Checkered Courage: Chuckwagon Racing's Glass Family

No one knows chuckwagon racing like Alberta’s Glass family. And no one exemplifies the true spirit of the West like they do. The hub of this remarkable family is Iris Glass, who has been called Queen of the Chucks. In her 75 years, she has experienced all the sport can offer—its tears and laughter, its thrills and dangers—and she has bound her family together through a lifetime of thundering chuckwagons and flying hooves. She has felt the pangs of seeing her son die competing in the sport they both loved. And through it all, she has prevailed as the sport’s matriarch.

But the Glass family not only excels at wagon racing. The family members also are renowned for their expertise as Hollywood stunt men and women. Hidden within runaway stagecoaches and flipping semitrailers, they have thrilled audiences and put their bodies and lives on the line in such major motion pictures as Shanghai Noon and Romeo and Juliet.

A native Calgarian, Glen Mikkelsen grew up enthralled by chuckwagon racing, western culture and the community spirit embodied by the Calgary Stampede. Since the mid-1980s, he has written about the Canadian West. Currently living in Prince George, British Columbia, he continues to follow the chuckwagon circuit. Glen Mikkelsen is the author of Never Holler Whoa!