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By the end of the 18th century, around the west end of Lake Ontario, horses were commonplace in agriculture, transportation, recreation, and military life. Horse racing in its many forms–trotting, flat racing, jumping, and fox hunting–was a favourite recreation of British officers stationed in Upper Canada, as was winter sleighing. At Niagara’s Fort George, a hotbed for racing as early as the 1790s, simple straight races evolved in the years after the War of 1812-14 into grand social and sporting events, complete with regimental bands, banquets, and dandies, in addition to the time-honoured fixtures of betting and horse dealing. In the early newspapers of both Niagara and York (Toronto), advertisements for lost horses, strays, steeds for sale, and saddlery were frequent. Throughout the countryside in the 1810s and 1820s riders paired with horses of all kinds, with prizes ranging from sizable purses to lumber and other desirable commodities. Informal racing and carriage riding at York had probably begun in the 1790s on a hard-sand stretch on Toronto Island (then connected to the mainland), but the rural surrounds and flat, 1,000-acre Garrison Common of Fort York were equally suitable for many sports. A good number of the town’s finest horses were owned by its officers. In 1801 a fox hunt was run out of the garrison, and an island race pitted the horses of a Mr McNabb and a Sergeant Purvis. War brought racing to a halt; when it resumed at York is uncertain, but the tandem and garrison racing clubs founded about 1818 in Quebec City provided worthy models, as did the organized races in Montreal
This decorative type from a Toronto newspaper of the 1840s was often used at the head of racing announcements. Though small in scale, it includes a finishing post and stewards’ tower. (Credit: Toronto Public Library) and La Prairie in the early 1820s. Closer to York, horses were being moved around Lake Ontario for sale, breeding, and racing. Historian Louis E. Cauz emphasizes the indebtedness to officers at Niagara and York who brought in thoroughbreds, many from the United States. In 1819, at York’s first annual fair, a race was run on Wellington Street. Early accounts also record highly popular races from Small’s Corner at King and Berkeley into the market-place; miller and court clerk Charles C. Small was an avid horse racer. (Races along public highways would later be prohibited in several counties in Upper Canada.) Inaugurated in 1827, the York Races mark the beginning of documented, organized racing at York. Newspapers provide virtually our only source of information. On 20 October 1827 the U. E. Loyalist, in its news of “The Turf,” reported that the “Officers of the 68th Regt. have prepared a Race Course, on
the grounds attached to the York Garrison. We understand that a match Race takes place on Monday next at noon, and that several Horses will be entered for Races which are to be run, on the Monday following. There will be no objection we believe to allow any individuals the benefit of the Course for training Horses.”The 68th Foot had been in garrison in 1819-22 and then from 1826, and clearly its officers wanted to race their horses. The course itself, likely a straight one, ran from Fort York to the area later occupied by the new fort, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile; there were no doubt end markers for turning. Whatever the reception to the new course in 1827, the public response to spring and fall races the following year was enthusiastic. On 25 June 1828 the Colonial Advocate reported that a “Town Purse of 40 dollars, the owner of each Horse paying 2 dollars entrance, was run on Tuesday last on the Garrison Race Course. Three horses started, and was won after a fine contested race by Dr. McCague’s Diamond.” The races of October 6, 8, and 10 were covered by both the Colonial Advocate and, in greater detail, the Canadian Freeman. The Advocate, perhaps with some exaggeration, noted that “half the people of York” turned out on opening day. The excitement was due in good part too, Edith Firth notes, to the zeal of the officers and the provision of substantial purses, one by Lieutenant Governor Sir Peregrine Maitland. Among the horse owners were iron-founder Frederick R. Dutcher, impulsive Irish physician James McCague, and Lieutenant Richardson William Huey of the 68th, while a Mr Nelles came from the Head of the Lake (around Hamilton Harbour) and a Mr Davis from Stoney Creek. The October races were conducted as a form of selling match, whereby, “according to the rules of the managers,” winners had to be sold on the course if interested parties came forward within two hours. Though such matches were disappearing from the British scene and were disparaged by the Freeman, the York Races had quickly established themselves as a premier event, with entrants from around the lake, weigh-ins for riders, and jockeys and horses from the United States. Dutcher’s Hornet, a winning favourite, was Yankee-bred. This superiority of American riders and mounts also piqued the Freeman: “We have not horses here to match them,” it ranted, “and we must be the losers, at least in bets.”
The Friends of Fort York have appointed Palatine Hills Estate Winery of Niagara-on-the-Lake as an Official Supplier
earlier complaints. The Trial Stakes were restricted to horses bred in Upper Canada, all entrants were obliged to subscribe at least £1 5s, a winner had to pay 10s towards the expenses of the course, stray dogs on the course would be shot, and riders were obliged to wear “full jockey style.” One can picture a carnival-like event on the common, with townsfolk, visitors, grooms, jocks, breeders, bookmakers, hawkers, and soldiers all mingling on the chilly field. Racing on the Garrison Common proceeded into the late 1830s with little prospect of change. In 1836 John Maitland, a lieutenant in the 4th Battalion of York militia, became secretary of the races and collected subscriptions, which totalled £60 for the year. The scene soon moved westwards, however, to the Simcoe Chase course of miller-distiller John Scarlett. The first meeting there took place in September 1837. Fort York had become preoccupied with the civil unrest of 1837-38, which likely prohibited racing within range of guns and musters, and the planning of a new fort (Stanley Barracks) to bolster the defences. Thus ended horse racing on the Common, though the sound of pounding hoofs there would be prominent for many more years. Both the Garrison course and the York Races remain important as the cradle of organized horse racing in Toronto. A former editor and historian with the Dictionary of Canadian Biography/Dictionnaire biographique du Canada, David Roberts lives in Scarborough.
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