Making a classroom out of the Calgary Stampede

What do a festival, mini doughnuts and a midway have to do with rodeos, stock horses and chuck wagons? It's an uneasy juxtaposition that has existed since the Calgary Stampede began and reflects this city's complex vision of itself.

"It is widely accepted that the Stampede has become a valuable brand for Calgary," says Dr. Max Foran, professor of Canadian Studies and western culture expert. "It helps bestow a unique identity to the city, and provides a distinct advantage in advertising Calgary nationally and internationally."

Each year Canadian Studies students trade in the lecture hall for the rodeo and midway when they embark on a one-of-a-kind course examining the culture of the Calgary Stampede. Students join a team of scholars researching all aspects of this world class festival.

Dr. Tamara Seiler explores the cowboy as a complex combination of myth and history. "As a major American cultural symbol, the pop culture cowboy doesn't fit easily into Canada's national mythology," she says. "Both the city and the Stampede draw on American cowboy mythology to construct our distinct "maverick" identity and to market the excitement of the Old West."

For Dr. Lorry Felske, the Stampede parade is a complicated ritual for which there is no comparison. "One of the rituals of the stampede parade is to inculcate equality and make everyone think they're the same as everyone else from the mayor to the average Joe," says Felske. "So we dress up as cowboys as a way to hide social class."