Brenda’s Wedding

In 1972 my baby sister Brenda decided to get married so I offered to have her reception at my place in the park. She and my parents agreed and we began to make plans. 

My house was a little small but if the guest list got too big we could always spill out into the park.  It was a beautiful setting and many newly weds already used the location for their wedding photos. 

At the outset it wasn’t going to be a particularly fancy affair. There wouldn’t be any expensive caterers or rented décor. Like all the Leeson family functions, my mother and sisters would kick in and provide the food and spend a little time making my bachelor pad a little more presentable. Mom would make the cake and my sister Noreen would decorate it. A few yards of crepe paper streamers and some tinsel and we would be in business. 

The date was set and a church was found a few blocks away from the southern entrance to the park. 

About a week before the big day Brenda decided that she would like to be taken from the church to the reception in one of my horse drawn vehicles. It was an excellent idea; I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it.

I had several buggies to choose from but when I hauled the best one I owned out of the shed I realized that it was not really suitable or fancy enough for an occasion as important as my sister’s wedding. 

Luckily, I knew a man who had just imported an antique wedding coach from Germany.  I had recently loaned him a pair of quiet, city-broke horses so he could carry out an advertising promotion for Simpson Sears and he owed me big time. 

It took a bit of persuasion but he reluctantly agreed to loan me the coach. 

He delivered the rig to my stables three days before the wedding, reminding me that he had about twenty-five thousand hard-earned dollars tied up in it and that it's loss would ruin him. 

“Don’t worry Udo, I’ll handle it with kid gloves” I reassured him. He didn’t seem convinced but he gave his pride and joy one last loving pat and reluctantly drove away.

I had a close look at the coach as I was backing into my garage for the night and I had to admit that it was truly magnificent. It was snow white with brass fittings and carriage lamps. The driver’s seat was at the front, perched high above a glass windscreen that protected the ornate passenger cabin. It’s pristine condition belied the hundred years or so it had been in existence. It looked like something Cinderella would ride in and I knew Brenda would be over the moon when she saw it but I also knew that I would, indeed, have to be very, very careful with it.

In fact I decided that I had better not trust the driving to anyone else on the wedding day.  I would drive the coach myself. Of course I would bring someone along to hold the horses while I was in the church attending the ceremony but then I would nip outside and put on my top hat and coachman’s cloak and drive the happy couple to the reception myself.

Everything fell into place and when the wedding day rolled around everyone assembled at the church; my other sisters being the last to arrive because they had been busy all morning preparing food and decorating my house. I had given some thought to the team of horses I would use. All of the teams had been quiet and working well of late but I was still experiencing a tinge of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrom from my wild ride down Leslie Avenue so I immediately eliminated the horses I’d been using on that fateful day.

I decided instead to use a pair of foolproof bays that my father had trained. Dad assured me that they were as quiet as mice. “They're more like insurance policies than horses," he bragged. 

I gave myself plenty of time to get to the church that morning; I had arranged for the parks superintendent to remove an iron post that was normally placed in the center of the narrow bridge that crossed the Don River; it was kept there to stop cars and trucks using the bridge and only removed on special occasions. After crossing the bridge I reined in the horses and watched while the super replaced the post locking it in place. When he was finished I thanked him and reminded him that I would be calling from the church when the ceremony was over so that he would have time to remove the post again to let me and the rest of the wedding party back across the river then I tipped my top hat and was off.

As I drove my horses through the residential streets on the way to the church that morning it appeared that Dad had been as good as his word. The geldings trotted along like real gentlemen and never showed any inclination to shy or misbehave. 

When I arrived at the church I turned the horses over to my stable man Dick and headed inside. The pews on both sides of the aisle were both occupied, but the Leeson clan on the bride's side of the church was clearly superior in numbers. All my sisters and their husbands and children were present decked out in their ‘Sunday Go’in to Meetin’ finery and my parents were sitting in the front row, Mom sporting a tight Tony perm and Dad wearing the oversized dentures he only used on special occasions.

The wedding went off without a hitch, vows were shared, people cried and kids misbehaved; it was all quite normal.

I nipped out of the church ahead of everybody else and slipped into my coachman’s attire then waited while Brenda and her new husband John ran the gauntlet of confetti tossers.

