Cecilia DeRose will be honoured with a lifetime membership to the Williams Lake Stampede at this year's event.
At 89 years old, Cecilia DeRose still enjoys the rodeo at the Williams Lake Stampede.
“As far as I could remember, we attended the Stampede every year,” she recalls, while sitting at her kitchen table in her house in Williams Lake.
A child of a rodeo family, she said a lot has changed since the early days.
Throughout her childhood, her family would travel by horse and wagon into Williams Lake from where they lived out past the community of Esk’et (Alkali First Nation). They would camp overnight en route, trying to take it easy on the horses, some of which her dad Matthew Dick, and her uncles would race.
DeRose said it was a chance for all the people from surrounding First Nations communities to get together and socialize.
Her dad rode horses in the flat races, her uncle Harry Dick raced the mountain race, and her uncle Joe Dick rode in the Roman race. In the Roman race, a rider raced down the track on two horses, one foot on the back of either horse. DeRose said Bill Twan always won the Roman race. Two of her sisters also ran for Stampede Queen.
