Chapter 4 Calgary’s Parading Culture Before 1912

The Stampede parade is a unique public event in the Canadian urban landscape. On the first Friday morning of July, the parade draws over three hundred thousand spectators to Calgary’s centre in anticipation of the rolling pageant of western Canadian icons. At dawn keen spectators loaded with lawn chairs claim prime front-row seats, then latecomers crowd sidewalks or stake out aerial perches from office windows, apartment balconies, rooftops, ladders, newspaper boxes, or the beds of trucks parked conveniently at each cross street. At earlier parades agile enthusiasts climbed telephone poles for a more commanding view. As the parade ambles past, the core components of First Nations, red-coated Mounties, and cowboys and cowgirls are mixed with a variety of other ingredients: clowns, business and community floats, chuckwagons, bands, horses and other animals, vehicles, and a roster of dignitaries (governmental, military, and royal) and celebrities (local, national, and international). Taking nearly three hours to pass, the parade’s finale comes with the flashing lights and whooping sirens of fire engines, police cars, and street sweepers scooping up the mounds of horse manure and other parade debris. Spectators flood the parade route and disperse. Most herd tired families towards cars or public transit for the ride home; others trot to the Stampede grounds to view exhibits, stroll the midway, grab scarce casino seats, climb the grandstand to watch rodeo events, or buy tickets for the chuckwagon races later in the evening. When the parade concludes, the Stampede begins.

In the writing about the Stampede that annually mesmerizes Calgarians, the parade receives frequent but indirect treatment; it is usually lodged in a variety of different contexts: the exploitation of First Nations, the confluence of American and Canadian cowboy culture, the historical evolution of the exhibition organization, or the biographies of important Stampede organizers such as Guy Weadick, Ernie Richardson, and C.W. Petersen.¹ One dominant theme is the interpretation of Stampede events as a performance discourse narrating the arrival and success of European settler culture in the Canadian West and the suppression of First Nations cultures. In this framework the parade becomes a one-sided story about the European colonization of western Canada, “a mindset that demanded continual repetition.”² Certainly a good portion of Calgary parade history lauded European colonization, but the Stampede parade had a local urban context as well. Unlike the competitive rodeo events created especially for the first Stampede, parades were an integral part of Calgary culture before 1912. Apart from the participation of more cowboys, cowgirls, and First Nations people, the 1912 Stampede parade did not stray far from Calgary parading traditions, and in the years that followed, the Stampede parade borrowed heavily from the first Calgary parades.

To appreciate the wider context of the Stampede parades it is useful to consider studies of performance activities in other cultures. One individual who explored this area was Eric Hobsbawm, who was interested in the invention of traditions in modern society. According to Hobsbawm, invented traditions include a wide variety of rituals (parades included) whose purpose is threefold: to accomplish social cohesion, to legitimize institutions, and to teach values and conventions of behaviour.³ These invented rituals spring from the need to reconcile constant change in the modern world with the desire for stability and traditional understandings about society. Usually controlled by a society’s elite groups, invented traditions resolve conflict by presenting new values or by showing how old values apply to new situations. The cathartic qualities of the 1935 Stampede parade are described by a spectator:

We enjoyed everything, but I could not help but notice the extra expression of heartfelt pleasure when the cow-boys and old-timers’ section of the parade came into view. One could…feel the vibration of good feeling running all through the crowd … It vibrated along the side-walks, echoed and re-echoed from the tops of trucks and businesses and on up to the windows and roofs of the buildings that lined the avenue.⁴

Other works exploring ritual performances make similar assessments of their stabilizing effects. In How Societies Remember, Paul Connerton emphasizes that rituals such as parades use interpretations of the past to legitimize a particular social order. Connerton argues that “control of a society’s memory largely conditions [or supports] the hierarchy of power” in a society.⁵ In this regard, “making sense of the past is a kind of collective autobiography…a master narrative that is more than a story told and reflected on, it is a cult enacted.”⁶ In an extensive study of ritual activities, Catherine Bell describes events such as parades as a means of achieving community consensus. In Bell’s typology of rituals, parades fall within a group that deals with “feasting, fasting and festival.” In this category, Bell sees events such as parades as “cultural performances” or “social dramas” in which people “express publicly – to themselves, to each other, and sometimes to outsiders – their commitment and adherence to basic…values.”⁷

In the case of the parade, Bell is careful to note that understanding the content of the parade is important, but the experience of viewing the parade, of being part of the crowd that witnesses the parade, is also a crucial part of the ritual. Events such as parades “draw together many social groups that are normally kept separate and create specific times and places where social differences are either laid aside or reversed for a more embracing experience of community.”⁸

Implicit in these interpretations of parades as ritual is the assumption of an underlying need to demonstrate community solidarity. Hobsbawm argues that the invention of traditions occurred “when a rapid transformation of society weakened or destroyed the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed.”⁹ Other observers of ritual, such as A.P. Cohen, make a similar observation that ritual becomes important when “community boundaries are blurred or undermined.”¹⁰ Still others see ritual as a way to deal with growing differences in a culturally diverse society. Dominic Bryan, who has studied Orange Parades and other ritual festivals in Europe, notes that “the more internally diverse the community, the more elaborate and regular the attempts to define it.”¹¹ In the case of new societies such as Calgary that were experiencing rapid growth and sudden reversals, conditions of upheaval and social confusion spawned ritual as a means of achieving social communication and stability.

Historical Background of Calgary Parades

Over the period of Calgary’s development from an outpost of the North-West Mounted Police in 1874 to an urban centre by the early 1920s, rapid economic, social, and political transformations occurred. Economically, the Calgary region evolved from a minor centre in the western fur-trading economy, to an intensive cattle-ranching area, and then to a prosperous market-driven agricultural district with an industrial and service support system that included railways, coal mines, and banks. By the 1920s the growing oil and gas industry promised even more change. These economic shifts contributed to major political developments, particularly after provincial structures replaced territorial governance when Alberta became a province in 1905. From a small community dealing with practical issues such as livestock roaming its streets, Calgary was becoming a major urban centre with fundamental urban problems. Drastic social transformation continued as well, as Calgary’s economic development boosted its population from 4,400 in 1901 to 50,000 by 1912. Ranching attracted newcomers from central Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. The development of an agricultural economy and its supporting services and industries accelerated immigration from European countries to Calgary and the surrounding area. With the neighbouring First Nations population already on the scene, Calgary’s cultural mosaic was complex. Over the period before the First World War, many different groups found parading a convenient way of staking claim to Calgary’s identity.¹²

Layered on these local situations were national issues and events that made the life of Calgarians even more challenging. Severe economic downturns in 1907–08, 1913–15, and 1920–23 complicated Calgary’s growth. The First World War (1914–18) brought further disruption to the city and to all of Canada, as the city and country attempted to adjust to the departures of soldiers, their injuries and deaths, and the reintegration of returning soldiers. With the rise of an urban economy, class tensions became more significant; people talked of working-class revolution and the “Bolshevik menace.” Additional social concerns such as prohibition, prostitution, and crime also claimed the attention of Calgary residents. Certainly other Canadian cities experienced these problems, but in western Canadian cities, relatively new creations with shorter histories of governance and leadership, they were significant challenges.

In the context of these developments, the emergence of Calgary parades as a device for community communication occurred early in the city’s history. The Stampede parades of 1912 and 1919 and those that followed continually from 1923 emerged from a local civic culture and history of parading. The eventual success of the Stampede parade was due partly to the skills of key individuals such as Ernie Richardson and Guy Weadick, but it depended fundamentally on an established Calgary parade habit that grew with the city. Calgary certainly was not alone in this regard; most western Canadian communities organized, participated in, and witnessed parades of various types and sizes before the first Stampede parade in 1912. Photographs of parades by specific groups such as Masons, Orangemen, trade unionists, military units, and the Mounted Police; ethic communities such as the Chinese; and small local bands, usually from fire or police departments, are found frequently in western archives and described often in the region’s newspapers.¹³ Indeed, as Susan Davis observes, “parades were an important, varied and popular mode of communication in nineteenth century cities” in North America.¹⁴ In the absence of other institutions, parades in newly created western Canadian urban centres, small and large, were an easy way to express, and to some extent challenge, the meaning of community and to articulate urban accomplishments, plans, and anxieties about the past, present, and future. Local and regional parading culture developed prior to 1912, and the additional elements that emerged during the First World War greatly influenced the Stampede parades that became a regular part of events from 1923 onward. Although the 1923 parade marked the beginning of Stampede parades held continually in association with the annual Exhibition, a massive 1925 parade celebrating the arrival of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) in Calgary finally corralled a parade within the realm of Stampede festivities.

