AND OTHER SKETCHES 115 



PAST AND PRESENT RACING. 



There are some new-fledged turfmen who pretend to 

 believe that racing in Canada thirty or forty years ago 

 was of no account. True, the tracks then were not as fast 

 as now, neither were their furnishings as liberal, nor the 

 purses as large in amount as those offered at the present 

 day, but the charge for admission was small and the 

 public then, as now, were liberal in their patronage. 

 Prominent men from distant sections of the country 

 used to foregather and there was more friendly inter- 

 course and social enjoyment at those early meetings than 

 at the present time. In a word, there was more pleasure 

 and less business, more keen enjoyment of the racing 

 through enthusiasm for the sport than for the sake of 

 the money that could be squeezed out of it. Yet when 

 memory travels back to the date alluded to, I can picture 

 many a gallant contest, recollections of which stir the 

 blood even now. 



In 1873 Barrie course was in its glory and a goodly 

 number of dollars were offered in premiums. Their July 

 meeting that year was a memorable one, it being the 

 initiatory year of the Canadian Derby, which was won by 

 Dr. Smith's War Cry, who landed at Barrie after a most 

 eventful trip from New York. It appears that after the 

 Doctor bought him, he selected a groom to fetch the 

 Derby candidate on to Canada, giving him instructions 

 to follow immediately. The Doctor arrived home, waited 

 day after day, but no horse came to hand, and though he 

 kept the wires busy with his messages of enquiry, nothing 

 could be ascertained from Gotham, except that man and 

 horse had left there at the time ordered. Finally the 

 missing pair were found at Albany, it turning out that 

 the groom had become crazy on the journey and had 

 taken the horse out of the car at Albany, and had left 

 him in a livery stable there. When reclaimed by the 



