Hays Breakfast returns as Legacy event with city's top leaders gathering Sunday
The prestigious Stampede breakfast, absent for seven years, came back Sunday at Heritage Park with Mayor Farkas, Premier Smith, and dozens of civic and business leaders.
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Calgary's most prestigious Stampede breakfast returned Sunday after a seven-year absence, bringing back a 69-year tradition that city leaders and volunteers say had been sorely missed. Now called the Legacy Breakfast, the invite-only event at Heritage Park honored the Hays family's founding of the original breakfast in 1950 and drew Mayor Jeromy Farkas, Premier Danielle Smith, politicians including Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi, first responders, and Flames and Stampeders players.
Farkas recalled nervously working crowds at the original Hays Breakfast ten years ago as a council hopeful. Returning as mayor, he called it "quite emotional." "Because this is really a who's who of Calgary," he said. "It's not just the old ranching families, it's also the current-day leaders, the leaders in business, volunteerism, and the not-for-profit sector."
The Hays family discontinued the breakfast seven years ago, and many attendees greatly missed it, said event volunteer Catherine Brownlee, president of CBI Business Solutions. "It was, for 69 years, the Stampede event that everybody wanted to be at," she said. "If you had an invitation to be able to attend, you felt blessed to be able to be there." The event began with the national anthem, a speech by Farkas, the ceremonial milking of a cow for the Hays family's mysterious "Syllabub," and remarks by Premier Smith. "I'm so glad that this event has been resurrected, and that we're going to be able to continue enjoying it for many more decades to come," Smith said.
