Grandstand ritual offering alarms pastor

Joe Woodard, Calgary Herald
Published: Tuesday, July 11, 2006


Local minister Gord Smith worries the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede Board may have called the wrath of God down upon the city, since it has endorsed pagan spirit worship.

Sunday night at the Grandstand Show, Stampede president Steve Allan invited onstage three village chieftains from Ghana to summon the spirits of their ancestors, Smith said.

The three, dressed in the colourful robes of their homeland, poured a sacrificial offering of gin onto the stage and uttered prayers to appease their ancestral spirits.

Smith, a chaplain at Calgary International Airport, acknowledges the Ghanaians have a right to believe what they want. But he thinks it's "offensive, totally offensive," for the Stampede board to endorse pagan spiritualism.

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