British and American Influences

One important source of inspiration for the Calgary parading culture was the British Empire. In this early period the annual celebration of Victoria Day, two coronations (Edward VII and George V), the occasional royal or aristocratic visitor, and to some extent Dominion Day all generated Calgary parade activity. From the earliest days of settlement in the Calgary area, connections with the British Empire had deep roots. In the 1880s and 1890s the British presence in southern Alberta sprang from general interest in investing in all parts of the Empire, from the South African gold fields to the Australian outback. Interest in the possibilities of the prairies was boosted by a visit by the Marquess of Lorne, Canada’s youngest governor general (1878 to 1883) and the husband of Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, Princess Louise (who gave Regina its name and after whom Lake Louise is named). Lord Lorne toured the West in the summer of 1881 with “a bevy of British journalists.”¹⁵ Overwhelmed by their experiences, the writers and Lord Lorne encouraged British investment in the West just as the Canadian government was offering cheap land leases to promote large cattle ranches. Arriving in significant numbers, British investors in southern Alberta soon rode beside Canadians and Americans and their cowboy work force.¹⁶ Polo and cricket became popular sports in the foothills of the Rockies. When Albert, the fourth Earl Grey, visited Calgary in 1889, his public ride through the city passed beneath a specially constructed triumphal arch.¹⁷ Grey’s visit was one of the first instances of Calgarians taking to the streets to acknowledge a significant event. (Grey became governor general of Canada from 1904 to 1911.)

With these local British connections and Canada’s key membership in the Empire, it is easy to understand why the Victoria Day celebrations emerged as significant Calgary activities. Already by 1901 the Victoria Day parade had reached substantial size and its format foreshadowed many aspects of other Calgary and Stampede parades. Despite rain the previous day, the 1901 parade “splashed manfully along,” moving east and west on the city’s major avenues. The parade began at the fire hall and went west on Northcote (Fifth) Avenue to First Street West, south to Stephen (Eighth) Avenue, east five blocks to Fourth Street East, south to Atlantic (Ninth) Avenue, west five blocks to First Street, north to Northcote Avenue, east another five blocks back to Second Street East, and south to City Hall, where it disbanded. Although held to mark Victoria Day and to preface the various sporting events and competitions held later in the day, the parade had a special western theme. As Territorial Premier F.W.G. Haultain and a “large majority of members” of the Territorial Legislature were visiting the city, the organizers seized on the opportunity to herd them into the first section of the parade under the direction of Major Saunders of the NWMP. Led by the twenty-five-piece Calgary Fire Brigade Band, the lieutenant governor of the North-West Territories, Amédée Forget, followed with the legislative members and Calgary Mayor J.S. Mackie, all in horse-drawn carriages.¹⁸

Each section of the 1901 parade that trooped behind government officials had a separate marshal and a marching band. The second subdivision of the 1901 Victoria Day parade was led by J.W. Mitchell (who became Calgary’s mayor in 1911) and the Medicine Hat Band. Decidedly military in nature and demonstrating the Empire connections, this section featured a contingent of thirty South African veterans led by Captain Inglis, along with a contingent of Mounted Police and a group of high school cadets. The third section, with P. Campbell as marshal and the Edmonton Fire Department Band providing music, was for sportsmen such lacrosse and football players and bicyclists, contestants for the competitions to be held later in the day. The fourth section, under the control of Parade Marshal W. McKenzie, moved to the accompaniment of the coal miners’ band from the neighbouring town of Canmore and contained all the float entries (mercantile and comical), followed by a selection of livestock. The final parade section, marshalled by J. Laycock, was more diverse; accompanied by a band from Olds, a town north of Calgary, the last section featured “citizens in their carriages,” Indians on horseback, and students from the local Calgary Indian Industrial School.¹⁹

For many of those participating in the 1901 Victoria Day parade, as in nearly all Calgary parades, prizes were offered. The best decorated bicycle, ridden by Ida Allan, won $3; the best decorated horse, pulling the fire department’s chemical pump, also won $3; the best decorated horse team, another fire department entry pulling the hose wagon, won $6. Although the brewery float handing out liquid refreshment was a crowd favourite, it lost the best comical float prize ($10) to the Darktown Fire Brigade. Reflecting the racial prejudices of the era, fire department members, with faces painted black, sprayed water on themselves and onlookers as they moved along the route. Prizes for the best representation of a trade float and the most handsome float, each worth $10, went to the Great West Saddlery Company. Its float featured two wagons lashed together, on the decks of which craftsmen demonstrated the construction of a saddle and a buggy bridle as they moved along the crowded route. The prize for the best mercantile entry went to the Hudson’s Bay Company float featuring the interior of an early trading post complete with stacked canned goods, rifles, blankets, and a rum jar, as well as a live white-haired fur trader and Indians engaged in smoking tobacco.

The final prize offered by the 1901 parade committee rewarded participation in these festivities by the Calgary community: $20 went to the best decorated building, the Calgary Hardware Company.²⁰ The interest in civic decoration continued in the Victoria Day parade, with “many stores and residences decorated in honour of the occasion.”²¹ By the 1908 Exhibition parade, everyone expected street decorations, and the Daily Herald chastised businesses that did not participate.²² The peak of civic decoration came with the Coronation parade for George V in June 1911, a year before the first Stampede parade. City Hall was swathed in bunting, and decorations adorned the post office, library, educational institutions, stores, and “private residences in the suburbs.” Eighth Avenue from Second Street West to Second Street East was “one streak of colour.” Although a light rain the day before the parade wilted some outdoor drapery, the city streets were walls of red and white bunting, especially the parade route from Mewata to Victoria Park, down Sixth Avenue, and under the Second Street East subway beneath the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) tracks.²³

An estimated six to ten thousand people marched in the 1911 Coronation parade for George V. Calgary’s entire school population of two thousand pupils participated, including students from Crescent Heights Collegiate, the boys wearing “merry widow hats” and the girls carrying Japanese parasols. Organized by Fire Chief John “Cappy” Smart, the parade comprised five sections, each led by a prominent citizen and a band. The school children led the procession, followed by civic officials. Next came two sections of military units that had gathered that week for training exercises on the outskirts of the city. The last division, led by the Salvation Army, contained Calgary’s fraternal and friendly societies. At least two floats graced the 1911 Coronation parade: the electrical workers built an illuminated Britannia pulled by six horses, and the Parks Department constructed a forest scene populated with grazing deer.²⁴ These contributions were not as extensive as those in the 1902 Coronation parade for Edward VII that featured ten company floats, with the Calgary Brewing Company taking the prize for best trade float.²⁵

Claiming that the 1911 Coronation parade “was the largest of its kind to be organized in the west,” Albertan reporters estimated that thirty thousand people lined streets and the Second Street subway was “beetled black with spectators.” The expectation that so many Calgarians would attend the parade had prompted Police Chief J.S. Mackie to warn everyone to leave houses and businesses “securely fastened” to eliminate opportunities for theft by nefarious types. Mackie also cautioned Calgarians about setting off firecrackers during the parade, as “several thousand horses” clomping along the route could be spooked. Despite these anxieties, George V’s Calgary Coronation parade, “a moving panorama of gay colour,” proceeded without incident and Fire Chief Cappy Smart reeled in the accolades for his efforts.

In the Victoria Day and Coronation parades, many elements of later Stampede parades were already evident: the parade’s role as the opening event for activities that followed,²⁶ the thematic divisions within the parade, the important place of government officials at the beginning of the parade, the presence of the military and Mounted Police, and the floats and bands oriented to the area’s history, local businesses, and nearby towns. A sense of frivolity and caricature had also emerged in Calgary parades, and citizens were encouraged to wear costumes and put up decorations to provide the dramatic backdrop for each parade. Overall, the parade stressed civic achievements in the context of connections with the British Empire.

Receiving significant but less intense parade treatment in these years before 1912 was another, newer empire with strong links to the Calgary area. The important role of American settlers was acknowledged by including them in various parades throughout these years. On some occasions separate parades were held to celebrate the Fourth of July and special days were set aside during the annual Exhibition to honour American settlers. In February 1908 a Calgary American Association emerged, “not to stimulate an admiration for American institutions and laws,” but to encourage a “love for Canada” among all its residents. In 1908 the association produced an American float for the Exhibition parade on July 1 and a parade on July 4 celebrating American themes.

Led by I.G. Ruttle, an American cartage company owner who participated widely in other Calgary parades and activities, the parade on July 4, 1908, was extensive, featuring the Iowa Regiment Band as well as bands from Lethbridge and Camrose. One parade stunner was an elephant symbolizing the Republican Party, with “President Taft” riding on its back, while “William Jennings Bryant” rode less regally alongside on a mule, the symbol of the Democratic Party. The official American float for the July 4 parade, which also appeared in the July 1 Exhibition parade, was in two parts: the first section was a boat filled with immigrants of all nationalities; the second part showed the results of “training in Uncle Sam’s school, the moulding of the rough material into lawyers, doctors, engineers, carpenters, blacksmiths, policemen and even politicians.”²⁷ Another float featured Miss Liberty against the background of a large version of the Stars and Stripes. Two gentlemen dressed as Uncle Sam and John Bull, who had made a previous appearance in the 1906 Exhibition parade,²⁸ passed by in a carriage waving energetically to the crowd.

