It has been just over two years since Dave Kay Jr. returned from Paris to his home at Eureka River, in northern Alberta.
Even now, he’s known as the cowboy who went to Paris to play cowboys and Indians in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show at EuroDisney, Disneyland’s theme park.
“I’m a little flattered and overwhelmed about the fame I got. I didn’t get the fortune, but I got the fame.
“Local people to this day know about it,” said Kay, 23, who traded in the Indian buckskin costume and the glamor of Paris for a steady home life on the Clear Hills Reserve chasing cows and training horses.
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Kay heard the European wild west show was holding tryouts for cowboys and Indians at Hobbema, Alta., and on a lark went down for the auditions. He said he didn’t know what was expected of the actors who reenact a fight between Sioux Indians and Buffalo Bill.
Kay, a Native Canadian, heard the call for cowboys and thought he fit the bill.
“I was raised a cowboy and never thought of myself as an Indian. When I was a teenager and somebody called me an Indian, I’d straighten them out.”
He was one of the few people who could jump on a horse without a saddle and ride bareback.
“When we went out riding as a kid, I was too lazy to use a saddle.”
Before he left, people warned Kay about the drugs and alcohol in Paris, but he wasn’t prepared for what he saw.
“If I had been three years younger I would have thought it was good, all the drinking and partying. We went to lots of parties with modeling agencies. There was all sorts of big shots and stars,” said Kay.
But he missed the quiet life of Eureka River. He missed his parents and he had recently gotten engaged to his girlfriend.
“I came home, I chose to have my home life,” he said.
Eureka River, in the northern Alberta Peace River country, straddles the border where farmland and the northern bush meet. The store and post office are gone, replaced by a super mailbox on a wide spot in the road. There is not much left to indicate how the area could draw Kay back home.
Treated differently
But in addition to missing his family and fiancee, Kay was disillusioned by the segregation of cowboys and Indians playing in the Disney dinner theatre.
“We (the Indians) would wear some stinky, crusty buckskin outfit over your skin that every other Indian had worn every other night.”
He also glued a wig onto his forehead, smeared on warpaint, jumped on his horse and played a part in the Sioux Indian and Wild Bill reenactment. The cowboys in the show were on a different strata and had fresh clothes and a large change room with a show monitor.
“We had an old grungy shack to change in,” Kay said.
After the opening ceremonies, when the cast danced around to rev up the audience, the show began.
Wild Bill introduced Sitting Bull, who introduced the Indians. They would do an act, the cowboys would do an act, play some games and a woman would come out and do an act, he said.
“Then the cowboys would make the Indians look like wild savage beasts. The Indians would steal the chuckwagon, the cowboys would steal the chuckwagon back and then have a big ending.”
EuroDisney’s portrayal of the cowboy and Indian stereotypes troubled Kay. He lasted about three weeks in the show before calling it quits. Officials asked if he wanted to play a cowboy, a more elevated position in the show, but by this time Kay had made up his mind to return home.
He now works full-time looking after cattle on the reserve and training horses.
“It was a good experience to go and see what’s out there.”
