[3] His high school summers were spent working for the Standard Holdings Group near Calgary where he was to be employed full-time from 1948 for the next 21 years, rising from a construction labourer to general manager.
[6] In 1969, after serving as a volunteer for 14 years with the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, he joined its permanent staff and was soon its general manager.
[8] He helped build Calgary's Chinook Shopping Centre, the Stampede Park grandstand, McMahon Stadium and Covenant House in Eagle Ridge (Alberta's first condominium).
[11] It was Bill Pratt, the former contractor who took over as Calgary Organizing Committee (COC) president in 1983, and who supervised the enormous construction project.
Says Donald Jacques, general manager of the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede: “Because of him, everything was built on time and on budget.” But Pratt rubbed many colleagues the wrong way.
He had barely settled into his job when the Calgary press began criticizing the committee for excessive secrecy and for awarding Olympic contracts to the Calgary public relations firm of Francis Williams and Johnson, where Pratt had been a director, COC insisted there was no conflict of interest.
General Manager for the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede for ten years, his contributions to the Stampede organization have made it a landmark of the Canadian cultural experience The award was presented personally to Pratt by Ray Hnatyshyn, Governor General of Canada, 29 April 1992 at a ceremony at Rideau Hall.