The Last Stampede of Flores LaDue: the True Love Story of Florence and Guy Weadick and the Beginning of The Calgary Stampede
By Wendy Bryden
Touchstone Pub.
Now that you have read that title and subtitle, you will have no doubt in your mind that this is a book about the origins of that wild west show called the Calgary Stampede!
Grace Maud Bensel was born in 1883. Left motherless at a young age, she was sent by her father, a busy doctor, to be raised by her grandfather, then serving as Government Agent on the Sioux reservation.
There she learned to ride and rope and all the things that a “proper young lady,” did not do. When the wild west show, featuring Will Rogers came to her hometown of Montevideo, Minnesota, Grace Maud now 15, determined to become part of the show.
So she changed her name, to Flores LaDue, and with the help of her good friend Red Crow, she took a ladder down from her upstairs bedroom and ran away to join the “Circus.”
How this young five foot tall lady became a part of The Calgary Stampede, is an exciting story sure to interest people who like the early history of our province, and those who admire fancy displays of rope-work.
By 1898, Flores LaDue was part of a show featuring Buffalo Bill. She knew Annie Oakley and Gabriel Dumont. She was becoming very good in the show ring with her fancy trick roping.
Guy Weadick, born in Rochester, New York, in 1885 was a sucker for every wild west show that came his way, he too had run away at 14 to join a Wild West Show.
It was fate that these two people would meet, perhaps it was also fate that they would dislike each other on sight.
In 1908 the population of Calgary was 25,000 and rising. The Exhibition put on in Calgary that year was a huge success with 100,000 people through the gates.
It was largely an agricultural fair with sideshows, acrobats, and vaudeville entertainers.
Weadick saw the possibilities in such a show, especially if it added a Wild West component. He wanted a show with Indians, and chuckwagons and roping competitions: a huge busy and exciting show. He knew he and Flores LaDue were just what the city fair needed, (by now the couple had overcome their aversion.)
Money had to be found for such an expansion to the Exhibition, and four gentlemen we know of out of Calgary’s past, Pat Burns, A.E Cross, Archie McLean and George Lane had that money.
Now it’s all history. That first really-big show attracted the Prince Arthur, the Governor General of Canada, his wife and their daughter, the popular Princess Patricia. In fact the date was changed by four days to make sure these dignitaries could take in the new Stampede.
A lively and interesting history of the City down the road from here.
Peggy Freeman is a local freelance writer.