Not a lifetime achievement award. The first one ever given.
In 2005, Alberta's centennial year, the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede created the Western Legacy Awards to recognise people whose work had made a substantial contribution to the province's way of life. Three were handed out at the inaugural gala breakfast on December 7. I was 22, and I won the one for Youth.
Two years earlier I was a kid with bad grades and a worse crowd. The distance between those two facts is the only thing I have ever really talked about on a stage.
What it was given for.
- 01
African Caribbean United Foundation of Alberta
Mentors there reached me at 17, when nobody was obliged to. By 22 I chaired the foundation's youth division — the same room, the other chair.
- 02
Chief of Police Advisory Committee
A seat at the table on trust between Calgary youth and the police, held while I was still young enough to qualify for a youth award.
- 03
ALLCITY and the Calgary Reggae Festival
A rap group used as a delivery system — stay in school, stay clear of drugs and violence. I built the festival's first youth stages and ran them two years straight.
These awards honour four extraordinary individuals who have dedicated their lives to making their community a better place.
The Western Legacy Awards were created by the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede in 2005 to mark Alberta's provincial centennial, and have run every year since. They recognise people and groups who have made a substantial contribution to the western way of life the Stampede exists to preserve. The categories now run Youth, Innovation, Sustained Contribution for individuals and for groups, plus a Chairman's Award given only rarely.
"They took the dream and made it alive," is what I told the Calgary Herald about the mentors, in the piece they ran after the gala. Twenty years on, that is still the whole method: somebody builds a door, and you walk other people through it.
- YouthRyan Perez
- Innovative projectDr. Frits Pannekoek
- Sustained contributionRoy and Lenore McLean
Calgary. Travels anywhere.
Keynotes, advisory, and audits. Tell me the room and the date.
