At The Calgary Stampede, A Breakfast Tradition Turns 100

If you’ve lived in Calgary for a while, chances are you’ve come to associate the toasty-sweet smell of pancakes with the beginning of summer. For the first 10 days of July, the delicious, fried-food aroma of corn dogs and mini doughnuts wafts out in a radius around the Calgary Stampede grounds, where what has become known as the greatest outdoor show on earth takes place each year.

But the breakfast itself is something special: City-wide, the morning air is thick with the smell of pancakes and sausages on the grill and intensely perfumed with maple syrup as communities, BIAs, clubs and corporations carry on what is now a 100-year-old tradition: the Stampede pancake breakfast.

This year marks a century since Jack Morton, a rancher from southern Alberta and one of the contestants in the very first chuckwagon races, first flipped flapjacks from the back of his chuckwagon. Alongside cook Horace Inkster, and the two badgers he travelled with, Morton set up on Stephen Avenue with a makeshift grill to feed locals and visitors in order to promote the then-new chuckwagon races. Since then, the free pancake breakfast has become a deeply rooted Calgary institution: The early morning events act as annual community gatherings, fundraisers, corporate and media outreach strategies and platforms for politicians and local celebrities to connect with their audiences by tying on aprons and flipping flapjacks for the masses. During his three terms as mayor, Naheed Nenshi attended more than 30 pancake breakfasts over the course of each 10-day Stampede. Having been elected during a time of reduced public events, current mayor Jyoti Gondek’s early-morning Stampede schedule hasn’t been quite as packed, but the city’s pancake breakfast lineup is quickly returning to its former glory. Last summer, Chinook Mall welcomed nearly 40,000 people at its 62nd annual pancake breakfast.

My own childhood memories of pancake breakfasts are of hot asphalt, live country music and waiting in line; my two younger sisters and I shielded from the sun by straw cowboy hats held in place with strings tied under our chins. We were so enamoured with this morning tradition we watched the newspaper and community bulletins and made breakfast calendars, noting which group was hosting on which day—a process social media has streamlined in recent years. One hot summer, my mom noticed a sign inviting competitors to a pancake-eating contest as we walked the Stampede grounds and brought the three of us in, thinking it would save the cost of buying lunch. Seated at a long table in front of an audience, I ate my stack politely and self-consciously, but my middle sister Alison, decked out in a checkered square-dancing dress and braids swinging from under her cowboy hat, completely devoured hers and left with bragging rights.

The events generally take over a parking lot or other open space that has enough room to accommodate long lineups. Folks will stand for hours for two buttermilk pancakes, two breakfast sausages and a generous pour of maple syrup. But like the lineups at Franklin Barbecue in Austin, Texas or Dominique Ansel’s cronut-famous New York City pastry shop, it’s all part of the experience: chatting in the queue, the live entertainment, the anticipation of that familiar, nostalgic, unremarkable-but-indispensable meal, eaten from paper plates and likely on your lap if you can find a patch of shade or curb to perch on. But unlike the hype-generated lineups for barbecue or pastry, people wait patiently for reasons of sentimentality and community support. It’s our civic duty, and we’re there for it.

Related: Our 12 Best Pancake Recipes

In 2020, the year the Calgary Stampede was officially cancelled due to COVID-19, it was unthinkable that pancakes wouldn’t be flipped, so the Stampede’s Caravan Committee pivoted to put on a drive-thru pancake breakfast, drawing 5,000 people through in a slow-but-steady parade of cars. The volunteer-run committee, who started hosting pancake breakfasts in 1976 with a budget of $800 to hire a band and serve pancakes and bacon to 6,000 people on stoves borrowed from the military, is not new to creative breakfast endeavours. Over the years, it’s served enormous crowds at downtown attractions and malls across the city, and has traveled to spread local hospitality around the world.

These days, the Caravan Committee hosts breakfasts at two locations per day throughout Stampede week to feed more than 100,000 hungry people—that’s 200,000 pancakes, which requires enough batter to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, each batch mixed onsite in enormous buckets using industrial-sized immersion blenders and pumped out from metal dispensers onto smooth, glistening griddles. Caravan breakfasts also go through two tons of sausage patties, 110,000 juice boxes and 2,000 litres of maple syrup per season.

Many neighbourhoods and organizations hire caterers or rent griddles to mix and flip their own, and some of the most popular breakfasts stray from the traditional pancake-sausage combo. Since 1997, the Ismaili Muslim Community of Calgary has hosted an annual StampEid breakfast, serving up pancakes and scrambled eggs with bharazi (pigeon peas in a coconut sauce) and chai. It’s one of the most popular Stampede events in the city—about 7,000 people attended last year—along with the Best of the East Stampede Breakfast, where merchants on International Avenue collaborate on an elaborate spread served up by the neighbourhood’s independent restaurant and small business owners. Attendees may find pakoras, jalebi, Filipino sweet breads or bubur ayam—Indonesian rice porridge made with garlicky chicken broth and topped with green onions, cilantro, fried shallots, soy sauce and chili oil.

The first annual plant-based breakfast launched in Inglewood—my neighbourhood—last year, with local vegan restaurants volunteering their time and ingredients to serve up pancakes and sausages to over 500 people, many of whom were excited to participate in a Stampede breakfast for the first time. Breakfast was of course free, but volunteers welcomed donations for The Alice Sanctuary, a local charity providing care and healing for rescued, surrendered and abandoned farm animals. (Disclosure: I helped organize the event, and was there flipping vegan pancakes and sausages.)

Other breakfasts are more focused on entertainment than the food—this year, thousands are expected to attend the third annual Cowboys Music Festival's Drag Me To Brunch, with a lineup of local and international performers and judges from RuPaul's Drag Race returning as co-hosts.

Yes, it’s simple to mix up a stack of pancakes at home, but that’s not the point. During Stampede week, the first meal of the day is more than sustenance: it’s conviviality, it’s neighbours feeding each other and eating together; it’s sharing a meal on a scale larger than most of us will ever have the opportunity to. And it’s free, making it accessible for everyone. All good reasons to get up early, pull on your boots and jump in the queue.