In mid-December, members of the Ontario Harness Horse Association and horsepeople from the Windsor area met to discuss the future. They talked about the potential of racing 10 days in Leamington to secure a home market area, and then spoke of the concept of longer term options, including building a new racetrack near Windsor. I applaud them.
The successes of the sport in places like France, Sweden and Australia are firmly rooted in community driven organizations. There are small groups that keep the sport meaningful across the countryside, and bigger, more robust not-for-profit organizations that drive the business at the top level. Everyone is motivated by the desire to grow live horse racing.
We don’t need to look beyond our borders to see what works and what doesn’t work. If not for strong action from the horse racing community, the sport might not exist across much of this country. Whether it’s building a racetrack in Saskatchewan, starting from the bottom in Quebec, or working for everything they have across the Maritimes, there are many very clear lessons to be learned.
On the largest scale, the fact that the Woodbine Entertainment Group is a not-for-profit corporation designed with the primary objective of supporting live horse racing is something that none of us in this industry should take for granted. And the history lesson behind it is critical in seeing the future for standardbred racing across Ontario
E.P. Taylor’s words from 1947, soon after being appointed Director of the Ontario Jockey Club, still have relevance today. “Racing in the province used to mean ramshackle grandstands, bad stables, poor facilities for the public and a generally inferior production,” said Taylor. He then started to acquire racing charters from all of the racetracks he could get his hands on: Hamilton, Thorncliffe, Long Branch, Dufferin, Stamford, and on and on.
Under the OJC banner, Greenwood and Fort Erie were turned into jewels of Canadian racing, and Woodbine was built and opened as one of the greatest horse racing facilities in the world. And then came Mohawk. Thoroughbred and standardbred racing took place virtually every day at the new OJC, and customers who had previously rejected racing at other facilities, came out in droves. Taylor didn’t do it on smoke and mirrors. His vision and actions required tremendous leadership, masterful planning and an enormous amount of work by the team in place at the OJC.
I don’t know if today’s version of E.P. Taylor was in that Legion Hall in Windsor but I’m hoping he was. What would Mr. Taylor say about the dozens of standardbred racetracks and fair tracks across the province currently with little direction? What would he say about how race dates are haphazardly allocated based on the whim of track operators, or the poor treatment of customers at many of our facilities? I’m guessing he would start with a vision, develop goals and figure out how to get there.
It’s heartening to hear that the first steps are underway in southwestern Ontario. We are seeing leadership from a group of horsepeople who have no choice but to develop a plan and carry out a strategy. In the coming months and years, they will need great strength, vision and leadership to persevere. Taylor’s greatest accomplishment in the 1940s was to create a plan not for the day, but for the future. And now, 70 years later in a technological world he never could have imagined, many of his achievements live on.
The work that will take place over the coming years will determine what kind of industry is left for our children and grandchildren. And that is a responsibility none of us can take lightly.
Darryl Kaplan
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