The New Canadian Establishment

Calgary boasts of being a singularly commercial place. Everything about its identity and style—from politics to child rearing, sexual congress to chuckwagon racing—is governed by the gravitational pull exerted by its Oil Patch entrepreneurs. Peculiarly, even making money is secondary. Enterprise is the name of the game; your net worth merely provides the entries on your competitors’ score cards.

If the city has a failing, it is its persecution complex, the feeling that the good times only usher in the bad, which perpetuates a decidedly humourless view of the world. The toughest jobs in town belong to the stand-up comics at Yuk Yuk’s Komedy Kabaret, not the whores of Victoria Park.

Despite the community’s urban flavour—Dallas North, not Toronto West—its value system retains the rugged individuality of the open range. Buzzard’s Cowboy cuisine still features an annual Testicle Festival, named for the ubiquitous prairie oyster, harking back to a time when...