John Ballem's Alberta Alone

Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers

Pierre Trudeau rides in the Stampede Parade, 1978 (Photo: Calgary Herald)

It’s Sharon’s first Stampede parade and she’s anxious about parking and crowds. Leaving her Chevy Vega in an impromptu parking lot, she guides her five-year-old daughter to their reserved seats on one of the bleachers on Ninth Avenue. Soon, the cloudless sky is marred by a sense of menace. The crowd erupts into a thunder of boos and catcalls as the parade marshal approaches. Prime Minister Lambert sits rigid atop a golden palomino, glaring straight ahead. He ignores the banners and placards. STAY OUT OF ALBERTA… CANADA WHO NEEDS IT?... SEPARATE NOW. The parade continues and the tension eases. Sharon’s daughter delights in the animal mascots dancing down the street. Then a giant raccoon scoops the girl up and dances her into the parade.  

The laughter died on Sharon’s lips as the animal figure disappeared in the mass of prancing horses… In the distance she saw the furry figure with the small, pale face of her child peering over its shoulder. The blaring racket of the band still blotted out all other sounds but she could see Shelley’s lips forming “Mommy, Mommy!” They disappeared behind a flower-decked float.

John Ballem, Alberta Alone (General Publishing, 1981)

Yvonne Trainer's Tom Three Persons

Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers

Stampede Corral (Photo: Shelagh McHugh Cherak)

On Labour Day weekend 1912, six hundred First Nations people arrive in Calgary for the first Stampede. The impresario Guy Weadick has persuaded the authorities to allow Indians off their reserves to participate in the six-day celebration. Among them is Tom Three Persons, a young Blood man from the Standoff Reserve southwest of Lethbridge. The poet Yvonne Trainer sees the Stampede through Tom’s eyes. Walking through the streets of Calgary, he notices the electric lights shining in windows.

Power

in Calgary

and none of it

carried in the bag

of the Medicine Man

or in the wisdom

of the chief

On parade day, Tom canters down Eighth Avenue on horseback.

Painted faces       war-whoops

and feathers

we rode like burning hell

through the streets of Calgary

We were stared at with wonder

and with more than a little fear

At the rodeo, all eyes are on the gifted Blood horseman. He mounts a black bronco named Cyclone, an outlaw horse known among cowboys as the Black Terror.

everyone was standing hands clapping

stone to stone

Then I knew

and walked out lake-quiet

into the shadows

of the motor-cars

but someone with a box camera

came and drew me into the sun

and I couldn’t help

smiling a little

when he snapped this picture.

Yvonne Trainer, “1912,” “Calgary Stampede, 1912” and “Snapshot,” Tom Three Persons  (Frontenac House, 2002)

Nancy Huston's Plainsong

Calgary through the Eyes of Writers

First Stampede Parade, 1912 (Photo: Milward Marcell, Calgary Stampede)

Twelve-year-old Paddon Sterling rides into Calgary from a ranch southwest of town. His father steers the democrat through the crowds of people streaming into the city for the first Stampede, September 1912.

Calgary had gone mad. A quarter of a million people surged together to congratulate themselves on their health and wealth, their young strong virile brawny land, the rich lore of the West.

Paddon and his father watch the parade – “a fantabulous re-enactment” of the province’s short history. The boy stands "in a throng that lined both sides of Eighth Avenue twenty people thick and all you could smell were armpits.” For the first time, Paddon sees Indians in all their finery, waving “perplexedly to the crowds who had defeated them and were now tossing thousands of white Stetsons in the air to hail their illusive comeback in near delirium.”

At the rodeo, Paddon’s senses are assaulted "by the loud voices, the pushing and the stamping, the smell of rank excitement and manure.” Later, as his father dances with a strange, beautiful woman, Paddon begins to retch. They head home in the democrat, his father cursing, the boy “desperate… to be anywhere in the world” but here. 

As you left the fairgrounds you began to sneeze again and [your father] burst out, For the luva God, Paddon, wot is the matter with yer… I go out o’ my way to give yer a treat and yer go an’ wreck the whole bleedin’ day. I’m tellin’ yer man, there won’t be too many more chances, if yer want to ride broncs yer better look sharp ‘cos I can’t be bothered with crybabies always snufflin’ in a hanky.

Nancy Huston, Plainsong (HarperCollins, 1993)

Katherine Govier's Between Men

Calgary through the Eyes of Writers

Calgary Stampede Ferris Wheel (Photo: Shelagh McHugh Cherak)

After a decade in Toronto, Suzanne Vail has come back to Calgary. She wanted to settle in the east, but “There she’d had too little weight, no depth; she had passed along the streets like a shadow.” And besides, in Toronto she could never see the sky. “It’s like being up to your eyeballs in hills and trees. It’s like standing on a bed that’s gone soft.”

