When I briefly lived in Estevan, Sask., I attended my first rodeo but it was so small I think it hardly qualifies as an experience of note.
While the Little Britches is a junior rodeo, it was better attended, had more events and more competitors. It also gave me a further view of life in the Cariboo.
Growing up in the Greater Toronto Area, it would be hard to find anyone all that interested in going to a rodeo. Some people would go to the track and gamble on horse races but that was really it. But rodeos just weren’t in anybody’s mind, except maybe for the Calgary Stampede.
Rodeos do exist in Ontario, though not many but almost all of them were a bit of a way from Toronto. There’s the Ultimate Rodeo Tour and the Official Ontario Rodeo Association. The Rawhide Rodeo Tour also makes stops in Ontario, including some cities like London.
Of course, I didn’t get to see a lot of the two-day rodeo because of other events and stories I needed to cover, but I enjoyed what I saw.
I think it’s quite interesting that kids as young as 12 out here are trying to wrestle cattle or riding them bareback, while back home kids that age were either playing soccer or baseball during the summer.
Not a single friend of mine I can think off ever tried it, or ever talked about it. I had a lot of girlfriends who were obsessed with and owned horses, but mostly only for show purposes. I can only remember one friend who had a farm in the rural Milton area, but again I don’t think she had any interest in any type of rodeo events.
In Grade 9 and 10, I lived in Ireland where two of its top ten exports are dairy and meat. Outside of Dublin, Cork and Belfast, it doesn’t take long to find a farm or ranch full of cattle and horses. After all, Ireland is known for its famed horsemanship and horse racing has been one of the country’s most popular spectator sports going back centuries and is one of, if not, the best breeders of thoroughbred horses.
Yet, rodeo culture has never developed in the country. The only type of bull riding you would find is of the mechanical sort. I doubt you would see anybody practising their roping techniques from the saddle either unless a young kid just watched an American Western movie.
So it’s interesting being exposed to this culture and while sometimes to an outsider, it can look a little cruel I think some of the events are still very fun to watch and I look forward to experiencing more.
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