Call me un-Canadian, but I have never worn a cowboy hat, never roped a calf and I have never been to the Calgary Stampede. And I don't plan to. The convergence of angry beef, wild horses and men in pointy boots who chew tobacco has never struck me as entertainment.
The stampede is billed as one of the world's great outdoor sporting events, if you think falling off a horse is a sport. Last year it drew 1.2 million visitors, and many of them were surprised to see that Calgary is not a cow town at all, but a modern metropolis with office towers, white-collar workers and a booming economy. The economy used to run on grain and livestock. Now it runs on petroleum, an enormous amount of it. Alberta is Canada's fuel tank, the country's richest province by far.
So why, for two weeks every year, does it pretend to be Dodge City? Last week, to help kick off the stampede, a group of cowboys were herding 200 wild horses into the city at the end of a six-day trail ride. Organisers thought it would be fun to see high-spirited mustangs clip-clopping down city streets. The horses were skittish - all that concrete and unfamiliar city noise. Then a train passed by, and the horses spooked. They began galloping across a bridge where Darlene Cook was sitting in her car.
'I just prayed,' she said, 'that these horses would be smart enough to go around my car and not over my car.' They did go around, but there wasn't enough room, and nine hysterical animals went over the bridge railing, and died. Ms Cook says there wasn't a policeman or barricade in sight.
This is not the first time the stampede was marred by mayhem. In 1986, 12 animals were killed in competition, including six in a chuck-wagon accident. Six horses were killed in 2002. This year, the Humane Society is calling for a boycott of the stampede, but most westerners dismiss this as tenderfoot whining. ('Tenderfoot' refers to the discomfort that city folk suffer when they wear cowboy boots).
The chairman of the stampede sniffed that there will always be spoilsports out there, trying to protest against 'circuses and rodeos'. And besides, cowboys do not walk away from a fight.