This Canadian city has given out free pancakes every year since 1923

If you took a stroll down Stephen Avenue to Olympic Plaza in Calgary any morning last week, there’s a good chance that you would have been met with a clown in a cowboy hat offering you a freshly flipped pancake.

Strange as this may seem, these free breakfasts are actually part of a tradition going back many decades in the Alberta, Western Canada, city. Since 1923, during the 10 days of the Calgary Stampede – the world-famous annual rodeo and accompanying festival – residents and visitors have felt the embrace of good old Western hospitality by enjoying pancakes (often referred to as ‘flapjacks’ in Canada) served out the back of a horse-drawn wagon.

The earliest pancake breakfasts were held along Eighth Avenue and at a replica of a pioneer shack called the Old-Timers’ hut on the rodeo grounds. Although the Stampede had been running since 1912, it was 11 years later that the Calgary Herald reported how Jack Morton, a rancher affiliated with the CX Ranch in Rosebud in Alberta, “galloped the CX chuck wagon down Eighth avenue [and] started the final performance of the ‘Morning Stampede’ in a way that Calgary will never forget”.

On 13 July 1923, the newspaper wrote: “Just how many city bylaws and statutes were broken by the howling, whooping, rip-snorting bunch of cowboys that he brought with him will never be known.

“Out came the old cookstove, and soon the pungent odor of wood smoke filled the air, to be followed shortly by the inviting aroma of sizzling hot cakes… Spectators fought to get to the front in order to bite into the luscious flapjacks that were being turned out by the outfit’s cook.”

The same year, a separate breakfast at the Old-Timer’s hut saw men gather to grill pancakes, which they served drizzled in maple syrup in a shack that looked like early homes of the west, harking back to the pioneers of the previous century. These Old-Timers’ breakfasts were carried on by the Southern Alberta Pioneers’ and Old-Timers’ Association, who continue to hold an annual stampede breakfast to the present day.

Through the 1920s the breakfasts grew into an annual tradition, with pancakes grilled at the hut and in the back…