Why Calgary Says Yahoo Instead of Yeehaw at the Stampede
The Calgary Stampede Collection and Archives holds a studio photograph from 2015 of Harry the Horse, the Stampede mascot, caught mid jump with his arms and legs spread and a blue sign in each hand. One sign reads YA and the other reads HOO. The picture marks his 30th anniversary, and he has been spelling the word that way since his debut in 1985.
Every July a first-time visitor lets out a yee-haw on the grounds, and a Calgarian nearby smiles and corrects it. No bylaw says so. The city got there on its own, and the paper trail is shorter than most people expect.
Key facts
- The Calgary Stampede Collection and Archives holds a 2015 photograph of mascot Harry the Horse jumping with signs reading YA and HOO, made for the mascot’s 30th anniversary.
- Morris Shumiatcher of the Smithbilt Hat Company began producing the white felt cowboy hat in 1946, in partnership with the Calgary Stampede, according to the Stampede.
- Calgary Stampeders supporters wore white hats to the 1948 Grey Cup in Toronto and gave them away, including one to the Toronto mayor, according to the Calgary Stampede.
- Calgary adopted a flag in 1983 that carries a white hat inside a large C, and city council voted in 1958 to cap white hat ceremonies at 15 a year, according to the Calgary White Hat entry on Wikipedia.
The yahoo is older than the mascot
The earliest Stampede yahoo anyone has found in print is a reader’s letter to a Calgary newspaper dated July 15, 1949, suggesting the city give Stampede officials a yahoo and a thank you for that year’s show. It came from an ordinary reader, with no marketing department or committee behind it, and it sits in a record known mainly through secondary accounts.
Yee-haw arrived anyway, carried in by television Westerns and visitors who learned the West from the movies. Calgary kept its own word, and a mascot with two signs made it official in 1985.
The white hat ceremony turned a yell into protocol
The hat did the larger part of the work. The Smithbilt hat company of Calgary was making white felt cowboy hats by 1946, and in 1948 Calgary fans carried them to the Grey Cup in Toronto and handed them out. One of the travellers, Don Mackay, became mayor in 1950 and began presenting white hats to visiting dignitaries. Council tried to cap the ceremonies at 15 a year in 1958, and the custom outlasted the limit. Tourism Calgary still oversees the ceremony today.
The oath at the end of it has recipients raise their hats and shout a Calgary yahoo. Astronaut Chris Hadfield went through it in 2013 as Stampede Parade Marshal and gave his signed hat to the SAM Centre, where it is displayed.
The 2018 poll counted a habit the city already had
In 2018 the City of Calgary put the question to a social media poll, and yahoo took 80.6% of the vote. It was an informal poll and nothing about it was scientific, which is the point. The result matched what the ceremony, the mascot and the grounds had been saying for decades.
In the archive photograph Harry is still mid jump, one sign for each syllable.
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