page_title: Calgary Stampede
section_title: Pancake breakfasts
hierarchical_section_title: Calgary Stampede / Community / Pancake breakfasts
caption_attribution_description: English: A large crowd of people at the Chinook Centre pancake breakfast during the Calgary Stampede.
context_page_description: The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year and features one of the world's largest rodeos, a parade, midway, stage shows, concerts, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing, and First Nations exhibitions. In 2008, the Calgary Stampede was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.
  The event's roots are traced to 1886 when the Calgary and District Agricultural Society held its first fair. In 1912, American promoter Guy Weadick organized his first rodeo and festival, known as the Stampede. He returned to Calgary in 1919 to organize the Victory Stampede in honour of soldiers returning from World War I. Weadick's festival became an annual event in 1923 when it merged with the Calgary Industrial Exhibition to create the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede.
  Organized by thousands of volunteers and supported by civic leaders, the Calgary Stampede has grown into one of the world's richest rodeos, one of Canada's largest festivals, and a significant tourist attraction for the city.
context_section_description: The pancake breakfast is a local institution during Stampede.  Dozens are held throughout the city each day, hosted by community groups, corporations, churches, politicians and the Stampede itself. The tradition of pancake breakfasts dates back to the 1923 Stampede when a chuckwagon driver by the name of Jack Morton invited passing citizens to join him for his morning meals.
  The largest is the breakfast hosted at the Chinook Centre shopping mall.  Four hundred volunteers are required to feed over 60,000 people who attend the one-day event that had its 50th anniversary in 2010. Other groups, such as the Calgary Stampede Caravan, feed as many as 120,000 people over ten days.  The rising popularity of the barbecue grill in the 1960s and the city's population boom at the time brought with it the growth of community and company barbecues throughout the city during Stampede.  Community booster groups have exported the tradition across the country as a symbol of Calgary's hospitality.  Among them are the Calgary Grey Cup Committee, whose volunteers have hosted pancake breakfasts on the day of the Canadian Football League championship game for over three decades, sometimes in spite of poor weather conditions for the annual November contest.
caption: The Chinook Centre pancake breakfast serves more than 60,000 people each year.
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