Renato Gandia

Every July, Calgary changes clothes.

It begins almost overnight. Cowboy hats appear in office elevators. Plaid shirts replace business suits. Boots click across polished corporate hallways. Coffee shops play country music. Hay bales decorate the entrances of banks, hospitals and grocery stores. For ten days, the city seems to agree to become someone else.

Or perhaps, someone it has always imagined itself to be.

When I first moved to Alberta nearly three decades ago, I couldn’t quite make sense of it. It all felt a little theatrical, as though someone had sent a memo reminding everyone that Stampede week had arrived and it was time to dress accordingly. I watched colleagues transform before my eyes, trading ties for bolo ties and polished dress shoes for cowboy boots.

It was both amusing and fascinating.

The irony, of course, is that I can hardly claim to be an outsider.

I own several cowboy hats. One is a proper felt hat that I bought years ago when I worked as press secretary to Alberta’s Minister of Agriculture and Forestry. I have a couple of pairs of cowboy boots too. Somewhere in my closet are the jeans and belt buckle to complete the look. If I wanted to, I could blend into Stampede week without anyone questioning whether I belonged.

I have also seen the Stampede from behind the scenes.

Long before I worked in government communications, I was a journalist. Every July, covering the Calgary Stampede became my assignment for what felt like an endless stretch of ten days. I interviewed chuckwagon drivers, rodeo competitors, volunteers and visitors. I wandered through exhibition halls and barns. I sampled foods that were deep-fried, smoked, grilled, dipped in chocolate or served on sticks simply because someone thought they should be. I covered concerts, parades and agricultural competitions. By the end of each Stampede, I had accumulated enough dust on my boots to make them look authentic.

Somewhere between filing stories and chasing deadlines, I realized the Stampede was about far more than cowboy hats.

Yes, there is performance.

How could there not be?

People who have never ridden a horse wear boots to the office. Executives who spend the rest of the year in tailored suits suddenly look ready to work a cattle ranch. Even those of us who know better willingly participate in the ritual.

But perhaps every community has its rituals.

Growing up in the Philippines, I saw entire towns transformed during fiestas. Streets filled with colour. Homes opened to neighbours and strangers alike. Families prepared food for days. Religious processions wound through communities while brass bands played. People wore clothes they reserved for special occasions. Looking at those celebrations from the outside, one could dismiss them as performance.

Yet they were something much deeper.

They were declarations of belonging.

Every culture has moments when ordinary life pauses so that people can remember who they are together.

Perhaps that is what the Stampede is.

For ten days, Calgary tells itself a story.

It is a story rooted in ranching, agriculture and the people who built communities across the Prairies. Like every story a place tells about itself, it is selective. Alberta today is also engineers and nurses, teachers and newcomers, artists and software developers, oil workers and entrepreneurs. It is people from every continent who now call this province home. No single cowboy hat could possibly represent all of that.

And yet stories are not meant to contain everything. They simply remind us where we have been.

Living in Alberta has taught me that identity is rarely fixed. It evolves.

As an immigrant, I have spent years learning new customs while holding on to old ones. I still cook Filipino food in our home. I still hear the rhythms of my first language in my English. I have learned to appreciate winter, though I will never pretend to enjoy scraping ice from my windshield. Somewhere along the way, Alberta became home—not because I abandoned where I came from, but because I allowed another place to become part of me.

Perhaps that is why I have come to appreciate the Stampede differently.

I no longer see only the costumes.

I see families who return every year because their grandparents brought them. I see volunteers giving thousands of hours simply because they believe in the event. I see children meeting farm animals for the first time. I see immigrants discovering another layer of the province they have chosen to call home. I see neighbours gathering over pancake breakfasts who might otherwise never meet.

These moments matter.

Community is built as much through shared rituals as through shared geography.

Every place has symbols that outsiders find curious. Every culture has traditions that appear theatrical until you understand what they mean to the people who celebrate them.

The Stampede is Calgary’s annual reminder that cities, like people, carry stories about themselves. Some stories are historical. Others are aspirational. Most are a little of both.

This morning, as I watched another Stampede week begin, I smiled at the familiar sight of cowboy hats appearing once again across the city.

Later this week, I may even open my closet, pull on my own boots, choose one of those hats, and join everyone else.

Not because I suddenly became a cowboy.

But because, every now and then, there is something quietly beautiful about participating in the story of the place you call home.