Small Towns, Big Rodeos, No Apologies

The rodeo clown works harder than most middle managers and gets paid a fraction to be laughed at in front of a crowd that drove forty minutes for the privilege of watching him dodge a bull. That's the Stompede, in July, and if you've lived here more than a season you already have opinions about it — the parking, the dust, whether the pancake breakfast is worth getting up for. It is. Go for the breakfast even if the chuckwagons don't move you.

Here's the thing about festival season in this part of the world: the big one gets the attention and the small ones do the actual work. Grande Prairie's downtown events pull the crowds and the traffic cones, but drive twenty minutes in almost any direction and you'll