Then couple was hustled over and into the coach and the rest of the family ran for their cars. As I glanced back and down through the glass panel that separated us I could see my sister comfortably seated, flowers in hand with her wedding dress and crinolines filling the small compartment and covering most of the lower half of her new husband. 

She looked up at me smiling serenely then nodded so amidst the hoots and hollers of the crowd off we went. 

The coach had been a dream to drive on the way to the church virtually silent on its rubber shod wheels but as we set out it immediately started to make a strange rattling noise. I couldn’t figure out what was going on at first but then I realized that some of the revelers had secretly attached several tin cans to the back axel. 

The horse perked up their ears and danced a bit but after I gave them a quiet word and they started to settle down. They were still a little apprehensive but it would have been manageable if the column of twenty or so cars following us hadn’t decided to follow the age old tradition of hanging out of the car windows and shouting while they leaned on their horns.

The horses immediately responded to the cacophony by breaking into a fast trot and then a canter. Clutching the reins in one hand I took off my top hat, turned around and waved it frantically at the pursuing vehicles. They seemed to think that I was trying to inspire and encourage them so even the people in the line up who would have had the good taste to refrain from behavior of this sort joined in and an unholy din of shouting, blaring horns and rattling cans ensued. 

It was too much for the horses; they totally lost it and took off at breakneck speed heading for the stables. There wasn’t much I could do, our fates were sealed, we were doomed. The only saving grace was that the team seemed to remember their way home and were negotiating all the turns on their own; albeit with the coach tipped up on two wheels and threatening to turn over in the process. When we hit the steep hill that led down into the valley and the horses felt the extra weight on their rear ends they pulled out all the stops and bee-lined  for the stable, hell bent for leather. That’s when I remembered the metal post in the center of the bridge; I hadn’t phoned to have it removed. 

Well that was that, it was all over, and there was no way of stopping the stampeding horses now that they could scent their stable. 

The horses could pass either side of that solid post but the coach could not. My borrowed twenty-five thousand dollar coach would be reduced to match wood and me and my passengers would probably be pitched over the bridge rail and into the Don River. At the very least the coach would be sliced into two frank pieces and the bride and groom dragged independently to their destination. It was too much to bear so I just closed my eyes and gripped the driver’s seat in anticipation of the impact. 

There was an impact but it wasn’t on the bridge. For some reason the post had been removed again while I was away and not immediately put back. The impact I felt was a result of the horses coming to a sudden halt as their noses crashed into the stable door. I ended up ass over teakettle in between them, shaken, but glad to be alive. The newlyweds had crashed their heads into the windscreen and both were disheveled and looked a little worse for wear but they also were otherwise unharmed. 

As I helped my little sister out of the carriage I noted that she had lost her bridal blush, her face was ashen white and her hairdo had exploded into a bizarre puffy lopsided coif that was sprinkled liberally with the remains of her bouquet. After shaking herself off and straightening her wedding dress she, in true Brenda form, was the first to appreciate the humor of the situation and broke out laughing hysterically. 

A good time was had by all at the reception that evening but as it turned out the marriage itself was doomed to failure and short-lived. They were quits before two years were out. 

I never told them about my fears concerning the post on the bridge or how close they were to being parted a whole lot sooner. 

Runaways

Ask any old timer who has spent his life around horses and he’ll have a story to tell about the horse that spooked and ran away with him. Cowboys, farmers, loggers even retired city milk wagon drivers- they’ve all had similar mishaps. 

When you’re breaking in a young horse you expect that it might have a go at taking matters into it's own hands and running off with you.  It’s only natural; flight is the horse’s first line of defense against predators with bucking coming a close second. 

It’s the unexpected that throws you for a loop, like when that old team of nags that you have been driving through all kinds of scary conditions for several years, for no apparent reason, takes a bad spell and suddenly bolts and drags you and whatever you’re riding in down the road at breakneck speeds. If you're lucky you might get them stopped and under control before too much of your rig has rattled to pieces or ended

upside down in a ditch.

My father was full of advice about how to handle these situations. “Let the bastards run, he would say, and when they get tired and start to slow down whip their asses and keep them going. Drive the buggers 'till they nearly drop. They’ll think twice about trying that trick again.”

