The Cowboy Spirit: Guy Weadick and the Calgary Stampede

Louis A. Knafla is a professor of history at the University of Calgary
and the co-editor of Law, Society, and the State: Essays in Modern Legal
History.

Born in Rochester, New York, in 1885, Guy Weadick grew up at the end of
the open-range era in the history of the southern and western United
States. Buffalo Bill Cody’s “Buffalo Bill Wild West” shows, and
others of the late 1890s and early 1900s, mesmerized young Guy. He and
his wife, Florence LaDue, would spend the majority of their professional
lives traveling across North America doing rodeos and vaudeville shows.
In 1912, Guy joined forces with ranchers Pat Bruns, A.E. Cross, and
George Lane to create Calgary’s Frontier Days, which later became the
Calgary Stampede. The Great Depression led to Guy’s dismissal from the
Stampede in 1932. There would be no professional comeback, although in
1952, the year before his death, Guy was fкted during the Stampede’s
40th anniversary.

Donna Livingstone’s gracefully written and engaging portrait of Guy
and Florence Weadick is complemented by carefully chosen and superbly
reproduced illustrations.