In addition to nearly fifty cowboys and a number of First Nations participants, walking and on horseback, the July 4, 1908, parade also had commercial floats previously seen in the parade that opened the Exhibition week on July 1. Along with a number of local citizens in carriages, the parade ended with the Canadian and American fat ball teams, men weighing over 200 pounds who competed during the Exhibition. The American team sported a large sign proclaiming that “We are Yanks…about to wallop the stuffing out of the Canadian Fats” and challenging the crowd to attend the game and watch its victory that evening.²⁹ Missing among the spectators for the July 4,^,1908, parade was a group of Spokane businessmen and their families whose attendance had been arranged by Calgary’s American Association. Delayed by a disabled train engine and too many glasses of liquid hospitality at a Fort Macleod breakfast,³⁰ they arrived just after the parade, but were an important part of the 1908 Exhibition activities that followed. Among this group were Andrew Laidlaw and C.F. Clough, who had investments in the Crow’s Nest Pass coal district in southwestern Alberta.³¹

While both American and British connections were an accepted part of Calgary’s culture, signs of local tension spawned by competing loyalties did occasionally surface. In 1911, shortly after the Coronation Parade, a car flying American flags roared up and down Eighth Avenue, the city’s main street, angering bystanders on a day so clearly devoted to warm Empire feelings. Constable Finlayson of the Calgary Police stopped the car and grabbed some of the flags, snapping their poles over his knee and ripping the banners to pieces, all to the delight of onlookers. With a warning from the constable and the approach of more officers, the car quickly vanished.³² This scene was repeated in 1912 at the Victoria Day celebrations when a Mr. Pyles appeared on Ninth Avenue in a car with American flags in an elevated position of prominence over the Union Jack. Police arrested the apparently drunk Mr. Pyles after pushing their way through a crowd of nearly a thousand people, most of whom had gathered to threaten Pyles with bodily harm. In an effort to mount an expedition to the city jail to force his release, his defenders unsuccessfully sought help from the American consul, who, probably with good reason, had made himself scarce.³³ Generally, though, the Americans were welcome visitors, and the Duke of Connaught recognized their contributions to southern Alberta when he visited Calgary during the 1912 Stampede. In his brief speech, the Duke observed,

There are around me – I well know – a great number of our American cousins from across the border, who have been drawn here by the numerous attractions presented by the Province of Alberta; and I wish to tell them that they are very welcome, and that we readily extend to them the hand of hospitality which they have extended to our young men in the Western States during the past.³⁴

Labour Day Parades

Another expression of the realities, and to some degree the growing tensions, in the Calgary community were the Labour Day parades that had also become regular Calgary events. The impetus to include all aspects of the community was strong. David Bright’s study of the Calgary labour movement, for example, found the city’s Labour Day parade had porous boundaries. Begun in 1902, Calgary Labour Day parades were dominated by unionized workers, but other groups, politicians, children, animals, and even employers were regularly included. At the platform events that followed the 1902 Labour parade, for example, Conservative R.B. Bennett and Liberal Arthur Sifton joined with Calgary clergy in proclaiming their working class sympathies. A similar mixture of other community groups and attractions occurred in the 1906 Labour Day parade, which had one thousand participants. In addition to the floats such as that of the Boilermakers Union, with its complete forge-equipped boiler-making workshop, there were also eighteen city officials, school children, mounted military cadets, Boy Scouts, and a zoo float “complete with goat and bear cub.”

In the 1907 Calgary Labour Day parade, the dual purpose of representing both labour and the wider community in which it worked was again apparent. A large parade with two to three thousand marchers and an audience of ten to fifteen thousand people, the 1907 parade started off with city police representing the “power of the law” and also included a group of city officials.³⁵ The latter group, however, did not impress a possibly labour-sympathetic Daily Herald reporter, who felt that “the pomp and chivalry of power was effetely expressed…by the city legislators. They rode in chariots, [with] the dull somberness of the landaus unlighted [sic] by a tinge of color. They looked sad and depressed.”³⁶ Also near the front of the parade were W.H. Cushing, minister of public works in Alberta’s provincial government, and M.S. McCarthy, a Calgary Conservative politician.³⁷ In this parade school children again took part; “decked out in their best, [they] tramped stolidly along in the ranks of labor” along with mounted khaki-clad military cadets. There was also a section of local clergy, undoubtedly included because of their growing sympathy for the social gospel movement, an increasingly popular theological position that promoted church involvement in practical social issues.

Once the opening sections of the 1907 Labour Day Parade had passed, the main body of Calgary’s workers made their way down the city’s avenues. The list of workers’ unions eager to express their skills and contribution to the Calgary community was extensive. One of the parade’s highlights, at it had been in 1906, was Boilermakers Union’s huge wagon pulled by six white horses, with men busily hammering metal at glowing forges. Equally impressive were the Stonecutters, with two monster stones “weighing many tons” that had been locally quarried and wrestled atop wagons for the parade. The Lathers Union float featured a miniature house constructed by its members. The Typographical Union float carried a foot press used to pump out handbills that union men tossed enthusiastically to spectators along the route. Bakers’ and butchers’ wagons were joined by a large contingent of building labourers that reflected the hectic growth in the city’s housing and business infrastructure. Finally, there were company floats, entries by a number of Calgary lumber firms that indicated, along with the police, legislators, and clergy, the inclusive nature of the Labour Day parade. Adding humour to the parade were the water wagons used to douse the city’s dusty streets. Riders on these wagons sprayed the parade audience on a hot September morning without regard for social rank.³⁸

Labour’s participation in Calgary’s parading culture was not limited to this one annual parade. The 1901 Victoria Day parade included a “best of trade” prize category; the 1902 Coronation parade, in addition to business floats, also had “labor men: 31 strong.”³⁹ Organizers of the 1902 Exhibition created a special day for labour at Victoria Park, as the event was held during the Labour Day weekend. The crossover between parades of different types occurred again in the 1908 Exhibition parade when the Trades and Labour Council entered a float.⁴⁰ The most amazing example was the 1912 Stampede parade, which was scheduled for the same weekend as the Labour Day holiday. The Trades and Labour Council and Guy Weadick’s Stampede management group agreed to hold a joint parade, the enticement for unionists to join the cowboys and First Nations allegedly facilitated by a $1,500 payment to the council.⁴¹ Hundreds of unionists marched in the parade that really should be referred to as the Stampede and Labour Day Parade of 1912.

A feature of the Labour Day parades by 1907 was the participants’ costumes. Members of a number of unions were donning identical clothing to distinguish themselves from other tradesmen. The leatherworkers wore white suits, red hats, and blue sashes; the tinsmiths donned tin hats; the railway workers wore new overalls; and the blacksmiths wore dark clothing suited to their trade. Special clothing also appeared in other parades. In the 1908 Dominion Exhibition parade, cowboys from the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch Wild West Show, who were hired to perform during the week, dressed in a way that “lent an air of supreme western[n]ess to the [parade] spectacle.”⁴² Costume prizes were awarded as early as the 1902 Labour Day parade, and they became standard for the larger Calgary parading events. For example, the 1908 Exhibition parade offered prizes for the “best decorated cowboy” and the “best decorated Indian.” The adoption of special clothing also extended to school children, who were dressed in white for the Exhibition parades of 1908 and 1909 and the 1911 Coronation parade, and members of various military groups, who appeared in uniform. The clothing worn by the First Nations was described in detail in local newspapers from the very first years of their participation in Calgary parades. In the 1912 parade special attention was accorded to Chief Yellow Horse, with his top hat, cavalry trousers, and yellow shirt. Decoration of the parade route, which had started early in Calgary’s parade history, and greater numbers of costumed participants made the parades increasingly spectacular. By 1912 the alteration of reality by decoration and costume had become a normal part of Calgary parade protocol. The eventual dominance of cowboy garb developed from these early patterns.

Impromptu and Charitable Parades

Parades marking Labour Day and the Empire were major celebrations in Calgary. Other occasions, however, were commemorated by parades of a less spectacular nature. These included parades by local fraternal organizations and more quickly organized processions to greet dignitaries arriving at the train station for a short visit and tour of the city. One such visit to Calgary was by Robert Borden in June 1911, a few months before the federal election that would make him prime minister. After greeting him at the CPR station, the Calgary Citizens’ Band led Borden’s carriage on a brief tour through city streets before he opened Calgary’s new sandstone city hall. Borden was then taken back to the train for a quick run to High River. When he returned, three bands led him to the Sherman Auditorium rink, where he gave a speech.⁴³

Another example of such an event occurred in the spring of 1912, when the city was suddenly overrun with American Shriners making their way back from their annual convention in Los Angeles to the eastern United States by way of Canada. Within a three-day period, several hundred Shriners disgorged from the railway station. Their Calgary counterparts greeted them with great enthusiasm and paraded them through the city streets, stopping at City Hall, where the Illustrious potentate of each temple received a three-foot golden ceremonial key to the city. Thousands of Calgarians lined the streets to watch the processions. Some Shriners, including those from Philadelphia’s Lulu Temple, also had marching bands. The “most demonstrative of all the visitors” were the New Yorkers, who were “armed with cowbells, dinner gongs, tin horns and almost every conceivable kind of noise producing instrument.”⁴⁴ The New Yorkers ignited firecrackers on the platform before boarding the train and set off firecrackers attached to its caboose as they pulled out of town.

A procession that annually wound its way along Calgary streets was the Hospital Parade. Started by Mayor John Emerson, the parade on Hospital Sunday advertised the campaign to solicit funds for the city’s hospitals, and eventually to raise money to build the General Hospital. The event held on Sunday afternoon, September 1, 1907, was typical. Organized by Fire Chief Cappy Smart, the parade was led by the Salvation Army Band, followed by Mayor Arthur Cameron and his aldermen in carriages, the fire brigade, guest speakers in carriages, and prominent citizens in their automobiles and carriages. Accompanying the procession were people wearing hospital fund badges and carrying donation boxes for collecting money from the crowd. Twenty-five hundred spectators followed the parade to Victoria Park to listen to speeches by the guests and politicians. Mayor Cameron reminded everyone that “three things in every community go to show what advancement the citizens had made…and these were the quality of the religious institutions, the quality of the educational institutions, and the quality of the medical intuitions.” The parade through the city centre served its community purpose well, as over $1,000 flowed into the Hospital Fund.⁴⁵ What is also interesting about this parade is that it was held the day before the 1907 Labour Day parade that brought more than half the city’s population onto its streets. Calgary parade organizers apparently had no concerns about staging two parades in two days. Parades were the accepted way to reach the general public.