That would have been good advice and if I had been living on the prairies where my dad had learned his trade, out where he had miles of straight open road or vast areas of open Saskatchewan grass land to work with. But I wasn't. My stables were situated in a park in the heart of Metropolitan Toronto and much of the time I had my horses and carriages out on the busy city streets. When things went wrong in that environment the consequences could be horrible. Intentionally letting a team run off their fear was not an option. The streets were too full of pedestrians, buses, streetcars  and other traffic.

Back in the days when horses were the main mode of transportation in our big cities traffic fatalities were almost exclusively due to runaway horses. The newspapers at the time were full of accounts of horses running amuck and charging through the streets dragging disintegrating buggies full of women and children. These events were so common that big city policemen were, as part of their training, given special instruction on how to deal with them. Awards of valor were frequently given to cops and private citizens for successfully intervening and saving the day but there were just as many stories about men who had died in the attempt. It was a terrible way to die; men were often impaled by pointed shaft ends or wagon tongues, crushed under heavy wooden spoke wheels, or pounded to a pulp under steel shod hooves. 

No, it was no laughing matter, which, when I look back at the times when I found myself in these hazardous situations, is why I wonder why all I can remember are the funny aspects.

For example there was the time I decided to take my team and democrat buggy along a very busy city thoroughfare to pick up a girl I had been trying to date at the office building where she worked.

I had been unsuccessful in all previous attempts to get her attention and was leaning heavily on the shock value of this latest ploy. I figured she would have to be pretty hard hearted not to respond to what I had in mind. When she came out of her office at the end of the day I would be waiting, all spiffed up and sitting flowers in hand in a fancy rig behind a pair of prancing horses. You couldn’t get more romantic than that. 

She had been playing really hard to get but I figured that if I could get her into that buggy and back down the road to my stables and bachelor pad and then I might get the green light. 

I know it sounds crass but she had been so unaccountably standoffish that I felt duty bound to defend my reputation.

When she found me waiting for her, she was still a bit reluctant to join me, but then she saw several of the women she worked with swooning around the horses and looking like they would willingly take her place so she threw caution to the wind and climbed up in the seat beside me. 

Yes! My plan was working and we set off at a brisk trot heading south on Leslie Avenue with me brandishing my whip and her clutching her posies.

For the uninitiated to understand what happened next I will have to digress and explain a bit about the mechanics of horse drawn vehicles.

Like any other vehicle it’s essential that a buggy should have the means of going forward, backing up and stopping. It’s the last of these requirements that I fell afoul of almost immediately. Without becoming too technical I should explain that the main component of the stopping apparatus on these horse drawn vehicles is a device known as a neck yoke. Put simply, the neck yoke is a short cross bar of wood perched at the end of the buggy tongue. It’s hooked to the horse’s collar and then a series of straps and buckles winds around the horse’s butt and causes the vehicle to stop when the horse does. 

Therein lay the problem.

I had been so anxious to make a dashing impression on the lady in question that I was a little too exuberant with my whip so the horses made a bit of an extra strong lunge forward as we swung on to the main drag and headed for the park.

No problem I thought turning and smiling confidently at my companion while hauling back on the reins to slow the team down. 

I could tell she was starting to respond to my efforts to woo her and for a few seconds our eyes met and we stared longingly at each other while I thought fondly of the candles and wine waiting at my tender trap. But then something went awry. The horses weren’t responding to the several sharp tugs I had given on the reins. When I looked forward to see what was going on the spell was broken. My ardor melted away and was replaced with panic and cold fear. The leather strap that held the neck yoke to the end of the tongue had snapped and now there was nothing to stop the buggy crashing into the horse’s rear ends, which now it was doing. 

Each time it hit the horses they became more frightened and increased their speed. When I hauled on the reins I just made the buggy slam into the horses all the harder so all I could do was sit there with the reins held limply in my hands and hope for divine intervention.

Within seconds the horses were totally out of control and going full tilt down the road with the buggy periodically slamming into their asses and egging them on. 

I knew what could happen and I was consumed with terror but when I glanced over at my passenger she seemed oblivious and just sat smiling like she was enjoying the whole thing. She thought this Ben Hurr esc. performance was part of my attempt to impress her. 

Within a minute or two we were insight of the entrance to the park but we were going so fast that I knew that we could never negotiate the turn safely so I gave the horse their heads and we galloped past. 

It was only a short distance to where the road we were on ended at Eglington Avenue, a large main street, where I knew I would have a better chance of turning the corner without flipping over, provided I didn’t crash into any of the busy traffic that was flying in both directions through the intersection. 

