Abstract
The Calgary Stampede is one of Canada’s most popular annual festivals. Its long history and its mission to preserve Western values might suggest that its principle character, the cowboy, would be relatively uncomplicated. Yet recent scholarship on popular culture and public celebrations, as well as that on gender and masculinity, encourages a re-examination of the cowboy at the Calgary Stampede. This article examines how the Calgary Stampede constituted cowboy masculinities during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Focusing on the era when the flamboyant Guy Weadick was the Stampede’s manager (1912, 1923–32), it first explores how the idea that the West could recuperate masculinity was expressed through a definition of the cowboy that was, in Weadick’s words, ‘open to all.’ As rodeo became a sport, a new normative cowboy emerged, as local men, both settler and Aboriginal, took centre stage, excluding women and performers. This paper argues that the Calgary Stampede helped foster the development of new rodeo masculinities for both settler and Aboriginal men, ones grounded in the respectability of sport, and in the economic, social, and political challenges of early-twentieth-century Western Canada. Resume: Le Stampede de Calgary est l’un des festivals annuels les plus populaires au Canada. Sa longue histoire et sa mission visant a preserver les valeurs occidentales pourraient donner a penser que son personnage principal, le cow-boy, est assez peu complique. Pourtant, des etudes universitaires recentes sur la culture populaire et les celebrations publiques, de meme que sur le genre et la masculinite, encouragent a reexaminer le cow-boy au Stampede de Calgary. Cet article analyse la facon dont le Stampede de Calgary a constitue les caracteristiques masculines (ou masculinites) du cow-boy au cours des trois premieres decennies du xx e siecle. En se centrant sur l’epoque ou le flamboyant Guy Weadick etait le directeur du Stampede (1912, 1923–1932), l’auteure explore l’idee selon laquelle l’Ouest pouvait recuperer la masculinite et l’expression de cette idee par une definition du cow-boy comme etant, selon les termes memes de Waddick, « accessible a tous ». A mesure que le rodeo devenait un sport, un nouveau type de cow-boy emergea : les hommes de la place, colons et autochtones, occuperent toute la scene, a l’exclusion des femmes et des acteurs. L’article soutient que le Stampede de Calgary a contribue a accelerer le developpement, pour les colons comme pour les hommes autochtones, de nouvelles masculinites du rodeo enracinees dans la respectabilite du sport et dans les defis economiques, sociaux et politiques de l’Ouest canadien au debut du xx e siecle.
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