The topic of their ire? The City of Calgary’s noise bylaw! What’s with that, anyway?
Over the weekend, prominent Conservative political figures including Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, many of the other usual suspects on the right, and eventually what appeared to be flocks of right-wing online bots took to social media to attack Calgary Mayor Jeromy Farkas.
If this sounds familiar to you, it should. Ms. Smith’s United Conservative Party and its political allies spent an awful lot of energy bitterly attacking Mr. Farkas’s predecessor, former mayor Jyoti Gondek, throughout her term in office from 2021 to 2025. Apparently they saw her as too woke, whatever that means.
But if you expected the UCP to stop picking fights with the chief magistrate of Cowtown after the election of Mr. Farkas, nominally a conservative of at least the fiscal variety, you were obviously mistaken.
Well, as another former mayor of Calgary famously observed not long after leaving that job, “Danielle Smith and the UCP government only know how to do two things: They know how to pick fights and they know how to waste money.” That, of course, was Naheed Nenshi, who is now the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition in Edmonton.
Mr. Farkas’s political crime, real or imagined, was apparently the implementation of recent changes to the city’s noise control bylaws to reduce the amount of noise late on week nights from music venues run by the Calgary Stampede, which will run from July 3 to July 12 this year.
“Looks like the fun police have struck again in Calgary, this time targeting the Calgary Stampede music scene,” griped Ms. Smith in a verbose post on the social media site previously known as Twitter.
“By reducing allowable noise levels and shutting shows down early on weeknights, the city will negatively affect hundreds of workers and create additional public safety and crowd-management problems due to guests leaving in a shorter timeframe,” she said, stretching the likely impact of the changes considerably but at least sounding faintly coherent.
Mr. Poilievre, an Ottawa resident for more than two decades, cranked up the volume a few decibels and introduced a nastier tone. “City Hall gatekeepers are making a big mistake killing jobs, smothering country music culture, and cutting back performances at the world-famous Cowboys celebration during the Calgary Stampede,” he complained. (Country music culture? Or, as a separatist commentator for a right-wing Alberta website put it: “Stampede/cowbody (sic) culture.” You can’t make this up!)
“Millions flock to the Stampede because IT IS FUN to stay up late and listen to loud music,” the commentator added with some Trumpian ALL-CAPS. (And if you happen to pay taxes, live nearby and have a baby that can’t sleep, I guess, TOUGH S#!T!)
Other contributors to this increasingly fractious debate included Rob Anderson, Ms. Smith’s increasing obnoxious chief of staff; Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner; Stephen Harper scion and former UCP staffer Ben; and even separatist blowhard Jeffrey Rath.
For his part, Mr. Farkas, channelling California Governor Gavin Newsom’s tweet war with U.S. President Donald Trump, fired back at Premier Smith: “Looks like the fun police have struck again in Alberta, this time targeting people trying to enjoy a pint. This last-minute hike before Stampede will raise the minimum price of a beer from $3.20 to $5, a 60% increase. The provincial government will negatively affect thousands of workers and create additional problems for bars and restaurants already facing higher costs.”
Well, that’s a fair comment about Ms. Smith’s tax-and-spend Conservatives. Mr. Farkas also corrected misinformation in Ms. Rempel Garner’s and Mr. Anderson’s posts.
“We are taking public safety in our downtown seriously,” he told Ms. Rempel Garner, who is said to live in Oklahoma, far from the noise generated by the Stampede. “Last year several hundred people brought complaints. People reported property damage, windows shaking, items falling from shelves, music until 2 a.m., disorder, and excessive intoxication spilling into nearby neighbourhoods. … No (one) gets a free pass to disturb residents or create unsafe conditions. A great city backs major events and holds operators accountable.”
Interestingly, back when Ms. Gondek was mayor, a Postmedia columnist sympathetic to the UCP used to bleat tirelessly about music promoters with “zero respect” for the neighbours and the lack of response from City Hall, “where the headbangers rule the land.”
“City Hall has to do something,” wrote columnist Rick Bell last summer. “Lay down the law. Bring the noise down.”
Now? Unlike the streets around Stampede venues, there’s nothing but crickets from Postmedia.
So what’s this really about?
Normally, when Ms. Smith spins up a little Internet furore like this, the goal is to distract from one scandal or another. It’s hard to guess which one it might be right now, though, because there are so many possibilities.
Why this particular city issue would have attracted the attention of prominent federal Conservative politicians, ex politicians and their children may also have to remain a mystery.
Perhaps it was a favour to a supporter that just got out of hand.
Or maybe Conservatives just hold residents of Calgary in contempt, especially the ones who don’t want to get drunk, raise a ruckus and leave a mess behind on weeknights, because, you know … cowbody culture.
