Community
The festival spirit during Stampede extends throughout the city. Parade day serves as an unofficial holiday as many companies give employees half or full days off to attend. People of all walks of life, from executives to students, discard formal attire for casual western dress, typically represented by Wrangler jeans and cowboy hats. Many Calgarians have reduced productivity during the event because they take a relaxed attitude towards their usual workplace and personal responsibilities. However, the community and corporate events held during the Stampede create social networking opportunities and help newcomers acclimatize to the city. The Stampede is an important stop for political leaders as part of their annual summer tours of the country, sometimes called the barbecue circuit.
Read more about this topic: Calgary Stampede
Famous quotes containing the word community:
“The most perfect political community must be amongst those who are in the middle rank, and those states are best instituted wherein these are a larger and more respectable part, if possible, than both the other; or, if that cannot be, at least than either of them separate, so that being thrown into the balance it may prevent either scale from preponderating.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“The poorest children in a community now find the beneficent kindergarten open to them from the age of two-and-a-half to six years. Too young heretofore to be eligible to any public school, they have acquired in their babyhood the vicious tendencies of their own depraved neighborhoods; and to their environment at that tender age had been due the loss of decency and self-respect that no after example of education has been able to restore to them.”
—Virginia Thrall Smith (1836–1903)
“Commitment, by its nature, frees us from ourselves and, while it stands us in opposition to some, it joins us with others similarly committed. Commitment moves us from the mirror trap of the self absorbed with the self to the freedom of a community of shared values.”
—Michael Lewis (late 20th century)