History & Heritage

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During the economic turmoil of 1930, when hardship shadowed nearly every industry, Conn Smythe was carving out an unusual path. A sharp-minded figure known for his dual passions—ice hockey and horse racing—Smythe had just become the new owner of the Toronto St. Patrick Hockey Club, or St. Pats, a team that had once clinched the Stanley Cup in 1922.

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When Canada becomes a winter wonderland shrouded with snow, many riders hang up their boots or disappear into indoor arenas. For teamsters in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec, winter means hitching their horses to wagons, cutters, and bobsleighs to drive the trails at fundraising rallies.

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In March 2024, Skijor Canada will once again hold Skijordue — a skijoring event billed as “a blistering blend of snow, speed, style, and cheese with gritty cowboys, gnarly free-riders, fur, fringe, and fashionista.”

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Helping others live their horse-filled dreams - “I do everything I can to make sure that anybody that has a dream or a wish to be around horses gets that opportunity,” — Brian Tropea.

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As leaves fall and tears flow, horrors of another time sear the collective consciousness. Each Remembrance Day we think of lives forever changed, forever lost. And many of us think of the four-legged ones by their side.

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Little Horses of the Big Woods - Sitting in the trees, the boys could feel warmth in the air, the breath of the herd rising to their feet. Pounding hooves echoed through the oaks like a warning bell, chasing Bill and his friends into the low branches. Here they sat watching dozens of horses pass below. Through Ontario’s Carolinian woods, the boys often followed snake-like “miikaans,” the little roads created by the horses. Emerging from the trees, the herd would wade across the shallow waters of the river to a small island, cooling themselves while they escaped the bugs. When the drumming of hooves had faded, the boys would drop from the branches like apples in autumn and continue on their way.

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Twenty years ago, the Oregon Horse Center in Eugene, Oregon held an indoor trail competition using log obstacles, water ponds, and dirt embankments to transform their arena into mountain trails. That event was the beginning of competitive mountain trail, where neatly dressed riders navigate an untimed, subjectively-judged course of obstacles typically found on wilderness mountain trails. In Canada, two organizations promote the sport — International Mountain Trail Challenge Association (IMTCA) Canada and the British Columbia Mountain Trail Association (BCMTA)— and each has their own rules, judging criteria, and obstacles.

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The Fraser Valley Hunt Club has been organizing “drag scent” hunts in British Columbia every fall and winter for almost 50 years. A local horse and hunt enthusiast hosts the opening hunt for the club each fall from his farm on the upper slopes of Mount Elphinstone on the Sunshine Coast. This story begins in early November when the core group of dedicated hunters arrive from the Fraser Valley by ferry with several trailers of horses and one of hounds.

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Our group of 17 horses and riders had taken shelter from the brutal midday sun beneath a massive overhang created thousands of years ago when water roared through the valley, and our chosen lunch spot was also home to several rattlesnakes.

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Down gravel roads in Chatham-Kent, Ontario, you can judge the changing of the seasons and the progression of time by the corn. Every July, throngs of teenagers head into the fields to detassel corn. It’s a rite of passage in Chatham-Kent — hats and gloves, thermoses full of water, corn rash, and heat stroke — all for summer wages. By August 1, Emancipation Day, the seed corn has been detasseled, and stands of sweet corn are speckled along roads and laneways to farms. A bell rings to signify the day, celebrating freedom. The rest of the corn in the area, mostly grown for silage, has reached toward the sun, and soon the harvest will come and the green of these fields will brown, marking the passage of time.

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