Taking the reins in one hand I swung my arm around my companion and pulled her in as close to me as possible. I needed all the weight on my side of the buggy to keep it from flipping over. She still seemed very calm  and even snuggled in closer than I intended. She still had no idea of the danger we were in and I guess she was assuming I was trying to get to second base. 

We hit the corner at breakneck speed with sparks flying from the horse’s shoes, the steel wheels of the buggy skidding sideways on the tarmac and pedals and leaves flying from my passengers bouquet. Somehow, I guess somebody up there likes me, we made it around the corner and fate provided a large gradual incline on the road in front of us. 

Now I was able to pull on the reins without the buggy hitting the horses and gradually got them to slow down and eventually stopped.

I made a temporary repair to the neck yoke with a bit of wire I had in the buggy and with me still badly shaken we took an alternate route back to my stables.

God does punish the wicked because as it turned out, as the evening wore on and we shared each others company the lady, so impressed and stimulated by the events of the afternoon, became totally compliant and was ready to grant me my every wish. 

I, however, was so shaken, stressed, and traumatized that I was not able to reciprocate in any meaningful fashion.

Cinderella

In the fall of 1972 a pair of very proper looking British men turned up at my stables in the city. Somebody at the CBC had directed them my way. They told me that they were bringing a musical production to Toronto that would be playing over the Christmas season. The show was called Cinderella and would be performed at Eaton Auditorium. They explained that they were bringing several well-known British singers and dancers over to headline the show and would be hiring all kinds of local talent to support them. When they said that the show was to be a traditional English pantomime. I was confused. What the hell did they need singers for if nobody was going to sing or say anything? 

Anticipating my question they went on to explain that in Britain pantomime referred to a type of show, always performed around Christmas that took fairy tales as a theme, added music and dance and reversed the roles of the players so that men would be playing the women’s parts and vice versa. It sounded a little kinky but they were British so I thought, "what the hell, why not?". 

They had come to see me because they’d heard that I supplied horses and equipment for TV movies and stage productions. They needed a pony to pull Cinderella’s carriage on to the stage during the scene when she arrives at the royal ball. The pony had to be a pretty silver dappled animal with white mane and tail and quiet enough to behave itself when onstage with the pit band blaring away and dancers cavorting around the stage. “Did I have such an animal? ” they asked. 

When they told me what they were willing to pay for the use of the pony and it’s handler I immediately became interested so I lied and told them that I had just what they needed. I compounded the lie by telling them that I couldn’t show them the animal I had in mind because he was far away up at my other stable in the country at the moment but I assured them that it was just what they were looking for.  

They were in a hurry to catch a plane back to England so we scribbled out an agreement, shook hands and they were off. 

As their taxi disappeared in the distance I made a mental note to try and find a pony like they wanted before Christmas rolled around.

That fall was a particularly busy one for me. My riding school was going great guns with over a hundred people enrolled in regular lessons and TV, movie, and commercial producers calling constantly to rent animals and props from me. When, around December 15th, I got a call from the Brits telling me that they were starting rehearsals the following week I started to get nervous. Oh well, not to worry. In those days ponies were a dime a dozen and a good quiet one like I needed shouldn’t be too hard to find.

I immediately hit the phone checking with the local horse dealers I usually dealt with.  I didn’t have any much luck. There were lots of quiet ponies to be had, pintos, bays, blacks, greys even appaloosas but no silver dapples with white mane and tale. 

The panic was beginning to set in when I realized I had one last chance to find what I needed.

I was in the habit of attending the weekly horse auction at Kitchener Livestock Sales northwest of the city. There were always a hundred or so horses and ponies going under the hammer and if I was lucky I might find what I wanted. 

There were lots of great looking mounts on offer as I made my way through the barns in Kitchener. There were several good big horses that I might have purchased if I hadn’t been so obsessed with my hunt for that special pony. 

I had walked passed almost all of the critters and was losing hope when I noticed movement in a pen in a dark corner of one of the out buildings. I looked over the top rail and there in the gloom was the pony I was looking for.  At least I thought he was until he suddenly bared his teeth, reared up and lunged at me. I shot back as his teeth snapped shut about an inch from my nose. “I guess I’ll pass on you pal", I thought to myself, moving away to check for more suitable candidates. 

