Christine Leppard, Historical Specialist and Archivist, Calgary Stampede
Proposal Type: Panel
Abstract: In 2013, the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede received the largest single-source donation in its long and storied history: $15 million from Calgary businessman Don Taylor, slated for the construction of a western heritage interpretive centre featuring industry-leading archives and educational facilities. The SAM Centre, named for Taylor’s father, is scheduled to open in 2018. Preparations for it are in full swing, and they are forcing the Stampede to address the cultural “edge” on which it sits. Best known as an annual 10-day festival filled with cowboys (both real and imagined), farmers, and an Indian princess, the Stampede’s history is inextricably intertwined with the city’s cultural and economic growth. The first Stampede was held in 1912 and promoted Calgary, then a mere ranching outpost and stop on the Canada Pacific Railway, as the “Last Best West” – a paradise for ranchers and agriculturalists. Even then, the Stampede was organized as a tribute to days gone by. It celebrated the disappearing west, characterized by rowdy cowpunchers rustling cattle on the open range, which had ended when the government instituted closed leases on ranch land to encourage homesteaders. Just two years later, Alberta’s ranching economy found new competition with the discovery of oil. Throughout the twentieth century, the oil and gas sector took over as the dominant industry and has thrust the city onto the global economic stage.
The modern, cosmopolitan, multicultural Calgary still values western heritage and culture as its identity, best seen in the modern spectacle that is the annual Calgary Stampede and Exhibition, which has consistently drawn over one million visitors since the 1970s. From the “Last Best West” to the newly-adopted “Heart of the New West” motto, the city of Calgary is struggling to make sense of its new role regionally and globally.
During the construction of the SAM Western Heritage Interpretive Centre, we face many challenges: representation, accessibility, inclusion, diversity, cultivation of public interest. Indeed, we must consider the role of the SAM Centre and its potential to acquaint visitors to the rich, sometimes contentious, many-edged history of western heritage and the Stampede’s role in its development and sustainment. This panel will address the challenges facing the SAM Western Heritage Centre in marrying the Calgary Stampede’s legacy to modern conditions. It will assess the Stampede both as an event and an actor in cultivating a specific vision of “western heritage” and explore the ways in which the new SAM Centre delivers opportunities to add texture to a history that can often appear whitewashed.
Seeking: This panel will feature three panelists, we are currently searching for the third. The third panelist would ideally address some of the following issues: First Nations/American Indians in the West, representing First Nations/American Indians in museums, First Nations/American Indians and involvement in spectacles or major events. We are open to other topics, so if this panel interests you please contact us.
Further, we are looking for feedback on the panel proposal itself. Particularly how to sharpen it. We are looking to explore the idea of “western heritage” and unpack the ways it has been defined and who has defined it throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. We believe that the Stampede Archive’s vast holdings can help add texture to this story and ideally it will be displayed at the SAM Centre in 2018.
Dr. Christine E. Leppard is the Historical Specialist and Archivist for the Calgary Stampede, where she is responsible for exhibit development, writing Stampede history, managing the Stampede’s growing collection of artifacts, photographs, and corporate records, and preparing for the 2018 opening of the SAM Western Heritage Centre. Her paper will address this process and the challenges presented in developing exhibitions for the Centre.
Shannon Murray is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Calgary. Her dissertation assess social reform, boosterism, and urban design in Progressive-Era Minneapolis. Her paper will assess the civic impact of the Stampede, its beginnings as a booster vehicle for Calgary and as a way to preserve and promote a specific interpretation of the “Last Best West,” and the legacy of these origins on the concept of “western heritage” and the role of the Stampede in it.
Related Topics: Museums/Exhibits, Civic Engagement, Place
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to share contact information for other people the proposer should reach out to, please get in contact directly: Christine Leppard, cleppard[at]calgarystampede.com
If you have general ideas or feedback to share please feel free to use the comments feature below.
I wonder if there’s anyone at the Glenbow who may be able to participate in this session.
I wonder if the proposal on the El Paso smokestack might be included in this panel? It may be a stretch but it seems to me that there are possibilities for discussing collective memory and western heritage broadly, from the ranching west to the mining west, from the realities of the industrial west to remembrance of a romanticized west. In one instance we have a major donation to create a significant cultural institution that will shape public memory and civic identity for decades to come; in another a conscious effort to demolish an extant structure and erase memory. Both were likely undertaken in the name of boosterism and economic development. Both likely involve borderlands and issues of race or ethnicity. While there is nothing new in the notion that the cattle frontier has been romanticized, I wonder if there are possibilities for conversations on what we remember, what we forget, and perhaps even how/if the mission of the Calgary western heritage centre could be broadened?