First Nations and the Parades

The First Nations had a longstanding interest in Calgary’s celebrations and fairs. According to the memoirs of Fire Chief Smart, interaction with the First Nations in the summer months dated from the 1880s. Smart remembered that as soon as the snow melted each spring, Sarcee and “halfbreed” families camped on Moccasin Flats (the area now known as the Mission District), where they held bucking horse riding contests and horse and foot races.⁴⁶ When Calgary’s first horse track was constructed on Jim Owen’s farm (where the Elbow Park district stands), it became a “mecca of Calgarians of all ages.” First Nations people were active participants known for being “square shooters” who did not fix races, as did some other horse owners.⁴⁷

Once the annual Calgary Exhibitions reached significant size, the First Nations were quick to participate. In 1906 “Indians by the hundreds” attended the displays in the pavilion, and both Indians and ranchers were of great interest to Calgarians and visitors to the city.⁴⁸ According to the Morning Albertan, the “extremes meet in the ranchers with their peculiar get-ups and the Indians with theirs.”⁴⁹ As Calgary’s sense of civic and/or urban identity emerged, those who resided beyond its borders were increasingly seen as different, perhaps even exotic. In 1906 many Calgarians gathered to watch the First Nations as they “left in a body at six o’clock [p.m.] making quite a fine show as they drove out in every variety of cart and wagon …”⁵⁰ The departure of the First Nations from the 1906 celebrations may have inspired the decision to include them more directly in later Exhibitions.

The integration of the First Nations into the city’s parading events emerged from a long context of local interaction. The parades organized by the Calgary Exhibition Society for the 1908 Dominion and 1909 Provincial exhibitions were large, intricately organized, and detailed, similar in many aspects to the later Stampede parades. Following the segmentation patterns previously seen in Calgary processions, the 1908 parade began with a star-studded opening section dominated by politicians and other representatives of powerful western institutions.⁵¹ Waving and smiling from their carriages at the head of the 1908 parade were Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor George Hedley Bulyea, Premier A.C. Rutherford, Chief Justice Arthur Sifton, Senator James Lougheed, Exhibition President I.S.G. van Wart, Hon. W.H. Cushing, Mayor A.L. Cameron and his city council, Colonel Sam Steele, Superintendent R. Burton Deane of the NWMP, and rancher A.E. Cross.⁵² The “great feature of the parade,” “the star performers,” however, came next, an estimated one thousand Indians from all the tribes of Alberta.⁵³ Led by the Ninety-first Highlanders Band “in full uniform,” the First Nations presented a varied collection of images. Organized by the “indefatigable” Reverend John McDougall and his wife, who rode on horseback at the end of this section and received “round after round of applause,”⁵⁴ the First Nations displayed

the old trappings of their bygone life on the open prairies and hills. Clad in skins, tanned with the fur on and off, with their old rifles thrown over their shoulders…leading their huskies packed for the trail…came a war party under two chiefs…following the chiefs came the braves stripped to the waist, their bodies covered with red and yellow ochre and their hands holding spears, bows and rifles … in the rear…came squaws and papooses on horseback and with travois.⁵⁵

The First Nations’ place in the parade stimulated a wide range of responses in local newspapers. Although the First Nations were given some credit for surviving in a difficult plains environment, they were depicted as a fading culture that had been replaced by a greater European civilization. Juxtaposed in the parade against the “new” phase of western Canadian reality (ranching, farming, and the increasingly dominant urban landscape), the First Nations fared poorly. Local newspapers depicted the First Nations and European cultures as passing each other: one culture in decline, the other in advance; an uncertain future for the first inhabitants of the prairies, a clear sense of the boundless destiny for settlers. It should be noted, however, that the First Nations were not the only group seen as marginalized. According to the Calgary Herald, the First Nations section of the 1908 parade also included pioneers in “traveling equipment,” early missionaries in “pioneering outfit,” the Hudson’s Bay Company, a “halfbreed” hunting party in Red River carts and on horseback, members of the Mounted Police from 1874, and an earlier form of western transportation, pack horses, an entry organized by H.C. McMullen, who would be a key organizer of the 1912 parade. At the end of this historical section was a “posse of Cowboys and their outfit.”⁵⁶ Colonial judgments about what was inferior, out of date, or a precursor of true progress were applied to these “pioneer” European groups by including them with the First Nations. Not walking in the parade, but meant to complement its historical elements, was a buffalo herd corralled on the Exhibition grounds for everyone to see.

Calgary’s other major newspaper, the Morning Albertan, expressed similar colonial disparagement of the First Nations. The Albertan, however, also acknowledged the importance of the First Nations, “who figured in the story, who were at one time factors in this great country” in the era of the fur trade. The Albertan saw the First Nations as people to be admired; their story was not solely the narrative of the vanquished. Columnists respected the uniqueness of First Nations culture and recognized the qualities that had been necessary for survival in the West.

The Indians showed to the greatest advantage. It is believed that the pageant of yesterday saw the last great parade of the great Indian race. If so, the Indians went at it as though it was the swan song of the race and they made the effort supreme to leave on the records that are to come that the [First Nations] race had many grand and noble qualities, that the pages of history and romance describing these people, which told of deeds and heroism and renown, were in no ways exaggerated.⁵⁷

Although the Albertan, like the Herald, relegated the First Nations to the category of the noble savage,⁵⁸ the Albertan was more astute in its observations of First Nations people in the parade: Chief Crowfoot was at the head of one group of Blackfoot, Chief War Eagle led another group. Most First Nations people were from the Blackfoot community, along with the Stoneys and Sarcees. In lesser numbers in the parade were members of the Cree, Peigan, and Blood communities. Leading the Sarcees was Chief Bull Head, whose political acumen was singled out for recognition. The Albertan noted that he had “checked on every occasion the efforts of the Calgary Board of Trade to open a portion of the reserve for settlement.”⁵⁹ As well as knowing who was in the parade, the Albertan was also aware that the First Nations had a sense of their own interests and were capable of protecting those interests. Their political skill was evident in the payment arranged for participating in the parade. To the First Nations, most of which came by train to Calgary, went a variety of foodstuffs: 1,800 pounds of flour, 200 pounds of sugar, 30 pounds of tea, 1,500 tobacco plugs, one and a half sides of beef, 200 pounds of bacon, two barrels of fish, one tub of mince meat, 200 pounds of “evaporated” apples, and “an amount of cordials and essences.”⁶⁰ Overall, the conclusion of the Albertan was that the Indians were in the very best form: “There was nothing in their part of the performance that deserves any kind of criticism, except praise. They passed along [the parade route] with the greatest dignity …”⁶¹

Although Marilyn Burgess has argued that the participation of the First Nations in these events was exploitive, a way of broadcasting the narrative of superior European settler culture that justified the usurpation of First Nations lands, other perspectives must be considered. It was certainly true that Calgary promoters sought participation of the First Nations as a means of providing a spectacle. Evidence of this objective is provided by their letters to Indian agents, especially those in the Calgary area. But it is also clear that these events sustained traditional practices. While the Department of Indian Affairs was determined to obliterate the cultures of First Nations peoples and set them on the trail to modernization, the Calgary parades helped preserve aspects of their traditions, although undoubtedly with some distortion. Those wishing to exploit the First Nations in parades or other events were, ironically, their allies against officials in Indian Affairs who were firmly committed to assimilation.

An example of these cross purposes can be seen in 1903, when Indian Agent A.J. McNeill refused to co-operate with Calgarian Crispen Smith, who was trying to organize Indian horse races. McNeill suspected “indian fights – War dances, sham fights” were also planned. McNeill explained that such things went against government policy, which was to teach the First Nations “to forget their Savage habits and customs and make them peaceful members of society.” McNeill opposed turning the “Sarcees into a Circus troop… [or] ‘wild west show’ just to entertain some of the residents of the town.”⁶² McNeill informed Smith that these things were all contrary to the Indian Act and that they also disrupted haying and other summer work on the reserve. McNeill reminded Smith, “had you to live on a Reserve like myself, I think you would expect a little sympathy and backing from your White neighbors, instead of having them make it harder by encouraging the Indians to keep up their old customs which are so prejudicial to their advancement.”⁶³

McNeill eventually came to view the participation of the First Nations in such events in a more positive light. A request in 1906 from Cappy Smart to have the Sarcees take part in the Fourteenth Annual Convention of the Pacific Coast Fire Chiefs Association in Calgary was approved. McNeill informed Smart,

I shall read your letter to Head Chief ‘Bull’s Head’ and principal men of the Sarcee Band. I have no hesitation in saying that they will do what is required of them. The Sarcees generally come home pleased with their holiday, and recently the Pennsylvania Editor’s Committee used them so well I am sure all will be happy to do their very best and will turn out with their ‘best clothes’ as you so ably put it.⁶⁴

In 1909 an incident illustrating the conflict between the goals of Indian Affairs and the plans of local promoters caused one local Mounted Police inspector, Arthur M. Jarvis, considerable grief. Members of the Exhibition parade committee and important local chiefs approached Jarvis to request that three members of the Blackfoot reserve be released a few days before the end of their thirty-day sentence for public drunkenness to participate in the parade. Knowing this was a somewhat unusual procedure, Jarvis intercepted Alberta Chief Justice Arthur Sifton at the courthouse to ask if it was possible. Jarvis took this action because his own superior, Captain R. Burton Deane, was away on special duty. Sifton told Jarvis early release would probably be acceptable, but he should contact the Alberta attorney general about the matter. Jarvis then telephoned S.B. Woods, the deputy attorney general, who gave his approval.