My first guess is that politicians build their big annual meet-and-greets around Stampede, and that the conservative ones believe it belongs exclusively to them. Any threat to their big (fundraising, deal-making) party must be eliminated.
Hello DJC and fellow commenters,
I can’t help but think that Danielle Smith would like to distract from some issue or other by drawing attention to what is, really, a minor issue.
I also thought that Danielle Smith was big on decreasing public disorder. It seems to me that she has had concerns about public disorder in Calgary.
Surely, a few decibels less of disturbance from Cowboys would not be so world-shaking, especially considering the effects on nearby neighbourhoods. As for the others commenting on this, it is quite incredible that someone who wants to be prime minister has the time to comment on the City placing some reasonable limits on disturbance on the lives of residents. You would think that he would be occupied with more important matters. But, then again, he seemed to be fine with the significant disturbance created by the convoyers in Ottawa, so maybe it’s just consistency on his part. As for the others, it may be just a way to criticize a new City administration in order to create dissension.
I agree. After Pierre Poilievre lost the election last year I thought he had toned things down to try and appear more prime ministerial. I guess he can only carry the facade so long, and now he is back to showing Canadians the voters in Ottawa Carlton were right.
Classic hypocrisy from these phony Conservatives and Reformers. They said absolutely nothing about the convoy protesters who were honking their horns and raising a ruckus at different times, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Something also has to be done about the reckless behavior caused by drunken and disorderly people. It also shows that Danielle Smith can’t stay in her lane. You know that Danielle Smith and the UCP are caught in another scandal, if she deflects like this. It’s also why she is buying votes with $100.
The UCP are so malicious with their stupid incompetence. These ARE the same people that were involved in the Ottawa debacle… and Nenshi was correct in his observation. They are grifters so my guess it’s about money somewhere down the line.
I can just imagine what Ms. Smith et al would have to say if if was their sleep that was disrupted the way Calgary citizens living near the venues were.
UCP supporters are so easily manipulated. It is amazing that they haven’t woken up to that fact yet.
This just goes to show you, how much Smith, PP and the rest of the UPC care about Albertans. This was an irresponsible comment, coming from an irresponsible, ignorant premier.
Alcohol prices ging up for the Stampede….. LOL. The back peddle by Smith is impressive! Talk about playing Albertans and trying to come out the hero. Or not. When is Smith going to stop playing her little games!?
How can anyone take provincial and federal politicians who have the time to interfere in a city’s noise bylaw seriously? Answer: you can’t.
Perhaps all these voices of the Smith posse are really one voice mouthed by various puppets. Can you guess who the puppet master might be? I have a theory that connects all the strings of these marionettes to one man and his mission to make the world fascist again.
I have another theory, too. Stampede attendance could suffer if folks from the rest of Canada get on their high horses and boycott the province trying hardest to destroy our nation right now. Hello, Alberta government and Danielle Smith. Did you think there would be zero consequences for acting like a bunch of yahoos? Do you know something we don’t know, like a drop in hotel bookings? Canadians have become very adept at boycotts. Ask the US how the tourism industry is doing these days.
Some locals will still drink their faces off all day from six drinks at the Dogie Do Breakfast to night. How much more booze do the booze hounds need?
Truly I was going to take a break from commenting. Get out and touch some (wet) grass. But no, this one, well, it stands out like a farmer in his field! Distraction from what you ask? How about real life handsome cowbodys delivering boxes and boxes of signatures in- what else- but a horse trailer. Horses and down home country music stars singing their hearts out in the Edmonton River valley. Well, okay, the horses mainly harmonized. Never mind the Chiefs in full regalia in all the urban centres speaking clearly, speaking loudly so that even the most rhinestoned, buckle bunnied, earplugged dudes get the message. Laura Laing and Lorne Fitch are my newest country culture heros, but there are many. Danielle Smith suggested Corb write a song about her, but I think he already has. How about A Leader on Losing Control? Bible on the Dash? Devil’s Best Dress? Hurtin’ Albertan? The Truth Comes Out?
This is typical of the big hat and even bigger belt buckle crowd. Nothing like tempering excessive drinking, loud music, and drug use to get the CONs in a knot. There was a time when CONs were all about good behaviour and restrained vice. Not all they want to do is drunken sexual assault 24/7. True anarchists.
Occasionally I notice what i consider an odd use of punctuation. To wit the following sentence:
“Stampede/cowbody (sic) culture.” You can’t make this up!)
Shouldn’t the ‘right parenthesis’ come after “culture” otherwise your concluding assertion of”You can’t make this stuff up!” appears to come from the cowbody commentator.
BTW: CowBODY! hilarious, i had to read it twice to catch the malapropism. Really appreciate your good work. i will leave quietly now.
