With the Calgary Stampede impending, we forget that a Medicine Hat rancher is largely responsible for its success. Without Addison Day, it might never have achieved lift off.
Addison Perry (“A.P.”) Day came from a ranching background in Texas, where he was a successful college football player and judge of stock. As the Texas range was fenced in, Day, his wife Ada, brothers Ford and William and his uncle Tony Day, moved cattle north in 1902 into Assiniboia Territory.
Tony and A.P. acquired ranches south of the Cypress Hills. A.P. leased 65,000 acres at Sage Creek known as the Cross Z and Tony a similar size ranch known as the Q. They ran thousands of cattle on these ranches and horses, including Clydesdales and Percherons. A.P. was also a cattle buyer for Pat Burns of Calgary.
Addison and his uncle Tony built houses on the Esplanade, between Maple and Ash Avenues, facing the river. Addison’s house was notable in that it used a soft mud moulded brick, made by Harry Yuill at a brick yard that he established near where Allowance Avenue crossed the tracks. That venture didn’t last but was to foreshadow Yuill’s later involvement in the Alberta Clay Products.
The 1900 Oklahoma City Stampede was one of the first, with Addison’s brother Ford starring with Will Rogers. Raymond, Alberta, staged its first stampede in 1902. Addison became interested in rodeos and staged bucking bronco shows in Medicine Hat in 1904. He staged his first rodeo with prize money in 1912 on an industrial site north of the tracks.
When promoter Guy Weadick proposed a Calgary Stampede later that same year, financial backers George Lane and Pat Burns wanted Addison Day of Medicine Hat to produce the show. A.P. invested $10,000 himself, and was the Arena Manager and provided the horses.
Day then organized a series of stampedes in Medicine Hat, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, and his last time at Calgary in 1919. He supplied horses and fellow citizens Jack Hargrave and Jim Mitchell as judges in all his shows.
In addition to rodeos and ranching, Day invested in real estate, oil and gas, a newspaper (“The Call”), in the budding theatre business and ran unsuccessfully for alderman in 1912.
With the discovery of some stoneware clay deposits on his land near Eastend, he, along with rancher John Read and businessman John Bending bought out Medicine Hat Pottery and renamed it Medalta Stoneware (1916).
However, after the war, a depression hit the economy and his businesses no longer prospered. In 1919, Day packed up his family and left Canada for California where he continued to use his talents in the cattle business and to organize rodeos, notably the 1924 World Championship Rodeo in London, attended by the King and Queen, and the Los Angeles Rodeo three years later. Day continued to ride to age 75 and ended up in Phoenix as an importer of cattle from Mexico.
Malcolm Sissons is vice-president of the Historical Society of Medicine Hat and District.