The decision Jarvis made to accommodate local citizens organizing the parade and chiefs who had done several favours for the Mounted Police ignited a serious controversy that eventually put his career in jeopardy. Upon learning of the men’s release, Gleichen Indian Agent J.H. Gooderham filed a complaint with his superiors, who immediately contacted the commissioner of the Mounted Police, Major A.B. Perry, a stickler for correct protocol. Perry ordered a Special Inquiry into the incident, and after reading its report concluded that Jarvis should have asked him, the commissioner, for permission to release the prisoners. Jarvis had mistakenly assumed that the province had jurisdiction because Alberta courts sentenced the men and paid the NWMP to house provincial prisoners. However, as the jails were run by the NWMP, Perry concluded that Jarvis should have requested permission from within the police hierarchy. In Perry’s opinion, Jarvis

by his ill-considered actions, had brought discredit on the Force; has shewn [sic] decided lack of sound judgement; and exhibited qualities which render him unfitted [sic] for the responsibilities of a commanding Officer…I propose to remove him from Calgary to some point of less importance and where he will not be called upon to exercise the functions of command.⁶⁵

After further consideration, moreover, Perry decided Jarvis deserved even harsher punishment for facilitating the participation of these individuals in the Exhibition parade. Perry ordered Captain Deane, the Calgary commander, to arrest Jarvis for possible charges of violating internal rules of discipline. Deane, however, “one to whom controversy… [was] the spice of life,” refused to obey. Deane argued that Jarvis had acted responsibly by consulting provincial officials, and if any mistake was made, Alberta’s deputy attorney general was at fault. Perry promptly responded by attempting to charge Deane with insubordination, but arguments about procedural conventions seem ultimately to have thwarted charges against both Deane and Jarvis. Perry settled for a clear instruction to everyone in the force that “the Attorney General’s Department in Alberta does not control the guard rooms of this force; that the Department has no authority to issue instructions to Officers of the force with regard thereto.”⁶⁶ Deane, who did, indeed, have a nose for confrontation, soon used this regulation to cause Perry new grief. When the superintendent of immigration asked Deane to deliver up a prisoner for deportation, he refused, citing Perry’s previous instruction that orders for release must come from Perry. Although nothing in the file indicates the outcome, Perry’s commitment to proper procedure was about to increase his administrative workload, thanks to Deane.⁶⁷

The Department of Indian Affairs opposed the participation of First Nations in other arenas as well during this period. Another dispute arose when Reverend John McDougall, the well known Morley missionary among the Sarcees, encouraged and organized First Nations communities to participate in summer festivals in Calgary, Banff, and other western towns. McDougall’s activities were opposed not only by Indian Affairs; within his church and the wider community, many criticized him for perpetuating pagan cultures and beliefs. Appearing in their traditional outfits, playing drums, singing, and carrying weapons were all seen as detrimental to the spiritual welfare of the First Nations. John Maclean, McDougall’s biographer, noted McDougall’s response. McDougall wrote that he “felt that there were sufficient safeguards at the Stampede and [other] Pageants to protect the natives; the amusement would relieve the monotony of life on the Reserve, while the knowledge obtained would prove beneficial to them all.”⁶⁸ Keith Regular documents McDougall’s keen defense of the right of First Nations to demonstrate and practise their culture. In a series of letters to various papers, McDougall forcefully stated his conclusion that the Department of Indians Affairs and others

view the Indian not as a fellow man, a being just as capable as themselves in distinguishing between right and wrong, but as an inferior to be treated as a child … I will not treat them as inferiors not yet will I approach them with feelings of bigotry or religious intolerance …⁶⁹

McDougall argued further, and in a startling manner for someone supposedly supporting colonization by arranging their participation in these events, that

while some Indians are Catholics and some Protestant, there are many who still cling to the old faith, and these…have as much right to join in the sun dance or the thirst dance as a Methodist has to join a camp meeting. We fought hard for the privilege of civil and religious liberty and the Indian is just as much entitled to religious freedom as a white man.⁷⁰

Despite McDougall’s ferocious and admirable defense of the First Nations’ religious and civil rights, and in the context of these many conflicts, the Department of Indian Affairs amended Section 149 of the Indian Act in 1914 to prohibit participation in exhibitions, stampedes, and pageants. As Regular points out, however, this was a hollow victory; the penalties for soliciting participation were lessened, established practices were not included, and the local Indian agents could grant exemptions. Regular concludes that the colonization campaign had been defeated by advocates for the Indians such as McDougall, by parade organizers who requested their presence at urban celebrations, and by less than unanimous support by Indian agents themselves. “[A]ll indications suggest that the Indians did not feel particularly exploited by their association with the exhibitions. There were no impassioned pleas to stop the fairs …”⁷¹

Participation of First Nations in the Calgary parades, and in those of other western communities, is not a simple tale of exploitation by European colonizers. Those intimately involved with these arrangements, such Reverend McDougall, took a pragmatic and culturally tolerant approach to their inclusion. It was certainly true, however, that the First Nations and the Europeans who shared an early prairie history with them were not generally viewed by the wider Calgary public as contributing to the future development of the West. That future was reserved for those who controlled ranching, agriculture, and urban activities.

Celebrations of Progress

Devotion to progress was expressed in many Calgary parades, most clearly in sections of the 1908 parade dedicated to “Modern Conditions,” which to parade organizers were epitomized by machines. As the 1908 parade began, an airship sixty feet long holding eight thousand cubic feet of hydrogen gas flew above the crowd, piloted by an American, Jack Dallas. Although it later caught fire and burned while on the ground, it was an impressive sight. Other modern elements were represented by “an automobile procession, as beauteous as a tropical garden” (one car smothered in pink rosebuds and another driven by Norman Lougheed adorned with chrysanthemums)⁷² and an assortment of decorated bicycles.

Joining these machines depicting modern times was a large section of floats representing Calgary’s ethnic communities – a visual buffet of cultural diversity. The recent inclusion of ethnic floats in contemporary Stampede parades is nothing new in this regard. The Calgary Citizens’ Band led this section, followed by the Imperial float featuring Miss Hattie Massander as Britannia, seated in the centre dressed in white, with a beaver and a live bulldog at her feet, surrounded by British military veterans representing “British possessions ruled by Britannia [South Africa, Australia, and India]; the power of Britain on land and sea; the industry and tenacity of the British people.”⁷³ The Canadian float carried several young women, one for each province, and portrayed the Dominion as an “unfinished” task, “a fairy-like creation with gossamer wings, carrying a basket of luscious fruits.”⁷⁴ The theme of the English float was nautical, Lord Nelson’s flagship H.M.S. Victory, with the motto that “England this day expects every man to do his duty.” The “Scotch” float decorated with the plaid of the Gordon Highlanders depicted Prince Charlie’s departure from Flora McDonald, with William Wallace and other warriors following on foot.⁷⁵ The prize-winning Scandinavian float recreated a Viking ship complete with raised prows, billowing sail, shieldadorned sides, and costumed rowers captained by a stand-in for Leif Ericsson. Unfortunately, low-strung wires on Calgary streets claimed the ship’s mast and sail, along with the more highly placed flags on the Imperial float.⁷⁶ Nevertheless, enthusiasm for Calgary’s new multicultural mosaic poured forth from the Morning Albertan:

Calgary streets last night were a living exemplification of the fact that the West is a cosmopolitan community. All sorts and conditions of men and women, too, good naturedly jostled each other, side stepped, sashayed and ducked, laughed, jollied, apologized, and forgot. Wharf rats from Lunon [London], coal-heavers from Lancashire, farmer boys from the Midlands met, jostled, exchanged repartees and passed on. Scotties frae …⁷⁷

Well before the 1912 Stampede, parading in Calgary had become a significant part of annual spring, summer, and fall celebrations, and parading was clearly considered a fundamental means of expressing various messages. The basic form of a parade – the juxtaposition of past, present, and future – was clearly in place before the 1912 parade. Historical pageantry had become a prominent part of many of these parades, which included fur traders; the ranching community with its cowboys, cowgirls, horses, and cattle; the NWMP; the military; the first European settlers; the government officials who had guided and still represented ongoing development at all levels; contemporary business and ethnic communities; individuals or floats representing the area’s external connections; and the First Nations and, it should be noted, the Métis community.

