Western Standard - June 29, 2026


CORY MORGAN： Calgary didn’t become famous by apologizing for its cowboy culture

Mentioned
Deborah Yedlin Mardi Gras Derrick Bell
MARTY UP NORTH： The state of ＂cooperative federalism＂ Western Standard News Update ｜ Pierre Poilievre shakes up Conservative shadow cabinet ｜ 30 Jun 2026

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

188.04

Word count

987

Sentence count

37

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The Calgary Stampede has been going on for almost a century. It s a state of mind that grasps the city for 11 days every year, and it s the envy of countless cities that can only dream of having such a distinct and ongoing event that takes over the entire city for a period of time. Unfortunately, to woke snobs, however, it s something shameful.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 i mean if you've been watching the news what's going on with uh what turned into a politicized
00:00:11 battle with well it's left versus right as usual it seems actually you know premier smith and other
00:00:17 conservatives saying that uh it's okay to have a party in the stampede and some others on the
00:00:23 other side saying no the city needs to crack down on the noise and such and i'll give it to rick
00:00:28 bell right in the middle complaining and curmudgeonly about the whole thing no matter what
00:00:31 at least he's consistent but it's an element of a bigger issue and calgary has a culture problem
00:00:38 and the problem isn't among the citizenry though it's it's in city hall where these
00:00:42 woke self-loathing souls have taken up habitation and they've been actively trying to undercut civic
00:00:48 pride and change the nature of the city they despise the agricultural and oil-filled roots
00:00:52 of the city and are incrementally trying to erase traces of them the calgary stampede is
00:00:57 just their latest target and they're not trying to regulate the nightlife out of the world acclaimed
00:01:02 party. Every city on earth has some sort of annual festival or fair but there's only a handful that
00:01:07 have unique events that take over the entire city for a period of time and Calgary is fortunate
00:01:11 enough to be one of those. The Calgary Stampede began as a rodeo but has become much more than
00:01:16 that. It also has a large exhibition in Midway but again the event is much more than that. It's a
00:01:22 state of mind that grasps the city for 11 days every year. People across the city dress in
00:01:27 western wear from the tasteful to the outright cheesy it doesn't really matter if a person's a
00:01:31 cowboy or not it's a period of good-natured fun cosplaying and people come from around the world
00:01:36 to take part in it even downtown in the corporate world it's been a long-standing tradition that
00:01:41 dress codes are relaxed during the stampede week and employees can wear denim the events go well
00:01:46 outside of the stampede grounds themselves pancake breakfasts barbecues parties held in every quarter
00:01:51 of the city and in people's homes businesses are decorated with hay bales and rail fences and
00:01:56 windows are painted with western and cowboy scenes. You can't walk a block in Calgary in any part of
00:02:01 town during Stampede Week without seeing evidence that the event is going on. Every bar tends into
00:02:06 a party hub during Stampede Week. Western bars such as the ranchmans have become legendary for
00:02:11 the Stampede parties held there. Downtown tents are erected with stages where live acts perform
00:02:16 and people party for every night of the event. Yes, it's just a giant piss-up for many people,
00:02:23 but that's part of the whole affair. I mean, should we pretend that Mardi Gras or Oktoberfest
00:02:27 are really any different? The Stampede brings in over $720 million in economic activity to
00:02:33 Alberta every year, and it's the envy of countless cities that can only dream of having such a
00:02:37 distinct and ongoing event. Unfortunately, to woke snobs, however, they see the Stampede as
00:02:42 something shameful. Look up Deborah Yedlin. She was complaining about the cowboy culture a few 0.70
00:02:47 years ago. That's the head of the Chamber of Commerce. They envision cowboys as hicks and
00:02:51 rodeos is primitive. They envision a city of coffee shops and art galleries unsullied by these
00:02:56 hundreds of thousands of partygoers, and these pompous, fun-hating fools are entrenched in 0.99
00:03:01 Calgary's City Hall. It really began during Nenshi's era and continued with Gondek. They began 0.98
00:03:06 filling the vacancies with woke hipsters and continued for over a decade. Now we're seeing 0.98
00:03:11 the fruits of all of that. Fort Calgary was renamed the Confluence, lest its proper name
00:03:16 offend an Indigenous person somewhere. They tried to cancel the fireworks at Fort Calgary as well
00:03:20 because they felt the city should be hanging its figurative head in shame
00:03:23 over the Kamloops residential school child burial hoax.
00:03:26 Calgary's slogan was changed from Heart of the New West,
00:03:29 because it was too Western, to be part of the energy.
00:03:32 But that referred to energy, so then they changed it to the
00:03:34 embarrassing and meaningless slogan of Blue Sky City.
00:03:38 It took them two steps, but they managed to eliminate references
00:03:40 to the West and oil field in a city slogan, and it was no mistake.
00:03:44 Now it's cracking down in the downtown partying.
00:03:48 Calgary City Hall is attacking a vital part of the whole affair, and they know it.
00:03:51 The young people coming to the Stampede are coming to party and to build memories.
00:03:55 If the lights are cut early and the sound is kept down, it isn't a party.
00:03:59 Out of 1.4 million people, just over 200 of them complained about the noise last year.
00:04:03 And City Hall felt that was enough to justify moving in.
00:04:06 Look, the Stampede's been happening for over 100 years,
00:04:08 and partying downtown's always been a part of that.
00:04:10 If it's really that onerous for a few people living near these event tents,
00:04:13 they shouldn't have chosen to live downtown.
00:04:15 It's like moving next to an airport and complaining about the planes.
00:04:17 take a week out of downtown and move to the suburbs then if it's that bad the battle brewing
00:04:22 over the party tents is much more than a small point of principle it's over the city taking a
00:04:26 big step towards killing a festival that made the city famous people have to push back and not let
00:04:31 these self-loathing calgarians work towards turning the calgary stampede into just another milquetoast 0.54
00:04:36 city fair rest assured the latte lappers in city hall won't stop with just the tents it's part of a 0.98
00:04:41 larger uglier plan and they can't be allowed to win here guys 0.99
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