The 100th Calgary Stampede: real men don't kill horses for fun

With the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede almost upon us -- the "Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth" marks its centennial on July 6 -- it's time once again to turn our attention a popular event that uses pointless cruelty for entertainment.

For, sure as shootin', a horse will die in a Stampede chuckwagon race this year, as horses die pointlessly every year for the entertainment of the humans who pack the Stampede grounds to witness the thundering excitement of the races.

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Last year, only two horses died in the Stampede's chuckwagon racing competition. The year before, six were killed at the Stampede, four directly attributable to chuckwagon racing. There are always some -- since 1986, well over 50 have been killed.

When it happens, the people who protest this cruelty will be dismissed as sissies and do-gooders. Professional chuckwagon racers will say how very, very sad they are. The deaths will be ignored by the Stampede's organizers, and by pretty well everyone else in political Calgary. Politicians of all stripes who should know better will show up at the Stampede looking fashionably butch in their Western Stetsons, chaps, spurs and Cuban heels.

Not one of them will say anything negative about the fate that awaits the wagon horses, because that would be tempting fate and, in the case of Conservatives like Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Alberta Premier Alison Redford, the rage of the people to whom they owe their success, if not their souls.


http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2012/05/100th-calgary-stampede-real-men-don%E2%80%99t-kill-horses-fun