By: Emily Katherine Maloney

It’s a cold November morning in the countryside just north of Toronto. Small flakes of snow fall to the ground. The landscape glistens in the sunshine. This is Caledon: A community bustling with typical rural life and a true example of the beauty of the Canadian landscape. As you drive down the back roads, along the rolling hills, beautiful horse farms are visible, pristine fences line the fields.

Something is missing. The paddocks lay empty; there are no horses to be seen.

Caledon is one of many communities hit hard by the recent decline in Ontario’s horse racing industry. Loss of a once prosperous and lucrative business has left this farming community in shambles. Families have lost everything they have invested and farms no longer breed, for lack of a decent return of the investment. Feed stores and farms that produce hay take a huge loss in income as well as other small businesseslike the ones that repair those fences The list goes on.

Rick Cadger owns a small thoroughbred horse farm in the west end of Caledon. He’s all too familiar with the damages the industry has caused. Cadger trains and breeds his own horses, but with the industry changing and becoming so unstable he has

decided it’s time to get out of the game. He has already stopped breeding his horses.

“If you can’t have confidence in what’s going to happen down the road, I mean what do you do with all the horses that you’ve bred if there’s no horse racing?”

There is a sign of hope in the future for this community, but the damage has already been done.

The loss of Slots at racetrack program hit everyone hard and as Cadger says “It was a surprise to us as horsemen.” Many of the smaller operators were shocked when the industry suddenly spiralled down. Nobody was prepared and the results were

The Rise and Fall of Horse Racing

Lexie Lou at the Woodbine South Ocean Stakes 2013. Courtesy photo from WEG

catastrophic. Cadger thought the industry was in good shape three years ago: if his family could have prepared it would have made the damage much easier to deal with.

It is not just the small horse farms that have been hit hard. Larger, mid-sized farms such as Mary Clark’s have felt the strain as well. When Clark first set out in the standarbred race industry (19xx) she began breeding old brood mares. She was getting $60,000 to $80,000 for her foals and was making a fair amount of money. The difficulties for breeders is not new, the problem has been escalating much longer than the racing. The past ten years have been very unstable. “I thought I could break through,” says Clark.

Her horses went from being extremely valuable, to worth hardly anything. Still she believed this would pass because like any business the industry has good times and bad times.

When the Slots at racetracks program was cancelled in February 2013, it hit breeders especially hard. “The breeders had already bred,” says Clark. “You didn’t know that your babies were worth nothing, especially if Canadian sired.”

Suddenly Clark’s business was beyond salvageable. Last year one of her foals went for just $5,000. From $80,000 to just five shows just how bad the breeding sector has been hit.

Clark is now pulling out of the industry because the motivation is not there anymore. Pulling out has some major consequences as well. “Now I am responsible for 30 horses on my property and now I can never move.” Bringing her horses home and no longer breeding or racing will mean a serious cut in her income. “I’ll be losing a fair amount of money but only a third of what I would be if I was actively involved in breeding and racing.” With racing in such a dismal state it would cost much more to stay active in the industry than to just cut her losses and pull out now while she has the chance.

With the government now stepping in and promising $400million over five years there seems to be light on the horizon, but even then it is only five years. The investment will focus on four public-interest principles; accountability, transparency, renewed focus on the consumer and return of the public money invested. This money will create a new sustainable horse racing model based on pari-mutuel wagering. The racing schedule will have 800 race days. New marketing and branding will aid in bringing new revenue into the industry. All of the racing industry will become the

Standarbred Horse (yet to be named) Courtesy photo from WEG

responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs. John Siscos, representative of the Woodbine Entertainment group says “ the Plan’s general principles will lay a strong foundation for the long-term sustainability of horse racing in Ontario. The plan also hopes to build a “integrated relationship between horse racing and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation,” says John. As good as this sounds there are still a number of sectors in the industry that this will not help.

President of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society John

Sikura says the governments funding is a way to right their mistake.

“They created a disaster and for their own good, if nothing else, they need to make sure that they don’t put an end to a business that’s been very profitable for them.” Sikura has been the president of the CTHS for the past 8 terms. Other than his role in CTHS he also breeds thoroughbreds both commercially and his own private stock.

According to him, before the loss of the slots at racetrack program, “Ontario was seen as one of the leaders of any jurisdiction anywhere.” The program grew the industry and encouraged large investments into rural Ontario. “We were absolutely headed in the right direction.” When the program was cut the markets were cut in half. Foreign entities stopped bringing their horses to Ontario and brood mares devalued exponentially. “If you can’t sell the product at sale, what are you going to do? It really made us do a 180 in terms of our thinking.” The $400 million will help sustain the industry but it will do nothing for the breeding sector. “We were the guys on the front line and even though it starts with us it won’t end with us.”

The CTHS is doing everything it can to help bring the industry back. Besides being involved in political projects, the CTHS has been putting all its efforts into educating the public about the crisis the horse racing industry faces now and in the future. “We’ve raised the profile of what we do a considerable amount.” Public support during this unstable time is crucial in order to sustain what is left of the industry.

Cadger says that even though there is a plan to keep racing alive he still wants out of the game. “I can see on the horizon that Horses Cody and Jet in their stalls. Owned by Caitlin

Wiebe and Emily Maloney.

might not go that far for a guy like me, possibly.” What he means is that even if the government money does bring life back into the horse racing industry, small time horse racers such as him will still be weeded out and left with nothing.

This is not a problem that should be ignored by the public. Sikura says, “Every jurisdiction that has slots at racetrack needs to realize you have to … educate the public and government. We were viewed as an easy target. If the Ontario government was able to attack our program and do it successfully then they might think of doing it down the road.” There is no guarantee that this will stabilize the future, but at this point the horse industry is filled with a sense of cautious optimism.

But for Clark, that money is “A little bit of a token thrown to the peasants.” She believes that it is too late and that the horse community can’t rely on the industry any longer. “Are you going to trust them after this?”

Photo taken by Caitlin Wiebe