Kimberly A. Williams, Stampede: Misogyny, White Supremacy, and Settler Colonialism (Halifax & Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing, 2021)

Kimberly A. Williams’ Stampede: Misogyny, White Supremacy, and Settler Colonialism is a very welcome addition to feminist scholarship and the previous analyses dedicated to the Calgary Stampede. Several historians and cultural theorists have explored the significance of the Stampede’s legacy to the prairie west, but Williams provides a feminist analysis of a more contemporary iteration of the event, the 2012 centennial celebrations. If, like Williams, you are not from Calgary, or even an Albertan, the Calgary Stampede certainly is a spectacular oddity. Even though she positions herself as an outsider experiencing an unfamiliar cultural event, given that the origin of the Stampede was an echo of the American Wild West shows, Williams might be the perfect person to be asking these important feminist questions.

The book provides a thoughtful consideration of who does and does not benefit from the Calgary Stampede’s festivities and pervasive cultural impact. In fact, Williams focuses not only on who is missing from the narrative, but who is harmed by the Stampede. It is difficult to dispute the book’s central argument that “ … the Calgary Stampede is, at its core, a misogynistic, white supremacist institution that is both a product and an active purveyor of Canada’s ongoing settler-colonial project” (2), and Williams uses the book’s chapters to great effect in supporting this assertion. The author shows the Stampede to be more than the innocuous spectacle that many make it out to be, and the book challenges the prevalent celebratory narrative inherent not only in the ten-day event but also in much of the writing dedicated to situating the Calgary Stampede as a cultural icon.

By focusing on what Williams refers to as “Stampede clichés,” things that have occurred so frequently and therefore become normalized and divested of original meanings, Stampede restores meaning to the seemingly innocent. She claims that she does not intend to either dismiss or vilify the Calgary Stampede, but hopes to “ … encourage a more complex understanding of the ways in which its constructed narrative(s) both helped to create and continue to perpetuate systems and structures in our city that cause many of us to be vulnerable to gender- and race-based violence and exploitation.” (17) She accomplishes this by situating the Stampede in the broader context of gender injustice experienced in Calgary. According to Williams, by scrutinising the narrative promoted by the Calgary Stampede, it is possible to reveal the ways in which the event is responsible for creating and maintaining a social, political, and economic environment detrimental to women in Calgary specifically, but across Alberta more broadly.

Throughout the book, Williams uses salient examples from the 2012 Stampede to support these claims. She situates the analysis within settler colonialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and misogyny. Chapter 2, “Petro-Cowboys and the Frontier Myth,” lays the foundation and orients readers to the theoretical underpinnings. While a stronger connection could have been developed between the frontier myth as it applied to the United States and the adoption of the myth by the Canadian prairie west, the chapter succeeds at situating the role of resource extraction in settler colonialism and connects it with the reification of the oil and gas industry at the Calgary Stampede. By continuing this analysis in Chapter 3, “Who’s Greatest Together?” Williams’ reading of the centennial parade includes an interpretation of militarisation and the connection to oil and gas. This relationship seems so obvious, especially in a settler-colonial society, but very little has been written about these aspects of the Stampede especially as they relate to the parade.

Williams’ interpretation of the Stampede Parade also draws attention to both the lack of women participants and the type of femininity that is expected and condoned at the Stampede – a theme that reappears in Chapters 4 and 5. In Chapter 4, “Colonial Redux: The Calgary Stampede’s ‘Imaginary Indians,’” Williams specifically grapples with First Nations’ participation in the Elbow River Camp and the Indian Princess competition. It is a difficult balance for a white settler to comment on the colonial underpinnings of these cultural events, however, Williams manages to provide valuable insights while acknowledging her positionality.

Chapter 5, “Sexcapades and Stampede Queens,” provides the strongest analysis of heteropatriarchy at work at the Stampede. Williams deftly contrasts the expectations of Stampede royalty, the Queen, and Princesses, with the policing of women’s dress and actions at the midway and the expectations of sex tourists. This analysis culminates in a brief discussion of the Calgary Stampede, the oil and gas industry, and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. It seems like women cannot win at the Stampede, and William concludes that “ … the Calgary Stampede and a thoroughly decolonized gender justice in our city cannot simultaneously exist.” (192)

This book does not possess many shortcomings, and the use of cultural studies’ theoretical methods are effective. For example, there are consistently strong descriptions and analyses of the visual sources. At times, the contextualization of the images or advertisements could have been expanded to remind readers that these visual narratives have been used and reused in reverberations throughout Stampede history. Some of those visual texts have been specific to the rodeo, an element of the Stampede that Williams decided to omit, which is reasonable given that other scholarly work has focused solely on the rodeo competitions. However, there are times when the book could have further explored the opportunities for subversion during the event. There seems to be little room to explore agency or potential power inversions. In recognition that one book cannot do it all, the author identifies questions for further analysis and provides truck nuts in the margins as a visual cue. Readers will not be able to help themselves from repeating the opening question, “What the f*ck?”

The conclusion provides excellent suggestions for future research and action. It is exciting to read a book that boldly scrutinizes the Calgary Stampede as both a result and a perpetuator of settler colonialism. The argument is accessible and convincing. Even though Williams’ book provides a detailed deconstruction of one example of a location-specific cultural spectacle, Stampede reminds us of the importance of challenging our regional cultural myths in light of settler colonialism and heteropatriarchy.

Susan L. Joudrey

Dalhousie University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.52975/llt.2022v89.0019.