globeandmail.com: Who doesn't want to be John Wayne?

June 2, 2007
VERNON, B.C.

-- The 635-kilogram bull snorts and heaves against the confines of the enclosed metal chute as Wade Marchand, a narrow-hipped wisp of a bull rider, lowers himself onto the beast's back.

-- /Summary --> The gate opens and the angry bull charges into the arena, wildly kicking its back legs in a bid to fling this human off its back.
Of course, the bull always wins. Within seconds, Mr.

Marchand is face-down in the dirt, but the 22-year-old Vernon native managed to hang on longer than his bull-riding classmates. More than 20 enthusiasts have paid $350 each for a three-day seminar to brush up their skills at the Marchand family ranch in the Okanagan Valley.
Instructor Gary Leffew is impressed and later remarks as he replays the videotaped, 10-second ride on a TV: That is how you ride a bull.

Mr. Marchand and two of his best friends, Ty Elliott, 21, and Quentin Schneider, 26, are three of the best rodeo athletes in British Columbia. All three are bull riders, considered the top of the food chain among rodeo performers.

Mr. Elliott and Mr. Marchard are inching up the ranks of Canada's two professional rodeo associations.

And last month, Mr. Schneider won the bull-riding event at the Cloverdale Rodeo in suburban Vancouver, collecting nearly $7,000 in prize money.
With their bow-legged saunter, polite diction - it's Ma'am'' and Sir to anyone who appears older - and sky-high pain thresholds, these rodeo athletes have honed their respective skills and images with equal amounts of care.

Each has the cowboy persona down pat. They wear Wrangler jeans underneath colourful chaps and carry rolls of white tape to bind their aching wrists, ankles and thighs. Rarely do they ever complain of pain, even when a rank bull stomps on a limb.

Cowboys are heroes, said Mr. Schneider, squinting under a blistering hot morning sun. Who doesn't want to be John Wayne?

They also love the horses and bulls that toss them around the arenas in rodeo after rodeo all summer long.
So they were dismayed and hurt when the Cloverdale Rodeo - the fourth-biggest in Canada - announced last month that it would eliminate four key events from its lineup next year. The decision came after a calf had to be euthanized because it injured a leg in a roping event.

It was the second animal death in three years, and Cloverdale organizers said they didn't want any more. They also conceded they were facing pressure from animal-rights activists who fiercely oppose rodeos on the grounds, they say, that these events are unnecessarily cruel and dangerous to the performing animals.
Reaction to the Cloverdale announcement was divided along urban and rural lines.

In Vancouver, pundits on one television talk show appeared to think the ban was a no-brainer, wondering aloud why rodeos even exist today.
But rodeo lovers and organizers outside British Columbia's urbanized Lower Mainland have defended the tradition as an important part of Western Canadian culture.
Mr.

Marchand, Mr. Schneider and Mr. Elliott say they're worried that animal rights activists will take their protests to other small rodeos and county fairs across B.

C.
Rodeo culture is more fragile in B.C.

than Alberta, they say, and they're concerned rodeos may become another West Coast taboo.
Mr. Marchand said the so-called bull rush is what makes the small-town rodeo circuit worth pursuing.

Despite his rising success in the standings, rodeo performers rarely break even financially. Prize money is devoured by travel expenses, and most cowboys have day jobs to pay the bills. Mr.

Marchand works in a sawmill three days a week.
He started riding bulls at age 14. His injuries over an eight-year career include: a cracked cheekbone, broken collar bone, a punctured lung, two broken ribs and a dislocated shoulder.

Mr. Marchand got his gap-toothed grin last year when his mouth collided with a bull's head, knocking out a tooth.
He views the animal rights debate as the result of colliding urban and rural traditions.

Rodeos, he said, evolved naturally in ranching regions as a once-a-year competition for the people who worked with livestock every day.
One of the events seen as most cruel by animal rights activists is the calf-roping event, which Cloverdale vowed to eliminate next year. Mr.

Marchand said ranchers do chase wayward calves from atop horses and tie them up by the legs. If you're on a 1,000-acre ranch and the calf is running away from you, you got to get him while he's running. You rope him off your horse, get him down, give him his needles, Mr.

Marchand said.
There is a gap in knowledge, a lack of understanding about our lifestyle. I think if you grow up in the cities, you don't have an understanding of this, he said, gesturing at the bulls herded into a pen.

We're with animals every day of the year. It's our life.
Part of the Marchand ranching operation involves raising bulls for rodeo use.

The senior Mr. Marchand owns 125 bulls and 127 cows and insists he treats his animals humanely.
Animal-rights activists disagree.

They say rodeo bulls are harassed and riled with cruel instruments - including electric prods - to make them buck harder. In addition, a rope that is tied around their rear flank is yanked just before the chute gate opens.
Mr.

Elliott said these devices don't hurt the bulls. The flank rope, he said, tickles the bull and causes him to kick up. The prods, he said, are needed to herd the mighty beasts.

When asked how he knows the prods aren't painful, Mr. Elliott replied that he and his college roommates in Texas used them to wake each other up. It'll make you jump, but it don't hurt, he said, grinning.

As for the cowboys' fears that that the Cloverdale move could prompt other rodeos to cancel events, so far there has been no stampede among other rodeos to do so.
Jim Pippolo, acting general manager of the Canadian Professional Rodeo Association, said no other rodeo has signalled an intent to follow Cloverdale's lead, although the Abbotsford rodeo, an hour's drive from Vancouver, has said it is bracing for protests when its fair begins this summer.
Mr.

Marchand and his friends believe the summer rodeo will prevail. Mr. Schneider noted that the bull-riding is always the most popular event at a rodeo.

It will always be here, Mr. Schneider said, still squinting under his cowboy hat. People want to see a wreck.