Key Individuals in Parading Culture

Before the 1912 Stampede, parades had already become a venue in which talented and influential persons emerged, took control, and represented a variety of interests. Ernie Richardson⁷⁸ became the managing director of the Calgary Exhibition in 1907, just as the Exhibition Committee won the right to hold the Dominion Exhibition in 1908. Richardson was the consummate organizer, a clear communicator and skilled planner capable of overseeing the increasingly large parade and the events associated with the Exhibition. He was, for example, keenly aware of the importance of advertising in making the Exhibition and events such as parades successful. For the 1909 Exhibition, Richardson convinced R.R. Jamieson, chairman of the Calgary Board of Commerce, to distribute seventy thousand copies of a ten-page pamphlet throughout the province.⁷⁹ In 1911 Richardson decided to distribute flags, “so popular last year,” to every school district in Alberta.⁸⁰ In addition to his general awareness of factors such as advertising, Richardson was a master of detail. After the accounts for the 1909 Exhibition reached his desk, he pursued apparent over-billing by the police department. For their services on the grounds, Calgary police invoiced fifty cents per meal and claimed three meals each day, while the fire department asked for only twenty-five cents and not always the maximum number of meals. Richardson wrote the new police chief, J.M. Mackie, “I wish to be absolutely fair in paying accounts, but do not wish to be imposed upon.”⁸¹ He expressed similar sentiments to the mayor about this matter, explaining that “we certainly do not wish to appear small in a matter of this kind, but on the other hand do not wish to be considered easy, and allow people to receive payment for accounts which we have reason to believe are not correct.”⁸²

Richardson was certainly an important figure in the Exhibitions and later Stampedes, and his skills complemented those of Guy Weadick, about whom a considerable amount also is known. Weadick, who originated the idea of a “Stampede,” was an entertainer and promoter who had travelled widely in North America. Weadick had planned a western show for Calgary as early as 1908, but shelved the plans for a variety of reasons. With the financial backing of the Calgary ranching community’s “Big Four,” Weadick finally pulled off the first Stampede in conjunction with the Exhibition organization in 1912. Weadick’s showmanship skills and Richardson’s management abilities welded the Stampede permanently to the Exhibition from 1923 onwards.

Harry C. McMullen has received less attention, although he was very involved in parades and Exhibition activities before 1912 and shared Weadick’s interest in developing a western show for Calgary, or anywhere else that might be enticed into such a project. McMullen was an American who had “found his way to Alberta with the first cattle drives from Montana in the late 1870s”⁸³ and eventually became the general livestock agent for the CPR.⁸⁴ In this powerful position, McMullen traveled widely in the West and made numerous contacts in the ranching and wider western community. In 1908 McMullen produced an infield show for the grandstand audience based on the idea of a mounted military corps. McMullen’s men rode into the infield, where they set up a camp, lit a fire, and posted a sentry. Moments later the sentry spotted the enemy and sounded the alarm and the men broke camp, saddled and packed the horses, and made their getaway over a number of hurdles.⁸⁵ In its basic form this event was similar to the camp break-up that started the chuckwagon races added to the Stampede in 1923. McMullen was a confidant of Guy Weadick’s as early as 1908,⁸⁶ and his letter about Calgary’s booming economy in 1912 convinced Weadick that the time was ripe for a “Stampede” event. Because of his contacts in the ranching industry, McMullen was able to introduce Weadick to the Big Four in order to arrange financing for the event.⁸⁷ For this assistance and for his role as director general of the Stampede in 1912, McMullen received a share of the profits.⁸⁸ Alberta McMullen, his daughter, won the award in 1912 for the Champion All Round Canadian Cowgirl.⁸⁹

Previously introduced in this narrative was another significant individual in parading activity before and after 1912, James “Cappy” Smart. Born in Scotland, Smart emigrated to Calgary in 1883 to live with his uncle, Thomas Swan, working at different jobs until he finally landed at the fire brigade in 1885. By 1898 Smart was fire chief, a position he held until 1933. Enthusiastic about community activities, Smart participated in many early athletic competitions and organized games for the 1901 Victoria Day event. In his efforts to promote fire safety and the role of the fire brigade, Smart pushed the Calgary fire brigade and its band into participation at parades and other public festivities.⁹⁰ By 1902 the fire brigade seems to have been expected to take the organizational lead in such matters. The fire brigade postponed the 1902 Victoria Day Parade because of bad weather and plans to celebrate the Coronation Day of Edward VII in August of that year. At the Coronation Day celebrations, Smart’s Fire Brigade Band headed the parade, followed by Chief Smart riding in a carriage with Alderman Hatfield.⁹¹ At the 1905 celebrations Smart’s fame was enhanced when the city awarded him a gold medal “for heroic service” in stopping a runaway team of fire brigade horses that had bolted while being hitched.⁹² As the organizer of the Exhibition parade in 1908, Smart “showed himself to be a man of great executive ability and his staff of assistants were most efficient.”⁹³ He remained closely involved with the yearly parades and led the procession for a number of years, walking alone at the front. In an undoubtedly wise moment of reflection, he declined fulfilling this leadership function on the back of a donkey.⁹⁴

The 1912 Stampede Parade

By the fall of 1912 the culture of celebration and the practice of parading were well established in Calgary and in other western communities. The Stampede theme rode comfortably on a format already well established within the Calgary community. For example, the participation of the First Nations in Calgary events was clearly normal, and not something newly created in 1912, although Weadick did move them nearer to the beginning of the parade. However, they were still behind an introductory section led by the Calgary’s Citizens’ Band and a collection of Stampede officials that included the director general of the Stampede, H.C. McMullen, and Stampede manager Guy Weadick, his wife, and several cowgirls.⁹⁵ Fifteen hundred First Nations people came next, following Reverend John MacDougall⁹⁶ and Superintendent of Indian Affairs Glen Campbell. The 1912 parade was scheduled to begin at nine o’clock in the morning, but McMullen and Weadick, preoccupied with details, made it to the starting point just after ten o’clock. Waiting for them were eighty thousand spectators, most lining the streets seven to eight rows deep, some climbing up the girders of the new Hudson’s Bay store, where they looked like “a telegraph wire…with swallows in the migratory season.”⁹⁷ With the delay, “kodakers were given a fine chance to snap the different groups”⁹⁸ of First Nations assembled at their Sixth Avenue and Ninth Street starting point. Popular in this photographic frenzy was Chief Yellow Horse of the Blackfoot nation, who proudly wore two medals, one given to him by Queen Victoria and one by the King, formerly the Duke of York (probably during his visit to Calgary in 1901). As the First Nations participants moved along the avenue, some walked, some rode horses, and some travelled in carts, singing and beating their drums. Guy Weadick had also “imported a hundred Indians from the United States who gloried in parading around in their war paint.”⁹⁹

As the procession headed east along Sixth Avenue, a series of other groups marshalled on intersecting cross streets joined in the parade. At Eighth Street, falling in behind the First Nations, a group representing the first Europeans in the West comprised Hudson’s Bay Company men, miners, fur traders, and other “old-timers”; a wagon pulled by oxen; a stagecoach with six horses driven by Colonel Murphy that had been used in the 1860s and 1870s on the run from Fort Macleod east, “when the country was often extremely dangerous with hostile Indians”; a whiskey trade outfit; and a team of buffalo hitched to a Roman chariot driven by Major Yokum.¹⁰⁰ The buffalo chariot illustrated the Calgary News-Telegram’s claim that the “Stampede is a marvelous exposition of the human subjugation of animal nature in its wildest moods, and is a wonderful exhibition of what man can do in rendering the most fractious of the animal kingdom subservient to his will.”¹⁰¹

At Seventh Street the parade acquired a section that included veterans of the NWMP who made the march across the prairies to southern Alberta in 1874. Led by Major Page and Colonel James Walker, these men looked to be “in the prime of life,” with “none of the harrowing exhibitions of senile decay usually witnessed at a review of military veterans.” Along with this group came bull trains and surveyors, then Senator Lougheed, with his wife by his side, driving a democrat (light wagon pulled by horses) and seeming “to enjoy the experience.” Next in the parade was a detachment of Mounted Police drawn from Calgary and the surrounding area as a special guard for the visit by the governor general of Canada, the Duke of Connaught, Queen Victoria’s third son, formerly Prince Arthur. Another parade through Calgary streets, complete with triumphal arch, was held especially for the duke and duchess later in the week. The Cowboy Band from Pendleton, Oregon, which captured a great deal of attention during the week that followed, and a large “roundup outfit of cowboys and cowgirls” were added to the parade at Sixth Street.¹⁰²

Where the 1912 parade differed significantly from other Exhibition and Victoria Day parades was in its final section, which joined the procession at Fifth Street. As the Stampede was held during the first week of September in 1912, the Labour Day parade was accommodated in this procession. The annual Labour Day parade and athletic contests had reached significant levels in 1911, when they “surpassed any previous demonstrations of the local labor men,”¹⁰³ so the negotiations for this joint parade must have been intense. According to Gord Tolton, the Trades and Labour Council was paid $1,500 to relinquish its own parade plans and join the McMullen march.¹⁰⁴ At the head of the labour section was the Painters and Paperhangers Union float, decorated in several colours and “very much admired,” with members of the union marching behind the float two abreast, each “nattily attired in smart…suits with caps to match.” Next came the Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators, then the Carpenters and Joiners, all sporting white caps. The Brewery Workers Union float came next, with a tiered display of bottles and casks. The Electrical Workers float included displays of motors, dynamos, arc lights, “vari-colored incandescent lights,” and a telephone exchange. Also included in the labour section of the parade was the International Union of Moulders, its members wearing black vests, dark shirts, and overalls. Following them were a boys’ brigade and a float with 20 young women, graduates of western educational institutions, with their teachers. Some real estate and furniture companies also had floats in this section, along with the delivery wagons of the Ontario Laundry Company and a float of Martin-Orme Company pianos. Most impressive in this section, however, was the Sheet Metal Workers Union, with each member wearing new overalls and holding a soldering hammer in his right hand. The cross-pollination of Stampede and labour themes was succinctly expressed in their headgear: they wore “Stetson hats made of tin with copper bands delicately riveted in the sides.”¹⁰⁵

