| It is a symbol of the city, and boomtown’s claim to fame overseas. But it also creates a challenge for those who want the city to project an image that’s a little less cowboy and a little more metropolitan.
The Calgary Stampede has long promoted a wild west image of Calgary to the world, but now the event and the city itself are attempting to combine it with their desire to show Calgary as a growing, sophisticated community with a diverse economy and culture.
According to Vance Gough, a marketing expert involved with re-branding the Stampede, the pioneer days remain perfectly relevant to the city’s current identity.
"It’s not contradicting at all. Think of the West, how it was settled," Gough says. "People came here from all over the world. All of the main cities had strong ethnic roots. Look at Calgary itself and the taming of the West. The reason it was wild was because you had all of these different cultures coming together."
This cultural influence is reflected in the Stampede’s expansion plans, which aim to reconcile the past and the present with a cultural sector and an international square complete with a hotel, shopping districts, etc.
"The re-branding is trying to keep (the Stampede’s) historical roots and keep up with the changing demographics of the new Calgary," says Gough. "They don’t want to lose their old members and roots, and want to reach out to new members."
Easier said than done, Gough acknowledges. He is on the committee responsible for the Stampede’s future makeover — how dramatic it will be is unclear, but the change promises to be noticeable, at least in scale, with an estimated price tag of $500 million. For a festival that has seen negligible change over the past decades, the significance is obvious.
Plans to diversify the city’s image abroad go beyond changing the Stampede. On Thursday, May 25, Mayor Dave Bronconnier announced a major initiative on the part of the city, its business community and its major promotional agencies to head to Toronto and Ottawa to promote all things Calgary.
Dubbed "Building Connections," the project focuses heavily on the city’s cultural and economic vibrance in the hopes of attracting investment from within Canada.
From the back of a polished CP Rail train car at the Palliser Hotel, the mayor, along with WestJet president and CEO Clive Beddoe and Bruce Graham, president and CEO of Calgary Economic Development, extolled Calgary’s sophistication, ending with the message, "Ontario, here we come."
Instead of focusing on oil and beef, the mayor plans to raise awareness about Calgary’s growing high-tech and logistical sectors, among others.
Meanwhile, Dave Pierce, entertainment producer and owner of Score Creative, will promote Calgary’s cultural side.
"We’re trying to help dispel some myths about Calgary. This city needs to get itself onto the map," Pierce says, adding that while there is a need to promote Calgary’s sophistication, the pioneer spirit is still an important part of its culture. "We’re trying to creatively marry the two."
Naheed Nenshi, instructor of non-profit studies at Mount Royal College, says the Calgary Stampede has a really interesting challenge ahead of it.
"You have a sense that, for (most) people, the history is not an authentic one. Or it’s the authentic history for a very small number of Calgarians."
But Nenshi says that doesn’t matter – the Stampede still has value as a community-building institution. As for the feeling that the Stampede compromises the city’s slick, urban image, he says that, too, is irrelevant.
According to Nenshi, even if the Stampede does not reflect the history of the vast majority of the city, we have made it our identity by hosting the event every year and championing pioneer values.
"That is kind of an insecure attitude. Toronto always describes itself as a world-class city, but any city that needs to describe itself as being world-class, isn’t.
"If we need to describe ourselves as urbane and metropolitan, that means we’re not. We need to be secure in that it’s part of our identity."
Despite plans to change the Stampede, combined with mostly homegrown fanfare about Calgary’s big-city status , the next out-of-town VIP to visit the city will still, of course, receive the ceremonial white cowboy hat – as will the one after that. |
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