I checked every nook and cranny of the barn but none were to be found.  When the horse dealers in attendance confirmed that there seemed to be an unusual dearth of silver dapple ponies in the region I went back to take a second look at my one and only option.  I got back to the pen to find the pony’s owner standing in front of it cautioning and warding off some children who were trying to peek through the bars at my candidate. He confirmed to me that the little three year old stud was one nasty little son of a bitch and although he dearly wanted to sell him he wouldn’t want me to get hurt. I thanked him for the warning but what choice did I have? 

When the pony came up for sale the ring crew refused to handle him and insisted he be left in his pen while the auctioneer chanted away trying to find somebody stupid enough to make an opening bid. I was hoping none of my associates would notice me when I raised my hand when the request for a bid got down to ten dollars. I didn’t have time to get my hand down before the gavel hit the desk and the auctioneer said sold. 

The man who had owned the pony was standing right beside me and I was feeling a little sheepish and cheap about stealing his pony but when I apologized he assured me that he would have gladly paid me fifty dollars to take him off his hands.

Buoyed with that information I enlisted the help of two of the stable hands and between the three of us we were able to load him into the box on the back of my pickup truck. All the boys around the stockyards stood watching and scratching their heads as I drove off with the pony screeching defiance, rearing and almost kicking the tailgate off.

When I got home with the little demon I knew it wouldn’t be safe to put him in the main stable with the other horses as there were too many kids coming and going and he was bound to eat one of them. Besides there were lots of mares in there and my little friend had been working as a stud on a pony farm before his bad behavior prompted his last owner to sell him. He would just get all hot and bothered in there and would be even harder to handle. 

I had a special stall secreted away in the garage on the back of my house and that was the place for him. 

With the help of my dad and two stable bums we got him safely off my truck and incarcerated in the box stall in the garage.

I knew I had to get the little bugger broke and quieted right away so I discussed a plan of attack with my father. 

He didn’t seem all that confident that I would have much luck with the animal but offered what help he could. “There’s a couple of things,”,he said, “He’s a vicious little bastard and he’s a little thin. The first thing I would do is castrate him. You would be killing two birds with one stone. He’d leave the mares alone and he’d gain weight. You know the old saying- it’ll change his thinking from ass to grass.“

The next morning, taking my dad’s advice, we threw the pony and relieved him of his testicals. There was an immediate improvement in him but I knew it would quickly wear off when the pain and embarrassment wore off.  I had to strike while the iron was hot and start training him. 

My first project was to stop his nasty habit of biting. I rigged up a pole similar to the ones that dairy herdsmen use to lead their bulls around. Instead of it being attached to a ring in his nose I hooked it into the ring of the pony's halter. This allowed me to keep him at a safe distance while I worked with him. Periodically when he bared his teeth and lunged at me I would allow the pole  to slip through my hands so he could come at me. When he did I would give him a sound thump on his muzzle and he would back off. 

Early one morning I was busy working with the pony in my riding ring when my psychiatrist friend Graham showed up to watch. My dad had told him about the terrible pony and he was anxious to see how I was getting on.  I had had the animal prancing quietly around in circle at the end of my long pole for a while when he asked me how I was going to go about breaking the animal. I told him I was going to use kindness but the words had just gotten out of my mouth when the pony took a bad spell and made a lunge for me. I loosened my grip on my pole and when the pony got close enough I gave him a whack on the nose that almost dropped him. “My God, Graham exclaimed, "I thought you said you were going to use kindness.” “I am", I replied, "but first I have to get his attention.” I hadn’t had the opportunity to use that old line for some time.

To everyone’s surprise, including mine, after a few intense days my improvised techniques began to work and the pony began to settle down. With any luck I would have him harness broken and ready to go to work when the rehearsals for the pantomime started. 

Since he now looked like he might be a keeper I thought I’d better give him a name. I had been addressing him as “you dirty little bastard” every time he tried to attack me but somehow that seemed inappropriate. When I asked my dad for suggestions he thought for a while and then said, "Now let me see. You took him away from his herd of mares- trucked him kicking and screaming into the city- chased him around on the end of a long pole for week punching him on the muzzle periodically- threw him down and cut off his nuts", then after a pause, "I know. Lets call him Lucky.” "Works for me,” I said, turning and walking away. The sarcastic old bugger wasn’t going to get a rise out of me. 

