History & Heritage

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One of the most prominent symbols of Canada is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) “Mountie,” wearing his red serge uniform and brown Stetson. Put many of these Mounties on black horses, have them perform intricate formations in front of a crowd, and you have another of Canada’s most recognizable icons: the RCMP Musical Ride.

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In the summer of 1381, Anne of Bohemia, only 15 years old, left her home at Hradschin Palace in Prague in the Kingdom of Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic). Ahead of her lay a 1,100-kilometre trip on horseback across Europe to Calais, France, where she and her entourage would take a boat across the English Channel to England, to her arranged marriage to Richard II, the King of England, also 15 years old, whom she had never met.

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It would be some 700,000 years before Duane Froese, an earth sciences professor with the University of Alberta in Edmonton and his team excavated a metapodial (cannon) horse bone from permafrost in the Thistle Creek gold mine in west-central Yukon in 2003. The team was hunting fossils embedded in permafrost while gathering data on the sediments that preserved them. Many other horse fossils found in Yukon had been pony-sized, but Froese and his team knew this find had come from a larger horse.

Norwegian Fjord, Asiatic wild horse or Przewalski horse, Highland Pony and the Icelandic Horse. Horses used by vikings, Beaver Dam Farm in Nova Scotia, American Driving Society (ADS), Wallace Point Fjords, Blue Raven Farm, and McKinnon’s Neck Farm

The Norwegian Fjord is considered one of the oldest pure breeds of horse. While they bear a striking resemblance to the Asiatic wild horse or Przewalski horse, they are in fact more closely related to the European wild horse, the Tarpan, as the Przewalski horse has 66 chromosomes while both the Fjord and the Tarpan have 64.

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Let's Talk - On May 25, 2020, 46-year-old Black American George Floyd was killed while in police custody, after it was alleged he passed a counterfeit bill. A Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while Floyd lay face down, handcuffed, and pleading repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe. Floyd ultimately succumbed. The tragedy struck a chord and protests flared against police brutality and racism — I can’t breathe their rallying cry, leading to an ongoing resurgence of the global Black Lives Matter movement.

World War I horse named Bunny, bunny the brave war horse, Elizabeth MacLeod, 1914 horse named bunny

In 1914, just over one hundred years ago at the start of World War I, Bunny, a strawberry roan gelding from the Toronto Police Mounted Unit, was called upon to serve his country. The Canadian military needed suitable horses to send overseas and the City of Toronto offered to donate mounts to the Canadian artillery. Major McDougall, the officer commanding the 9th Canadian Field Artillery, inspected all their horses and picked 18 of the best. Four of the unit’s officers, including Constable Thomas H. Dundas, enlisted with what became known as the Toronto Battery.

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These days, importing European horses generally means flying expensive horses with high-performance Warmblood pedigrees over to North America. But importing horses to North America isn’t anything new. Horses were brought over from Europe when Spanish explorers and conquistadors sailed the ocean blue in the 15th century.

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In the July/August 2017 issue of Canadian Horse Journal, we celebrated Canada’s 150th anniversary with stories of 20 exceptional horses that have reflected our values and fired our national pride. One of those horses was Nijinsky.

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In 1968, show jumping trio James Day, Jim Elder, and Thomas Gayford surprised the world by putting Canada on the podium when they won Canada’s only gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City. It was the first time Canada had ever entered a team in the show jumping and, going in, the Americans, Germans, and British were the favoured medal contenders.

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In British Columbia, Howard Jackson, who with his wife, Marylin, owns the BC Appaloosa Centre (BCAC) in Prince George, has enjoyed a lifelong relationship with Appaloosas. Jackson was born in 1948, and in 1955 his father acquired an aged Appaloosa stallion named White Chief #36 ApHCC in a horse trade.

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