Moving at a fast pace, the two miles of parade participants took over an hour to complete their march. Although the parade column moved smoothly along, it was interrupted twice by streetcars that were still providing service despite the parade. The streetcar motormen “became the embarrassed object of impatient hoots and cries” before stopping their cars and moving them on to side streets. Although Director General McMullen’s “indefatigable efforts… [were] largely responsible for the magnitude of the Stampede” and he was a thoroughly happy man at the end of the parade, he probably wished that streetcar service had been suspended.¹⁰⁶ As the parade neared its conclusion at Victoria Park, the labour section of the parade broke off and continued west along Seventeenth Avenue. The rest of the parade marched forward for a review by Pat Burns, Archie McLean, George Lane, H.C. McMullen, and “other old-timers,” who received a “great ovation and waving of hands from the cowmen and cowgirls.”¹⁰⁷ In a very basic way the division of the parade represented the future split in the city’s interests, one clearly tied to the urban economy and the other linked to the rural hinterland.

Messages of the Parades

During the turbulent years from Calgary’s emergence as a settlement site in the 1870s until the early 1920s, flexible institutions such as parades were a means of reflecting issues and realities that preoccupied the community. Parades of various kinds were the dominant social activity in this period; a great deal of time and effort was expended in organizing, staging, and attending them. In a very basic sense Calgary parades were an allegory of the local community, an iconic repertoire of the near and distant past mixed with a glimpse of the future. Central to this story of Calgary beginnings were the First Nations, who were portrayed not as a civilization defeated by force, but as a civilization in decline. However, the First Nations were not alone in this categorization. The Métis and the first Europeans were often linked with the First Nations in parades and other civic endeavours, all seen as remnants of a way of life that was coming to an end on the plains. The narrative of past times fading also included the homesteaders, the early mine prospectors, the first Mounted Police, and the first ranchers.

As well as origins, Calgary parades addressed the contemporary scene, often revealing the tensions that emerged in this period of western Canadian development. During the years before 1912, the gap between rich and poor widened considerably, as Calgary evolved from a town in which everyone was looking for opportunities to a city in which some had succeeded and others had not. The city’s parades addressed this disparity with the floats of businesses celebrating entrepreneurial success and those of workers’ organizations that displayed pride in their skills, the contribution of the working class to western development, and the implicit message that everyone should share equally in the fruits of those accomplishments. David Bright points out in Limits of Labour, however, that class polarization in Calgary was never as extreme as in other prairie cities such as Winnipeg.¹⁰⁸ Other entries in Calgary parades by organizations such as the Salvation Army and advocates of Prohibition promoted their values as social goals around which the community could unite. As the city’s population diversified, the parade also functioned as an interpretative guide for newcomers and a means for them to proclaim their participation in Calgary’s community. The most common parade message was faith in progress, with the implication that future growth would erase present differences; everyone would succeed in the end. The egalitarian cowboy, the first pioneers, and even the area’s First Nations, were unifying booster images in western Canada.

A rambunctiously growing society also needed boundaries. Calgary parades always included the symbols of order and constraint in the form of the Mounted Police, military representatives both domestic and international, local fire and police departments, and officials from various levels of government. After the beginning of the First World War in 1914, the parades became even more military in nature. The Exhibition’s close association with the armed forces continued after 1918 and intensified during the Second World War. To this day, the Mounties and the military are still a presence as participants in the parade and exhibitors on the grounds.

Calgary parades, Stampede and otherwise, also provided residents with symbolic representations of connections with others: local, regional, and international. The Stampede parade consistently included entries from outlying towns and cities, their participation facilitated by expanding railway lines and roads. Very early in their development, the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Board realized that their events could be associated with other tourist and recreational attractions such as the national parks to the west of the city. Internationally, ties with Great Britain’s empire remained fundamentally important despite the devastating loss of life in the First World War. Associations with another empire, the American one, were also apparent in the early parades, and the American presence continued in the following decades, eventually overshadowing, but not completely erasing, British participation.

In a new society such as Calgary’s in the first two decades of the twentieth century, parades were a flexible institution that could address a variety of important community issues and accomplishments. Calgary’s vibrant street culture set the stage for the successful development of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede; the Stampede parade has become one of its major components. That street culture resurfaced with intense vitality in 2004 when thousands of Calgary Flames fans crowded the Red Mile – the Seventeenth Avenue district. These celebrations and the early ones that occurred in Calgary before 1912 emerged in very similar circumstances, those of a city experiencing rapid growth and the issues it produces. In the absence of other institutions, or the slowness or incapacity of other institutions to respond, citizens in both periods took to the streets to define, refine, and express their vision of Calgary and western Canada: its past, its present, and its future. Calgary parades were, and still are, bulletin boards where messages about identity are exchanged among segments of Calgary’s community.

Notes

1. Robert Seiler and Tamara Seiler, “Managing Contradictory Visions of the West: The Great Richardson/Weadick Experiment,” in Challenging Frontiers: The Canadian West, ed. Lorry W. Felske and Beverly Rasporich (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004), 155–81; David R. Jones, “C.W. Petersen,” in Citymakers: Calgarians After the Frontier, ed. Max Foran and Sheilagh Jameson (Calgary: Historical Society of Alberta, Chinook County Chapter, 1987), 183–96; Grant MacEwan, “Calgary’s ‘Cappy’ Smart,” in Citymakers: Calgarians After the Frontier, ed. Max Foran and Sheilagh Jameson (Calgary: Historical Society of Alberta, Chinook County Chapter, 1987), 70–78.; Lorain Lounsberry, “Wild West Shows and the Canadian West,” in Cowboys, Ranches, and the Cattle Business, ed. Simon Evans, Sarah Carter, and Bill Yeo (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2000), 139–32; James H. Gray, A Brand of its Own: The 100 Year History of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1985); Fred Kennedy, The Calgary Stampede Story (Calgary: T. Edwards Thonger, 1952); Donna Livingstone, The Cowboy Spirit: Guy Weadick and the Calgary Stampede (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1996).

2. Marilyn Burgess, “Canadian ‘Range Wars’: Struggles over Indian Cowboys,” Canadian Journal of Communication 18, no. 3 (1993): 2.

3. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 9.

4. Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Fonds (hereafter cited as CESF), M2160/41, Newsclippings file, 1910–1941, Glenbow Museum Archives (hereafter cited as GMA).

5. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 1.

6. Ibid., 40.

7. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 120.

8. Ibid., 127.

9. Hobsbawn and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 5.

10. A.P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London: Tavistock, 1985), 50.

11. Dominic Bryan, Orange Parades: The Politics of Ritual, Tradition, and Control (London: Pluto Press, 2000), 11–12.

12. Max Foran, Canada’s Frontier Metropolis: An Illustrated History (Calgary: Windsor, 1982); Henry Klassen, Eye on the Future: Business People in Calgary and the Bow Valley, 1870–1900 (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2002).

13. Morning Albertan, 2 July 1906. The 1906 Red Deer parade, led by the mayor and the Red Deer Band, featured 40 business floats. The Calgary Salvation Army Band led the city’s Orange Parade in 1906, which was reported as the largest ever held in Alberta: Ibid., 12 July 1906. Another Orange parade occurred in 1908: Ibid., 13 July 1908. On 24 May 1903, the annual Church parade of the Sons of England took place just prior to the Victoria Day parade. Calgary Daily Herald, 25 May 1903.

14. Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 3.

15. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 4–5.

16. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 4–5; Sheilagh Jameson, “The Social Elite of the Ranch Community in Calgary,” in Frontier Calgary: Town, City, and Region, 1875–1914, ed. Anthony W. Rasporich and Henry C. Klassen (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1975), 56–70. For views of the British and American influence in the western ranching communities see David Breen, The Canadian Prairie West and the Ranching Frontier, 1874–1924. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983), and W.M. Elofson, Cowboys, Gentlemen, and Cattle Thieves: Ranching on the Western Frontier (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000).

17. Donald B. Smith, Calgary’s Grand Story: The Making of a Prairie Metropolis from the Viewpoint of Two Heritage Buildings (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2005), 41.

18. Albertan, 25 May 1901; Photograph NA-1113-1, GMA. This photograph shows the Calgary Fire Brigade Band at the head of the parade.

19. Morning Albertan, 25 May 1901.

20. Ibid., 29 May 1901.

21. Daily Herald, 25 May 1905.

22. Ibid., 1 July 1908. The dominant department store in town, the Hudson’s Bay Company, received praise for its efforts.

23. Albertan, 22 June 1911.

24. There was controversy over credit for building the float; the Albertan got it wrong and the correction appeared in the Herald.