Coming home to Calgary in the mid-1980s is a bumpy ride. Suzanne is at odds with the city: the traffic, the construction, the macho culture of money. “It was a striving kind of place. Always trying and never, by accident of geography, arriving.”

She cowboys up for Stampede: fringed vest, beaded belt, white Stetson. Only her shit kickers are authentic: riding boots she wore as a teenager during her horsey phase. For old time’s sake, she goes down to the Stampede grounds. She rides the Ferris wheel and reacquaints herself with the view.

She was on the front of the wheel, gently swinging. It turned a dozen feet and stopped to load. She saw her years stacked beneath her in stages; she had ridden on that seat, and then that one. She could see up to the North Hill, down to the river. There was so much out there, in this large bowl offered of the city, much more even than she ever thought. The higher she got the more she could see. There was no need for limits. The wheel turned and stopped, turned and stopped. At last it was full. Grandly lifting to begin the descent, she rose up from the centre and went over the top.

Katherine Govier, Between Men (Viking, 1987)

Edna Alford's "Half Past Eight"

Calgary through the Eyes of Writers

Bing Crosby at the Stampede Parade, 1959 (Photo: Alison Jackson Collection, Calgary Public Library)

Stampede Parade Day, 1977. Tessie Bishop and Flora Henderson head out of the seniors’ lodge where they live and ride the city bus to Mewata Stadium. They’re an odd couple. Tessie, thin and petite in her best summer dress and Scarlet Fire lipstick, and Flora, tall and big-boned with fuzzy pin curls sticking out from under her straw hat. They find their seats in the midday heat, clutching Revels and paper cups of Orange Crush, Flora cursing as they go. “Why don’t you watch where you’re goin’, ya dirty bugger.” They’re just in time for the parade marshal: Prince Charles, riding an RCMP stallion. Almost as exciting, Tessie thinks, as the time Bing Crosby waved at her from his convertible when he was parade marshal years before.

By the time the parade finishes, the women are hot and thirsty. Tessie hails a Yellow Cab and they head to the Palliser Hotel. Inside, they settle into red velvet chairs in the Rimrock Lounge and order drinks: a Shanghai Sling for Tessie, a shot of whiskey – neat – for Flora. After their second drink, an old man in western clothes joins them and buys two more rounds. Unlike their friends back at the lodge, Tessie and Flora will be out well after half past eight.

“Well wha’ did you ladies think of it this year?” asked Hank.

“Stacks up, I’d say,” said Tessie. “Better than last year’s if you ask me.”

“Didya ever see so much horseshit in all yer life?” Hank shook his heavy hawk head.

“Never,” Tessie replied, emphatically.

“Seems to me it don’t all come from a horse’s ass neither.”

Edna Alford, “Half Past Eight,” A Sleep Full of Dreams (Oolichan, 1981) 

Anthologized in Alberta Bound: Thirty Stories by Alberta Writers, Fred Stenson, ed. (NeWest Press, 1985)

Writing the City: The First Post

Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers

Calgary's Eighth Avenue, 1912 (postcard)

I have lived in Calgary most of my life, but I have rarely seen the city imagined on the page. For a long time, I thought it was the city’s fault. The soil seemed too thin for the literary imagination, too far away from the country’s literary centre.

In 1983, the Alberta author Jon Whyte argued that writers had failed to evoke Calgary’s specialness in their fiction or poetry.

This winter, I set out to see if his assessment still holds true.

I thought my search would be brief, that at best, I might find a novel or two, a handful of poems, a few essays and plays. But months later, I am still at it. Books crowd my desk. A reading list has blossomed as sudden and urgent as a Calgary spring. The city, it turns out, has a literary landscape: all I had to do was go looking.

In the weeks to come, I will be posting glimpses of the city as writers have imagined it. You will find excerpts, a little context and links so you can track down the featured work. If you have a favourite Calgary story you think I should check out, please let me know.

Stampede is around the corner, so that’s where we begin. New posts will appear on Fridays. I hope you’ll drop by often.

Welcome to Writing the City: Calgary Through the Eyes of Writers. 

Writing the City: Coming soon

How have writers brought Calgary to life on the page? What do their stories tell us about the city? In this weekly blog series, I'll be posting glimpses of the city as writers have imagined it. 

Stay tuned! The series launches Friday, June 19th.