
After the sad fact that majority of Calgarians buy into this giant gimmick, an insulting factor in this event is that there is a charge to access this event that is supposedly the root of our culture, the parade excluded. Don't get me started on the rodeo, which, despite being the central 'claim-to-fame' by the stampede board, costs extra to, um, 'attend'. They say the quality of society can be rated by how they treat their freeloaders. The most insulting (and least known) thing, however, is that the Stampede board expropriated land in Victoria Park, deliberately destroying a once vibrant community (ever wondered how a "ghetto" [by our standards] appeared between Uptown and Inglewood?) so the stampede could have the grounds to expand its agenda of "western (*cough* social conservative) values" in the form of a, yes, "Western Theme Park" and the most important thing to the modern frontier cowboy: more conference and casino space. This fair, and organization for that matter, epitomizes Canadian identity: aloof, confused, and with an even more confused (yet very powerful) elite controlling the agenda.
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