Caron: Well, I considered making the change you suggest, but I think the way it is – odd punctuation and all – is closer to the meaning I intended to convey. Thanks, though. DJC
Read Rick Bell’s column from last summer that David provided a link to. Good catch by the way. As Bell notes, these “ear-piercing” concerts don’t take place on the Stampede Grounds, but rather in a park adjacent to a densely populated residential area on the west side of downtown.
The Calgary Stupede. Let the horse deaths and embarrassing cowboy cosplay begin.
My old use-to-be and I lived in a 350 year-old, ground-level apartment a stone’s throw from the St Jean Gate of Quebec’s Old City. One bracing winter day city workers nailed a sheet of plywood over our only window onto the street (place was less than 12 feet wide) and I asked her, she a native of that beautiful city, what the hell was going on. She led me onto the frozen pavement (so cold that if one is nimble enough nothing melts under sock feet) and pointed to the city works-crew hoarding off every window down both sides of the street. “What’s all this for?”
“Carnival,” she said, before informing me that we were going to visit friends in Montreal until it was over. Next winter we lived there.
Not so long later I lived in Calgary in a soulless row-housing development in Fish Creek, with For Rent signs everywhere offering six months free if one signed a two-year lease (the bust part of the boom-cycle). My housemates, an old friend and his wife, were regular Stetson wearers, we hung out at Ranchman’s, listened to Jimmy Buffet, Marshal Tucker, Charlie Daniels and all that. But when Stampede was about to happen, something I never attended before, I noticed them loading up the pickup one morning and my buddy tuning up his motorcycle. “Going somewhere,” I asked.
“Yeah, going for a ride. You should come too.”
“But what about Stamped?”
“Pfft! Get serious! I’ll race you up to Kananaskis.” (He, a pipe-fitter, had a fifth-wheel up at the future Olympic Ski Village—just breaking ground at that point, nobody around for the whole weekend.)
Well, you know what they say: “When in Rome…” But apparently in Quebec and Calgary that means, “…get the hell outta Rome” before festivities begin.
One gets the impression locals disdain a bunch of foreigners who take over their town, get hammered, make noise and a mess, then leave—the only part remotely likeable, like when you stop hitting-your-head-against-a-brick-wall kinda way. But why complain when instead you can feel the wind in your face on a beautiful summer weekend in the Alberta Rockies? Besides, both my buddy and I are from rural Ontario, so we’ve seen enough cattle to last a lifetime.
What’s Danielle Smith up to? What’s ever might be, PP put his brand on it.
You can bet your last dollar that these idiots pissing and moaning about the new noise guidelines do not live within earshot of the Stampede, especially the MP from Oklahoma.
It really is amazing how stupid these fools and their supporters are isn’t it? It’s no secret that they are anti- conservative as the former conservative MLAs taught me they were. They certainly had it right.
Poilievre praised the criminal convoy truckers, bought them coffee and donuts and proved that there is nothing conservative about him when he showed no concern for the $7 million debt they created or the $6 billion economic disaster they created for Canadians. Then has the audacity to blame the Liberals for the high cost of groceries when truckers talk about the billions of dollars in spoiled meat and produce that they were forced to dump because of his stupidity. Where is the intelligence in that? Of course the stupid Albertans saw nothing wrong with it and re-elected him.
I have told my children and grandchildren they had better look for jobs elsewhere, Alberta is bankrupt and we see no way out of it. Watching our cars being destroyed by potholes, driving at night, has our vehicle mechanic friends fuming, can you blame them? It’s getting worse each year and we were warned by former road workers that it would and they were right.
Yes, Farkas is a conservative, but not the extreme separatist type that dominates the UCP now. Besides they are crankier than usual at him because Farkas previously highlighted their education tax increases, which municipalities get blamed for because they collect it with property taxes, instead of taking one for the team like a good UCPer perhaps should. So perhaps it is payback or punishment time for that now.
I’m not sure why PP, who was formerly an Ottawa MP and still spends much of his time there cares about the noise issue at all. Presumably Rempel goes back to Calgary for the Stampede, so perhaps she likes noisy drunken bashes, maybe they remind her of Oklahoma or something. I have to wonder if PP is just trying to get attention to stay relevant or find a new way to channel outrage that works better than the ones he used in the past.
Of course Farkas, while conservative, also wasn’t the first choice for Calgary Mayor by Smith and the UCP. Perhaps this was because they felt he was not extreme enough, but I suspect they also may have a grudge against him for beating their favoured candidate.
In any event, there are some bitter losers in right wing side of Canadian politics these days and it seems like they may be starting to devour their own.
I think it may be because Farkas has criticized some provincial policies lately with good reason, so Smith wants a reason to sneer at him. Just imagine, he is governing like a grownup and it makes them all look bad.
