How the west was won.

It's Stampede time in Calgary. A time when cowboy wannabe's dust off their boots and don their stetson's to hit the trails, and the bars, for a foot stompin', knee slappin' good ole time in the west. A time when horse drawn carriages parade through city streets and ol' fashioned gunfights leave the best man standing in the OK corral on every street corner.

Stampede has erupted with all its riotous exuberance and celebration of how the west was won and suddenly every street side cafe is corralled off with wooden barnboards and bales of hay.

With Stampede also comes a letting loose of public morals and good behaviour. Suddenly, law abiding citizens are staggering out of hotel bars at 8 am, their bellies full of sausages and eggs swirling in a bath of vodka and OJ. Boot weary feet stumble to the next festivity as everyone gets into the act of living it up in the Wild Wild West.

Last night, C.C. and I met for a late dinner at a downtown restaurant. I had an early evening meeting and he had a desk load of paper work to clear up. It was 8:30pm by the time we sat down for a leisurely meal and chat.

Two hours later, dusk had fallen but the streets were still alive with Stampede revelers. As I walked to my car a man came stumbling towards me. He'd obviously had a few too many at some cowboy joint down the road. His cowboy hat sat askew on his head. His gait was unsteady. As he navigated the sidewalk he smiled and leered at passers-by who deftly sidestepped his crooked progress. Like everyone else, I gave him a wide-berth. Drunken wannabe cowboy's can be unpredictable.

As the man reached an intersection, the light turned red. He didn't hesitate. He stepped off the curb and kept on walking. Brakes squealed as drivers stopped to give him safe passage. A couple of horns blared. He laughed and smiled and kept right on walking. He made it safely to the other side, waved at the drivers who had stopped to let him pass and kept on going. People laughed and waved back. Hey man! It's Stampede. Nothing much wrong with a drunk holding up traffic. It's part of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.

It's a far cry from a scene I'd witnessed earlier that day when driving to a meeting. A couple of blocks from the shelter where I work, a man who appeared visibly 'homeless', jay-walked on a red light. Cars slammed on brakes. Horns honked. Expletives filled the air. One man called out from his car, "F***** idiot. Get off the **** road and get back in your **** dumpster." He didn't wait for the man to reach the other side of the road. With a gunning of his engine, he swerved around him, and peeled away.

It's okay to be drunk if all you're doing is partaking of Stampede revelries. It's not okay if you're mired in poverty and despair.

We live in a city of contradictions. Stampede is one of the greatest. A draw for tourists from around the world, Stampede is one big 10 day long party in every quadrant of the city. It's hard to avoid it and while many Calgarians bemoan its raucous days, they eventually make it down to a bar somewhere to imbibe in the festivities. Conversations around water-coolers centre around how drunk you got the night before; that's if you even make it into work the next day. Line-ups form outside hastily erected tents that span parking lots in the downtown core. They've got one sole purpose in life: to ensure every thirsty office worker has the opportunity to consume their body-weight in alcohol and partake in some good ole' fashioned western hospitality before hittin' the dusty trail homeward bound.

At the shelter, where we are home to 1100 people a night, we struggle to keep clients safe from the excesses they encounter on the streets. Visibly homeless individuals are easy prey for drunken party-goers who perceive them as fair game on the open range. A man peacefully sleeping on a grassy verge may find his sleep interrupted by a citizen whose tin badge sparkling on his chest, feels obliged to give the homeless guy a kick in the ass, with a slurred, "Move along there pardner. You don't belong here."

Problem is, there's not much 'pardnering' goin' on and there's no safe place for a homeless drunk to sleep it off without encountering the condemnation of passers-by.

Across the road, drunken citizens stumble along searching for the next opporunity to get into the spirit of the Stampede. They've got the world by the tail and they're flying high on opportunity. Yee! Haw! It's the wild wild west.

And that's the way it goes in the OK corral. Some got it. Some don't. And when the have's get to livin' it up western style, nobody cares if you fall down drunk. It's just part of the how the west was won.

Have a drink pardner. It's Stampede!