25. Albertan, 13 August 1902.

26. Lounsberry discusses the role of a parade in the opening of Wild West shows and touring circuses in “Wild West Shows.”

27. Morning Albertan, 4 July 1908.

28. Ibid., 4 July 1906.

29. Ibid., 4 July 1908.

30. Daily Herald, 4 July 1908.

31. Morning Albertan, 4 July 1908. See Lorry W. Felske, “Studies in the Crow’s Nest Pass Coal Industry from its Origins to the End of World War I” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1991), Chapter 2, for details of American entrepreneurial development in the Crow’s Nest region.

32. Morning Albertan, 6 June 1911.

33. Ibid., 25 May 1912.

34. City Clerk’s Correspondence, City Clerks Department Fonds, box 50, file 403. City of Calgary Archives (hereafter cited as CCA).

35. David Bright, The Limits of Labour: Class Formation and the Labour Movement in Calgary, 1883–1929 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998), 63–66. Winnipeg’s Labour Day Parade had five thousand participants in 1907.

36. Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1907.

37. Albertan, 3 September 1907. See Smith, Calgary’s Grand Story, 116, for background on M.S. McCarthy.

38. Albertan, 3 September 1907; Calgary Herald, 3 September 1907. The unions represented in the parade included those of the Tailors, Typographical and Pressmen, Bakers, Leather Workers, Soap Workers, Warehouse Workers, Blacksmiths, Teamsters, Boilermakers, Maintenance of Way Men, Machinists and Railway Carmen, Electrical Workers, Laborers, Lathers, Plumbers, Stone Cutters, Carpenters, Quarry Workers, Bricklayers, Tinsmiths, Plasterers, Painters, Engineers, Civic Employees, and General Machinists.

39. Albertan, 13 August 1902.

40. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

41. Gord Tolton, “Dreams of a Showman,” Canadian West Magazine 9, no. 1 (1993): 43.

42. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

43. Calgary Daily Herald, 23 June 1911.

44. Morning Albertan, 23 May 1912.

45. Morning Albertan, 2 September 1907. Before the 1911 Coronation Parade, the YWCA collected money from Calgarians.

46. “Cappy Smart: I Remember Calgary When,” magazine section, Calgary Herald, 3 December 1932. According to Smart, the area known as Moccasin Flats included all the land west of First Street West to Sixth Street West and from Seventeenth Avenue south to Rideau and Roxboro.

47. Ibid., 31 December 1932.

48. Members of the First Nations in the Calgary area participated in the 1901 Victoria Day Parade and First Nations students at the Calgary Indian Industrial School were in the 1902 Coronation Parade.

49. Morning Albertan, 7, 9 July 1906.

50. Ibid., 11 July 1906.

51. There were seven divisions in the parade under Fire Chief James Smart: First Division, H.B. Wilson; Second Division, Crispin E. Smith and J. Morrison; Third Division, H. Hewer; Fourth Division, H. McClelland and R. Morrison; Fifth Division, W. Gillespie; Sixth Division, H.P. Swain; Seventh Division, Mr. Rees. Labour Day parades followed the same arrangement. Calgary Herald, 1 July 1908. In 1911 the first part of the parade included the Citizens’ Band, the press, members of Parliament, candidates for the House of Commons, sport judges, the mayor, commissioners and aldermen, city employees, city officials, friendly societies, and the trade unions. The parade was led by two mounted policemen and the parade marshall, J.G. Lubbil. Morning Albertan, 4 September 1911.

52. Calgary Herald, 1 July 1908. Also in the first section were Attorney General Cross, Hon. W.T. Finlay, Judge Mitchell, the judges of the Exhibition, the directors of the Exhibition, two carriages of ex-mayors, and two carriages conveying the pageant committee. Eight former mayors in these carriages included George Murdock, Calgary’s first mayor. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

53. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

54. Ibid.

55. Calgary Herald, 1 July 1908.

56. Ibid.

57. Morning Albertan, 2 July 1908.

58. Emma LaRoque, “When the ‘Wild West’ is Me: Re-viewing Cowboys and Indians,” in Challenging Frontiers, ed. Lorry W. Felske and Beverly Rasporich, 136–55.

59. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid., 2 July 1908.

62. A.J. McNeill to the editor, newspaper clipping, no name or date given, RG10, vol. 1627, Library and Archives Canada (hereafter cited as LAC).

63. A.J. McNeill to Crispin Smith, 10 July 1903, RG10, vol. 1627, LAC.

64. A.J. McNeill to Chief Cappy Smart, August 2006, RG10, vol. 1627, LAC. McNeill also seemed happy to cooperate with John de Sousa of the Inter-Western Pacific Exhibition Company, Calgary. To de Sousa he wrote, “I shall arrange to get as many Indians in as possible to attend your exhibition, but had you given me longer notice I could have done better. Owing to the Indians being scattered over their Reserve at haymaking, some being 15 miles west…the bad condition of the trails and crossings, it is no easy matter to collect them in a hurry. I shall do the best I can however.” A.J. McNeill to John de Sousa, 30 August 1903, RG10, vol. 1627, LAC.

65. A.B. Perry to Comptroller of RNWMP, 5 January 1910, R.G. 18, series A1, vol. 390, file 237-10, LAC.

66. A.B. Perry to Comptroller of RNWMP, 9 September 1909, R.G. 18, series A1, vol. 390, file 238-10, LAC.

67. A. Burton Deane to A.B. Perry, 25 November 1909, R.G. 18, series A1, vol. 390, file 238-10, LAC.

68. John Maclean, McDougall of Alberta: A Life of Rev. John McDougall, D.D., Pathfinder of Empire and Prophet of the Plains (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1927), 260.

69. Keith Regular, “On Public Display,” Alberta History 34, no. 1 (1986): 7.

70. Ibid., 6.

71. Ibid., 9.

72. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid., 2 July 1908.

75. Ibid.

76. Calgary Herald, 1 July 1908.

77. Morning Albertan, 1 July 1908.

78. Seiler and Seiler, “Managing Contradictory Visions.”

79. Board of Commissioners Papers, series I, box 2, file R.R. Jamieson, 1909, n-z, CCA.

80. Clipping, n.d., n.a., M2160/41, GMA.

81. Ernie Richardson to J.M. Mackie, 3 August 1909, Board of Commissioners Papers, series I, box 2, file R.R. Jamieson, CCA.

82. Ernie Richardson to Mayor R.R. Jamieson, 3 August 1909, Board of Commissioners Papers, series I, box 2, file R.R. Jamieson, CCA.

83. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 35.

84. Morning Albertan, 6 July 1908.

85. Ibid., 2 July 1908.

86. Lounsberry, “Wild West Shows,” 146.

87. Tolton, “Dreams of a Showman,” 39; Guy Weadick, “Origin of the Calgary Stampede,” Alberta Historical Review 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1966): 21.

88. CESF, M2160a, series I, 17 April 1912, GMA; Guy Weadick, letter to editor, High River Times, 8 February 1940; CESF, M2160/41, Newsclippings file, 1940–1941, GMA. McMullen and Ad Day (Addison P. Day), the arena director, were each due 25% of the net profits. As this number shrunk to $15,000 and the Big Four had promised $5,000 to the Hospital Fund, they demanded that McMullen forfeit $2,500 of his share: Tolton, “Dreams of a Showman,” 43–44. Guy Weadick was adamant about the role of H.C. McMullen in organizing the 1912 parade, as Cappy Smart, who had been in on so many Calgary parades, was starting to get the credit by 1940: Guy Weadick, letter to the editor, High River Times, 8 February 1940, CESF, M2160/41, Newsclippings file, 1940–1941, GMA.

89. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 38.

90. Calgary Daily Herald, 25 May 1901.

91. Albertan, 13 August 1902.

92. Calgary Daily Herald, 25 May 1905.

93. Daily Herald, 1 July 1908.

94. James Gray notes that Smart was chairman of the parade committee and grand marshal from 1903 until two weeks before his death in 1939. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 109.

95. Calgary Daily Herald, 9 September 1912.

96. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 37. McDougall received $390 for his services, but it is unclear if this was to cover expenses or a personal payment.

97. Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1912.

98. Ibid.

99. Gray, Brand of Its Own, 37; Guy Weadick, “Origin of the Calgary Stampede,” Alberta Historical Review 14, no. 4 (Autumn 1966): 23. Weadick, Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1912.

100. Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1912.

101. Calgary News-Telegram, 3 September 1912.

102. Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1912.

103. Morning Albertan, 2 September 1911.

104. Tolton, “Dreams of a Showman,” 43.

105. Daily Herald, 3 September 1912; Morning Albertan, 2 September 1912. The unions for the 1911 Labour Day Parade included the Leatherworkers, Machinists, Allied Printing Trades, Bricklayers and Masons, Stonecutters, Brotherhood of Carpenters, Lathers, Amalgamated Carpenters, Plumbers and Steamfitters, Electricians 348, Metal Workers, Barbers, Plasterers, Railway Carmen, Painters, Bakers, Horseshoers, Electricians 416, and Brewery Workers.

106. Guy Weadick, letter to editor, High River Times, 8 February 1940, CESF, M2160/41, Newsclippings file, 1940–1941, GMA.

107. Calgary Daily Herald, 3 September 1912.

108. Bright, Limits of Labour.