Two weeks later Lucky was a changed beast and I had him pulling a cart around the park roads.  He wasn’t perfect, I knew he would still need a firm hand to control him when he made his début at the theater, but he had come a long way. 

It was almost time to move him down to the city when I decided to turn him over to my most competent handler.  I didn’t want anything to do with looking after the pony during the show because I knew it involved being dressed up as a pageboy while leading him on stage. I was reluctant when it came to wearing tights. When I surrendered the reins to my assistant a complete change came over the pony and he reverted to his evil former self. 

He started rearing, biting and kicking and wouldn’t stop until I took over again. Apparently his new good manners hinged on my presence and as my learned friend Graham explained to me later, it probably would take just as long for my handler to establish a similar rapport with the little horse. There wouldn’t be enough time. I would have to handle the pony myself during the run of the performance. 

Eaton Auditorium was a large theatre on the top floor of a famous old multi-leveled department store located at the corner of Young and College streets in downtown Toronto. It was a most unusual location for a theatre of its caliber and was probably included in the store's plans so that Timothy Eaton, the company’s founder, could control the type of entertainment offered in that end of the city. It was a beautifully designed room with vaulted ceilings, crystal chandeliers and ornate art deco décor.  Old Timothy had only failed to notice the absence of one important feature when he signed off on the architect’s plans. There was no freight elevator leading to that floor. 

It was an oversight that I only became aware of when my pony and I arrived at the location for the first rehearsal of Cinderella.

The only way to get to the top floor was to use the bank of elevators that served to move the store’s regular clients from level to level. 

There were several of these fancy lifts, each manned by a lady operator in a fancy uniform complete with white gloves. In his defense old Timothy Eaton in his wildest dreams could not have anticipated the necessity of hoisting a horse up to his beautiful theatre on the top floor. 

After a hurried meeting with the shows producers and the store management, with the producers standing firm on their position that the pony was absolutely essential to the show, an agreement was reached.

I would be permitted to lead the pony across the main floor and use one of the elevators located on the back wall. “ But, the manager said in haughty tone, you must attempt to be as inconspicuous as possible.” 

That seemed doable so I decided to reconnoiter my route through the store before I went for the pony. My most direct avenue to the elevators would see me beginning my passage in the ladies' lingerie department, passing through the area where jewelry was displayed, and ending at millinery just in front of the elevators. It would have been shorter to go past the perfume counter but I thought the smell of the pony might have an adverse effect on sales. 

I had already spent some time constructing a portable box stall back stage; I needed someplace to keep Lucky while we waited for our turn to perform. The plan for this little enclosure was simple, four sheets of strong plywood attached end to end with a narrow entrance door. I also planned to include a two-foot high band of heavy gage chain link fencing above the plywood so that no one could get near Lucky. 

When completed it would look more like a lion cage than a horse stall but knowing the kind of behavior the pony was capable of, I felt it was necessary. I got the wooden portion of the stall finished before rehearsals started but there was a delay on the metal fencing so I knew I was going to have to keep a close watch on Lucky till I had him more securely incarcerated. 

I approached my first trip through the store with the pony with a certain amount of trepidation. I was about to try to lead the pony, that had terrorized the Kitchener Stockyards two short weeks earlier, through a crowd of women buying corsets and trying on hats. 

The possibilities of what might happen were too horrible to contemplate so I just steeled myself and pressed on.

I brought the pony out of the little trailer I had built to transport him and approached the front of the store. 

That’s when we encountered our first problem; the entrance was equipped with a revolving door. I was stymied for the moment so I just stood there eyeing the contraption for possibilities.

The pony was small enough to fit into one of the door’s segments but there wasn’t room for both of us.  If he took a bad spell and decided to run amuck circling around in there I might not be able to get him stopped. 

I don’t think I really would have attempted it but fortunately before the notion took hold of me I looked up to see the store manager staring through the window at me with an incredulous look on his face and pointing in the direction of a set of regular doors located further down the block.

We got into the store with very little trouble and as the pony and I wove our way through the aisles of glitzy merchandise I tried to appear nonchalant.   Figured that if I looked like I didn’t notice the pony perhaps no one else would. Everything went much better than I expected no one screamed or ran for the exits and we reached the elevator banks without any further trouble. 

