Stampede is the one time of year that can either ignite a little flame of civic pride or convince a long-time Calgarian that perhaps one would be better off spending a couple of weeks in Banff. If you happen to have a rekindled interests in your city’s cowboy heritage, a hankering for a good party, or you’re just plain old curious about the novel gastronomic monstrosities on offer at the Stampede grounds this year, this article is for you.

Brand new is the Agrium Western Events Centre, which will now house the majority of the Stampede’s agricultural events. Though the spotlight has been stolen in recent years by events like Nashville North and the World’s Biggest Hamburger – more on that later – the agricultural events are the soul of the Stampede. In fact, they are its very literal raison d’être.

A few of the kid-friendly activities aim to give school-aged children a chance to connect with the process and the animals involved in agriculture that they might not have as a part of city life. Agtivity in the City has touch-oriented games and a chance to interact with animals such as piglets and llamas. The Cattle Trail is another event that aims to offer an ‘interactive journey from pasture to plate’ to offer kids a look at exactly where their food comes from. One wonders how sanitized certain aspects of such a journey might be, lest the Cattle Trail churn out a steady stream of little green-at-the-gills vegans.

For the more action-oriented, the Agrium centre will also host the Cowboy Up Challenge, which aims to display high-performance cowboy sport, where competitors can show off rarefied versions of the skills essential to ranching, including horsemanship, racing, and cattle-penning.

With the ag events shifting to the new Agrium centre, many of the other Stampede standbys have been shuffled about, opening up the prime real estate in front of the Grandstands for another new feature known as the Triple-B, for ‘barbecue, bulls, and beer’. This thousand-person capacity venue will feature, in the words of Stampede Publicity Manager Jennifer Booth, "exactly what it sounds like!"

"We have two barbecue trucks," Booth continues. "They’re both from California and it’s their first time in Canada."

Juicy’s offers a plethora of barbecue options, including the aforementioned world’s largest hamburger – a 777-pound affair that requires a 24-hour pre-order, and will make a trifling $5000 dent in a prospective gourmand’s wallet. Shockingly Booth was not aware of any pre-orders at the time of our interview.

Big Bad Bubba’s BBQ brings more conventional ribs, chicken, and sandwiches to the Triple-B venue. The other two B’s are somewhat self-explanatory: plenty of beer, and the pair of mechanical bulls that will be running constantly at Triple-B.

There are a bevy of ways to test one’s digestive mettle at the 2014 Stampede. Booth tells us: "The vendors that we have on Stampede Park, we have a really good relationship with them ... when we’re initially touching base with them for Stampede, our team goes out and challenges them to come up with great and creative new food items. They can be anything from bacon-wrapped corn-on-the-cob to scorpion pizza."

This year’s experiments run from the innocuous and clever, like the Tokyo Teriyaki corn dog and the red velvet mini-donuts, to offerings that likely have the city’s physicians cringing. The deep fried cheesies, deep fried cookie dough, and deep fried donut bacon cheeseburgers come to mind.

This year’s Corral show is put on by the venerable Peking Acrobats.

"It’s a pretty phenomenal show that they do," says Booth, "and they have designed it specifically for the Calgary Stampede."

The Coca-Cola Stage and Nashville North are both in full swing as well, offering up acts such as George Fox, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Billy Talent, and the Trews.

The biggest challenge for last year’s Stampede organizers was, of course, the flooding that ravaged our city just weeks before the show was due to open. To paraphrase Stampede CEO Vern Kimball, there was a lot of sweeping things under the bed, and hoping the visiting mother-in-law didn’t look too closely. Though the grounds have been largely repaired, Booth informs us that it will likely take until the end of the summer to have the Stampede’s digs back to 100 per cent.

"There were a lot of Band-Aids last year," Booth confides. "This year we really did our best to remediate and take preventative measures for the future. The riverbank was a really big undertaking for the Stampede, making sure that it was restored in a way that helps for future incidents, as well as sustainable for the ecology of the river."

As perennial as the Stampede itself are the animal rights activists who object to what they see as its excess and exploitation. They likely won’t be mollified by knowing that show animals are given a stringent standard of care. Given that virtually everything edible on the Stampede grounds involves a dead animal at some point in its preparation, Booth assures us that the Stampede maintains some of the strictest guidelines in equestrian sport.

"We’re ahead of the norm when it comes to animal welfare, and making sure that animals are in the best possible environment for performance. For example, we have our Fitness to Compete program, which monitors animals on a daily basis, and up to minutes before going into, for example, a chuckwagon race. If for any reason they are slightly dehydrated, or there are any other signs showing on a test, they will not be able to race." The single animal fatality during the 2014 Stampede as of press time is purportedly the result of a viral infection.