Poilievre especially seems desperate to suck up to the drunken rowdy convoyer type idiots. Maybe we’ll see him delivering donuts to all the fake cowboys.
Perhaps the real underlying reason that Farkas is being targeted by the separatist right wing gang is due to Farkas teaming up with other Alberta mayors with enthusiastic support of the Forever Canadian movement.
I’m sure that the separatists are unhappy with an Ipsos poll from June 5 showing support for separation is only 12% in Calgary, lower than even Edmonton at 16%.
Farkas has also been very vocal against the UCP education tax increases that hit municipal taxpayers hard recently. Farkas also fired back a directed salvo against the recent UCP provincial liquor price increase.
Farkas isn’t afraid of confronting Danielle Smith and he is gaining respect for doing so. Perhaps he will be the next Calgary mayor to move into provincial politics.
So…conservatives complain they want everybody to work until they drop but when those same people who have to get up early in the morning to go to work because a bunch of drunken fake cowboys were screaming on the street half the night and kept them and their kids awake…well, they’re just grinches who don’t know what fun, is.
Make up my mind.
Also, Mayor Farkas is urging people to vote to stay in Canada and doing a much better job than mealymouthed Smith.
Here he was on Neighbour Day in Calgary, June 20, along with NDP leader Nenshi and Liberal MP Corey Hogan. He is also probably not partisan enough for the Cons.
https://x.com/JeromyYYC/status/2068902698376696044
In my misspent youth, I spent 5 years living in Edmonton in Old Strathcona right behind the Strathcona Library. At that time the Old Strathcona Armoury was repurposed as a nightclub and bar. This was right next to us, lucky us. Headquarters and MainStage of the Edmonton Fringe Festival was but a stones throw from the apartment I lived in. Every Fringe Festival sleep was elusive. The Fringe ran shows to Midnight- Come see our Wonderful Show – this amplified to 110 decibels. At 2 am the bar would empty next door. The emptying process took a half hour to three quarters of an hour. It was more akin to a small riot, bottles being smashed, multiple fist fights between horny young men, rock throwing, and women hurling obscenities in full caterwaul mode.
Having had the experience, I am fully with the Calgary Mayor in his midnight curfew. Failing that maybe complaint calls after midnight to Danni, P.P. And Rob Anderson at their personal numbers to let them know how much the yippe ky yaying and country twang is appreciated. Along with drunken boohoos peeing in your parking lot. This is called mutual civic responsibility, and decency not freedom to create a disturbance.
Wow!! It’s almost like Conservatives don’t participate in politics in good faith. Les sifflet de chien n’est pas?
Do we not all recall when Mr Farkas was similarly disingenuous as a counsellor – in constant outrage mode when Nenshi was mayor? Leopards and spots and something something.
As a Calgarian, the number of fellow voters who feel honoured to eat a few pancakes and eggs in proximity of their bosses’ bosses cosplaying with the politicians (and the lobbyists) is most embarrassing.
I sincerely appreciate the authors reportage, but it really seems like no matter the story, my neighbours are deaf(ened by) the Stampede’s yearly fireworks to even notice this fartkin
Farkas spent time away from politics, travelling and earning a living, and learned and grew up in the process.
Too bad Poilievre never managed to, it’s why he is an inadequate leader.
Honestly, Smith needs to shut up and mind her own business instead of interfering with Calgary.
https://x.com/ABDanielleSmith/status/2069196886817509514
I doubt that Pierre Poilievre has ever attended the Calgary Stampede long enough to get any dust on his shiny new boots but if he has then he would surely know that the Stampede is essentially a ten-day-long orgy (both figuratively and literally if the reports of the spike in testing for STDs and the divorce filings in the following weeks are accurate) celebrating both the cowboy life and the country music that’s most closely associated with it. To claim that Calgary city council is ‘smothering country music culture’ only illustrates how completely out of touch this man is. Good thing no one pays attention to him anymore.
On the other hand, Danielle Smith’s statement was totally predictable. In her world the desire of her cronies and supporters to make as much money as possible will always Trump the wants and needs of Albertans who are struggling to make ends meet (the government’s paltry rebate of $100 of our own tax money notwithstanding) even as those same people face the real possibility of dying in a hospital emergency room while waiting for care in her government’s revamped health care system. If the generally accepted rallying cry of the Stampede is ‘Yee-Haw’ it’s unsurprising that Danielle Smith’s preferred motto is ‘Ka-Ching’.
It’s not Yee-Haw, it’s Yahoo. However, you are correct about the Ka-Ching thing for the woman with the golden puddytat.
Typo alert (maybe?) at end of column: “cowbody culture”?
Jerry: Not my typo. It’s from the Cory Morgan piece, cited above. I thought I’d leave it as it was because, while it’s just a typo – and we all make those from time to time – it’s unintentionally hilarious. DJC