"A Mover and a Shaker of ideas, people, communities and life" attempts to define Wayne Jakino. With the novel idea of combining gay and country fresh in his mind; Wayne decided to check out something called The National Gay Rodeo in Reno, Nevada. After a fun weekend in Reno, over a decade ago, he returned home to Colorado and formed The Colorado Gay Rodeo Association. Serving as president the first three years with more ideas growing all the time.

Wayne then gathered half a dozen people together and put together a little group called The International Gay Rodeo Association. The past 12 successful years of organizing gay rodeo is the direct result of all the hard work and dedication of this year's Grand Marshal. How fitting to have the founding President of IGRA as the Grand Marshal of the first truly International Gay Rodeo. Out of a desire to include more and more people in the fun of rodeo weekends, Wayne helped found the International Gay Square Dance Association.

As trustee for CGRA, he brought Miller Brewing Co. on board as the first IGRA International Sponsor. In 1994 Miller is contributing over $115,000.00 in cash and $100,000.00 in printed materials and misc. merchandise to the rodeo circuit. Miller Brewing knows "A mover and shaker" named Wayne Jakino.

His current passion for the past six years has been announcing gay rodeos. It is really a thrill for Wayne this weekend to be announcing the first IGRA sanctioned rodeo to be held outside of the U.S.A. on the gay circuit. Wayne has been on the Denver Mayor's Council working on city and community issues in an attempt to unite and educate the police, fire department, and local government in general on gay issues. Success has come through many tireless hours of work and communications as a liaison with all levels of the general public.

The last 8 months have been spent helping his life partner, Rusty Barker battle cancer. This battle was lost on May 29,1994. Wayne in a very personal way has experienced the wonderful extended family of friends and support found in the gay rodeo family across this land. If you feel some Moving & Shaking going on, look around, you may just get a glimpse of Wayne Jakino.

Calgary is honored and thrilled to have as our Grand Marshal and Announcer, a man who is an outstanding leader in our Gay and Lesbian Community; and also the founding father of the International Gay Rodeo Association.

Our hats are off to you Wayne Jakino!

The first organizational meeting of the Alberta Gay Rodeo Association was held in April, 1991. Richard O'Sullivan, a local gay businessman, called the meeting after having attended a gay rodeo in Phoenix, Arizona. The original concept was that we try and find out if there would be enough interest in forming an association that would organize a gay rodeo in Alberta that could eventually become affiliated with the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA) circuit.

We incorporated the AGRA as a non-profit society in August, 1991 and elected a slate of officers. We had 53 founding members by our year end in October of that year. Twenty-one of those members remain active including Joe A., Gordon A., Boots & Saddle (Edmonton), Johann Cluett, Darren C., Fraser E., Ernie H., Hollister Hyatt, Paul Kopf, Phill K., Larry L., MikeL., Doug M., Bill O'Connell, Darcy 0., Shane P., Henryk Rajner, The Roost (Edmonton), Trax and two of our founding executives Bruce Chudobiak (Treasurer) and Cord Woima (Past President).

The AGRA has had 166 people become members since our inception. We have 119 paid members at the present from the provinces of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, the North West Territories, Ontario, Saskatchewan and the state of Montana. Perhaps one day (Maybe this weekend?) we will have members from across this beautiful country and from several states south of the 49th parallel.

The first two years were spent mainly raising money and then we held our first event, "The Canadian National Gay Rodeo" in July, 1993. In August of that year we became a member association of the IGRA at the Annual Convention held in Billings, Montana.

The Alberta Gay Rodeo Association would like to thank the Atlantic States Gay Rodeo Association (ASGRA), the Big Sky Gay Rodeo Association (BSGRA) , and the Southeast Gay Rodeo Association (SEGRA) for encouraging us to apply for a sanctioned event .... The Canadian Rockies International Rodeo .... The first Miller Lite!IGRA sanctioned rodeo to be held outside of the continental United States of America!