Wendy Bryden - The First Stampede of Flores LaDue: The True Love Story of Florence and Guy Weadick and the Beginning of the Calgary Stampede

An attractive book for its uncovered detail, wealth of illustrations, and unique subject matter. Anyone looking to get excited about the Stampedes centennial should start right here.

Macleans

The First Stampede of Flores LaDue is a love letter to an abiding Calgary institution. It tells stories about the women who made it what it is today, and helps us reconnect with the land.

Calgary Herald

The love story of rodeo promoter Guy Weadick and trick roper Flores LaDue began among the rough-and-tumble vaudevillians preserving the frontier way of life in the first Wild West shows. Their love endured through North American performances in the small-time and big-time circuits to the audiences of Europe and culminated in 1912 with the most spectacular of accomplishmentsthe establishment of the greatest outdoor show on earth, the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede. That was one hundred years ago, and this is their story.

WENDY BRYDEN is an award-winning sports writer. She resides in her native Calgary with her husband. Their four sons and respective families live in Calgary; Vancouver; and London, England..

calgarystampede.com

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COVER DESIGN PGB GEORGE CATLIN (17961872), LANDSCAPE BACKGROUND (UNDATED).
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A. PHOTO
SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM, WASHINGTON, DC / ART RESOURCE, NY;
FLORES WITH ROPE, GLENBOW MUSEUM; BOOTS DRAWING BY PENNY MUNRO REID

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Based on the true love story
of Florence and Guy Weadick
in celebration of the centenary of
the Calgary Stampede, 19122012

Florence LaDue fancy roping, 1912
Calgary Stampede

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Copyright 2011 by Wendy Bryden

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following previously published material:

Far Pastures, Raymond M Patterson. Copyright 1963. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

Alberta Centennial, John Murrell, O.C., A.O.E., playwright. Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. Used by Permission.

This Touchstone export edition June 2012

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Designed by Akasha Archer

ISBN 978-1-4516-0932-5

ISBN 978-1-4516-0933-2 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-4516-0934-9 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to the most important women in my life

Elizabeth Edgerton Copeland, my maternal great-great-grandmother, who (after her husband, Hugh Copeland, died) immigrated to Canada in the early 1800s from County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, with her nine children, who were raised on her farm in Ontario. She died at the age of 100.

Arabella Timmins Copeland, my great-grandmother, whose family was also from County Fermanagh, and who married James Copeland, the second son of Elizabeth and Hugh Copeland. They settled in Winchester, Ontario, and had eleven children, the sixth of whom (Sarah Jane) was my grandmother.

Sarah Jane Copeland Dale, my gentle grandmother, who, despite always longing for the trees and water of the Ontario home where she was born, relocated as a young wife and mother to Red Deer in 1910, thus becoming the first Copeland woman to establish an Alberta branch of her Irish family.

Ola Dale Carruthers, R.N., my beloved mother, who sparked my interest in writing so many years ago by giving me the bestselling autobiography Why Shoot the Teacher , authored by her Copeland cousin, John Victor Maxwell Braithwaite.

Beryl Dowker Graham Bryden, R.N., a loving mother-in-law, who gave me a kind and understanding husband, whom I have loved over the years.

And most of all the beautiful and talented wives of our four sons:

Lisa Bryden

Kathleen Heddle