A Calgary Stampede award recipient has helped the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth for more than 50 years. Longview’s John Scott received the Calgary Stampede Pioneers of the Rodeo Award earlier this month for his longtime involvement with the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. He’s provided animals for the Stampede from horses to mice. “When I was 13 years old, the Stampede had a game there called Oscar the Mouse and they had this wheel and whatever coloured hole it went down they would pay off,” the 76-year-old Scott said with a laugh. “I asked them, ‘where do you get your mice?’ And they said from all over and we pay a $1 each. “Next year, I went back and got 20 mice and got 20 bucks from the carnies… I guess that was my first contract.” Scott, who operates John Scott Productions, has supplied horses for Academy Award winning movies from Unforgiven to The Lord of the Rings and has worked on movies with rodeo stalwarts from three generations of the chuckwagon driving Glass family – Ron, Tom and Jason — to DeWinton barrel racer, the late Isabella Miller, the grandmother of bull rider Brock Radford. “I have been very fortunate the horses have taken me a lot of places,” Scott said. Including front and centre at Calgary’s biggest production every summer. He’s provided horses for the parade that gets the Stampede party going. Some people who likely won’t be on a horse someday soon, have been on one of Scott’s horses. “We’ve had guys who have never been on a horse before and you try to match them with the right horse,” Scott said. “We had all the parade marshals the past few years. Ian Tyson was a marshal, and he, of course, is a great rider. Chris Hadfield rode one of mine. “And although the Calgary Flames are the greatest athletes in the world on the ice, they are not the greatest on a horse.” He estimates he had around 100 horses at the parade this year. Scott has driven chuckwagons at the parade – one time driving for hall-of-fame driver Ron Glass. Scott did his homework and grabbed a set of branding irons and put them in the elder Glass’ wagon. “In those days there were at least 20 wagons in the parade and they were all being judged,” Scott said. “It came down to Orville Strandquist’s wagon and Ronny Glass’ and because we had the branding irons we won the ribbon.” He’s been part of the rodeo scene as well. “I had rodeoed at the Calgary Stampede quite a few years ago and then we started the first boys steer riding school, Winston Bruce was kind of the head of it,” Scott said. “The boys would learn how to steer ride and graduate up the ranks to bareback and broncs.” “It was one of the first schools in Western Canada.” Jason Glass has seen Scott’s Stampede efforts first hand. “John has been around here for a long time,” Glass said after the final heat of the Calgary Stampede. “He’s done so much for so many people. “If I need a horse trailer or anything I will call John Scott. It’s not just me, he helps everybody. He’s a class act, like a godfather to me.” Glass’s grandmother Iris Glass was a Stampede Pioneer recipient in 2005. Scott still has the enthusiasm – he was back in Glass’s barn at the Stampede on July 15. “I like to see a good team work together,” Scott said. “It’s phenomenal if you put the right horses together and away you go.” Joining Scott as Pioneer recipients in 2018 were former chuckwagon driver Buddy Bensmiller and barrel racer Marlene Eddleman McRae.
