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Calgary Herald

Stampede bartender says 'I'm never going to do it again' as mental health impacts linger around the city

Post-Stampede enrollment at the Calgary Counselling Centre is similar in many ways to enrollment after December holidays. As the chaos of cowboy carousing begins to ebb, and life returns to normal, people's minds are given leeway to drift towards their own mental health needs. Article content Kelly Hanasyk thinks the drinking culture around Stampede might creating the need for mental health support. She was on the Stampede's front lines, having driven from her home in Edmonton to bartend in one of the numerous party tent pop ups around the city for the full ten day run. She documented the experience on Tiktok, with one video garnering more than 1.9-million views. Article content Article content Article content She said she saw a clear degradation in the public over the course of her time behind a bar. By the second weekend, guests were more aggressive and demanding, and at times outright hostile. Article content Article content A three-year long study published in the Canadian Journal for Emergency Medicine found that during the course of the Stampede, emergency departments saw a 24 per cent increase in the diagnosis of substance misuse. The study found a general increase in emergency visits, with a sharper spike in visits at nighttime, and by men. Article content Sarah Rosenfeld is the associate director of counselling initiatives at the Calgary Counselling Centre. She said the key to navigating any event that has such an emphasis on consumption healthily, is to build out a support group of peers, who can check in with each other despite the pressure to participate. Article content Article content 'We kind of have a collective responsibility, in my opinion, to be able to look after one another, but we also need to be able to have the skills and knowledge to be able to navigate some of those more difficult situations because it can be hard to have those conversations, right? It can be hard to support people in the way that you think they might need to be helped,' Rosenfeld said. Article content Hanasyk said that those working around the city were particularly vulnerable to the Stampede wear and tear, due to incredibly long working hours. She said that multiple employees worked shifts longer than 20 hours straight, pushed by an ambiguity around the gratuity that they were owed at end of the night. With much of the income being dispersed in cash, she said it was impossible to know if you were being equally compensated unless you were there in person. Article content 'You're you're trying to manage competing priorities, right? So I think for some folks, that's a source of income as well that they wouldn't otherwise have access to,' Rosenfeld said.