William Robert 'Bill' Stuart of Ilderton, Ontario passed away peacefully on Friday, Dec. 11 at London’s University Hospital surrounded by his family. He was in his 91st year.
Stuart and his wife of 65 years, Eileen Mae (Segriff), began racing Standardbred horses in the early 1960s and started a small breeding operation early in the 1970s. As breeders, the Stuarts had the good fortune to purchase the great trotting broodmare Mygal Haw Lea as a yearling in 1975 from the first crop of Speedy Crown.
From Mygal Haw Lea, they bred Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame member and two-time Maple Leaf Trotting Classic winner Bridger, and the most expensive Standardbred yearling in Canadian history (at the time) for $100,000 who went on to be the first 2:00 trotter in Ontario Sires Stakes history, Brisco Herbert, and O’Brien Award winner Mombasa (dam of O’Brien Award winner Filly At Bigs) and Fuchsia (granddam of Northern Bailey) and the dam of O’Brien Award winner Stormont Tuscany.
With funds from the 1981 sale of Brisco Herbert, the Stuarts returned to a Kentucky yearling sale a month later to purchase the Speedy Crown filly Segriff, winner of three Grand Circuit stakes as a three-year-old and dam of the precocious trotting filly Razzle Dazzle Tom and grand dam of trotting mare Charming To A Tee. Another racing highlight for the Stuarts came in the early summer of 2007 when they purchased a share in the promising two-year-old trotting colt Deweycheatumnhowe. That deal landed them in the 2008 Hambletonian winner’s circle.
A World War II Canadian Army veteran, Stuart was an electrical inspector for Ontario Hydro in the London area for the majority of his working life, and enjoyed over 35 years of retirement benefitting from his and others' hard fought battles during tenures as a Union Steward. Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, next to the U.S. border, he was a member of the locally famous Bridger family, who supplied Sarnia families and restaurants and docked lake freighters with flowers and produce for over 65 years beginning in 1900 from their vast greenhouse and market garden operation on London Road (near Indian Rd – not far from Hiawatha Downs).
Bill’s own father, George Stuart, was a fireman for Imperial Oil in Sarnia and it is through him that his great love of harness racing was nurtured. George had immigrated to Canada from North Yorkshire, England, circa 1900, as a young orphan and was placed as a farm labourer near Parkhill, which was then, as it is today, a harness racing hotbed. Bill remembered attending the races at Brigden Fair (early 1930s) with his dad when a call came for volunteers with cars as they were needed to drive over the wet track to dry it out so, as a passenger going round and round, the young Stuart was hooked.
Besides his wife Eileen, Bill Stuart is survived by children David, Paul (Carolyn), and Sharon (Bill), seven grandchildren, Rebecca (Martin), Matthew (Sarah), Mark, Jason (Courtney), Daniel, Jonathan, and Carly, and seven great-grandchildren, Natalie, Kate, Charlotte, Ella, Sean, William and Brady.
Stuart will be buried in the Bridger family plot at Lakeview Cemetery, Sarnia. Visitation will take place at the Smith Funeral Home in Sarnia, Ontario, from noon to 1 p.m. on Tuesday, December 15 with funeral to follow.
Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Bill Stuart.
What a pleasure it was to
What a pleasure it was to train a horse for a gentleman like Bill Stuart. Always had the common sense business approach about him, which I'm sure any one at Hydro or in the horse business admired. My condolences to Eileen, Dave and the rest of the family.
What a wonderfully written
What a wonderfully written story about a man who combined so many great things in a life well lived. I almost feel as though I somehow "knew" the Stuarts from reading about them and the many real nice horses they owned, bred or were somehow connected with over the years. I know finally know where the inspiration for some of the great names in Canadian harness racing came from, especially Bridger and Seagriff. Back when I wrote "Looking Back" in the old Standardbred magazine for Barbara Lennox, David Stuart penned a lot of very well done articles under the title of "The Breeding Scene". I loved reading them then, and still go back and read many of them to this day. My thoughts and caring I extend to the Stuart family at this time.