Calgary & Southern Alberta

Early Stampede Star, Guy Weadick
Courtesy of the Calgary Herald

Since Calgary first became a city, its boom/bust economic cycles have alternately exasperated and exhilarated its promoters. Equally vexatious for promoters has been the uncertainty over which "Calgary" civic leaders and citizens wish to project. Calgary's western image has been associated over the years with the label of "Cowtown". For most people, the title is disparaging, conjuring images of dirty conditions, cattle roaming Main Street, and a general lack of concern about civic appearance. Historical fact lends some substance to the image. Like the residents of every western Canadian town, Calgarians in the early settlement days witnessed dust, dirt, and motley collections of animals in the streets. The town's untidy condition, however, was more a product of the shortage of financial and technological resources that plagued all prairie towns, than of citizen apathy.

As early as 1884, when Calgary was incorporated as a town, local boosters were envisioning Calgary as a metropolitan city, and creating numerous schemes to promote a quick ascent in status. In 1886, when local officials imposed laws requiring that major downtown buildings be constructed of sandstone rather than wood, Calgary began a physical transformation from a "Cowtown" to an imposing "Sandstone City". Changes in the town's physical appearance reflected and bolstered the great economic expectations voiced by civic leaders. Visitors and the eastern press saw the new sandstone buildings as indications of a solid, stable community in which business and investment would flourish. By this time, as the centre of the western cattle industry and many CPR operations, Calgary already had the full panoply of services and facilities associated with a "civilised" lifestyle, including elite social clubs, cultural venues, and corporate businesses.

Since World War I, numerous social and economic changes have continued to alter Calgarians' image of themselves. Although the cattle industry remained significant to Calgary's economy after World War I, it was no longer the dominant contributor. Agriculture also declined in the Post-War period, and the incredible population boom ceased. Calgary's economic and physical growth, once seemingly assured, stopped. The search for a new economic base acquired new focus and direction with the oil boom and the return to prosperity after World War II. To some, the new economy, which was explicitly urban in its emphasis, seemed to have little connection to its ranching and farming past.

The success of the oil and natural gas industry coincided with broad technological advances that changed lifestyles after the War. Half of Alberta's population was composed of urban dwellers by 1950. While many rural southern Albertans moved to Calgary, the city also drew newcomers from other more distant towns and cities. Since the 1960s, fewer and fewer Calgarians have been able to trace their roots to southern Alberta ranching and agriculture. Not surprisingly, many current residents feel little attachment to Calgary's western image, and view the continued cultivation of this image as an impediment to a more appropriate contemporary cosmopolitan view of the city.

In recent years, Calgary has regularly addressed the question of what image its citizens now wish to project. Few image-related issues have engendered more debate than those concerning the Calgary Stampede. Some people argue that the yearly event furthers an inaccurate and unflattering "Cowtown" image. Nonetheless, it remains that the traditional western image provides substantial revenue for the city. Today, the Stampede alone pumps $235 million into the city's economy, and accounts for some 20 percent of tourism spending. Moreover, recent surveys of the tourism industry indicate that the international appetite for the western experience traditionally offered by Calgary has not yet been satiated. Present-day boosters, like their predecessors who began the Stampede and its related appeals to tourism, will not likely dispense with Stampede revenues without protest.