I pressed the up button then Lucky and I stood a discrete distance back from the sliding door while we waited our turn. Moments later the doors of our lift swished open and a rather startled group of women emerged clutching their shopping bags and giving us wide berth. 

As Lucky and I started forward a stern looking older lady elevator operator assumed a defensive position in the center of the door effectively blocking our entrance. Apparently she had not been briefed concerning the pony and, as she said a little later, was not about to be part of the most flagrant breach of store policy she had seen in her thirty years of service. However when she got the nod from the store manager who had been hovering nervously in the background she acquiesced and reluctantly let us aboard.

She was just about to close the doors when two women, about the same vintage as she was rushed forward and attempted to join us. She tried to deter them but they insisted that they had seen the cute pony and would be delighted to share the elevator with us. 

These old birds were regulars at the store and at Eatons the customer was always right so we became a party of five and began our ascent. 

The two women immediately began fawning over Lucky, talking baby talk to him and patting him with their white-gloved hands. I was worried that he might take a bad spell and attack them but surprisingly he didn’t seem to mind the attention. 

Then something terrible happened. He suddenly dropped his head and coughed violently and in the same instant lifted his tail and let a thunderous fart. It was only a matter of seconds till we reached the next floor where the ladies, making a hasty unscheduled evacuation, burst through the elevator doors and disappeared gasping and gagging into forth floor china. 

The old elevator operator wasn’t too excited about getting back into the car but after she waited awhile for the air to clear she climbed aboard and we resumed our trip to the top floor.

When we reached our destination and I got Lucky into his stall I breathed a sigh of relief that the easy part of the project was over.

I had been so preoccupied with getting Lucky ready for the show that I hadn’t thought much about the way things would be back stage with the full cast in attendance. 

By the time we arrived the place was a hive of activity. The band was warming up in the orchestra pit and a dozen or so ballerinas were swirling around in tutus and toe shoes waiting their turn to perform while about seventy other actors, singers and musicians were milling about in full costume rehearsing their lines and warming up vocally. I reluctantly left Lucky in his stall guarded only with a beware of pony sign while I was ushered away to be fitted out in the dreaded leotards and other apparel I was compelled to wear. 

The protective chain link fencing I had ordered for around his stall still hadn’t arrived and as I sat for what seemed like an eternity while a couple of makeup and costume people fussed over me. 

I was worried about how Lucky might be reacting to all the chaos. When my ordeal in the dressing room was finally over and I got back to my improvised stable I panicked. The warning sign I had pinned to the stall was laying in shreds on the floor and all the kid dancers who were performing an excerpt from the Nutcracker Suite were clustered around Lucky. He was munching on something and I hoped it wasn’t a set of tiny fingers. As it turned out one of the kids was sharing her oatmeal cookies with him and he seemed disinclined to attack her. 

I cleared the kids back a safe distance from the stall and gave them a stern warning but apparently it fell on deaf ears because during the run of the show every time I turned my back the little pixies and the other ballet dancers were back at it again feeding and pampering him.  

After a while I stopped worrying about him - he was a changed little horse. When he wasn’t performing or being fussed over he stood quietly with eyes half closed serenely enjoying the backstage activity. He reminded me of Disney’s Ferdinand the bull sniffing his flowers. 

When he was required to pull Cinderella’s carriage onto a stage full of flouncing dancers with the band blaring away and the audience applauding it was as if he had been doing it forever, he didn’t even flinch.

I don’t know what caused the incredible change in him, maybe it was all the perfume and estrogen floating around in the air. I know it was affecting me - I took the opportunity to party with half the ballerinas in the troupe. 

When the show was over, with all the things we had seen, done and learned I knew that life would never be the same for Lucky and me. 

Later, when I bragged about my several backstage romantic encounters to my dad and attempted to wax poetic about how Lucky’s and my life had been forever altered he said “Altered?" he exclaimed. "It sounds like we should’ve altered you along with Lucky.” “Whatever” I said, walking away.”

Jimmy Smiles At Everyone (Longlisted for the Canada Writes CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize)

           In 1965 I was a Constable on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Mounted Unit. In the spring of that year I was ordered to take a couple of the horses I was training to 56 Division in the east end of the city. The place was a typical old style police station, a sprawling red brick building with a small garage on one side and a large stable at the back.

            I wasn’t happy about my temporary assignment but I knew that the surrounding area with its busy streets and parks would be ideal for schooling the young horses I was working with. The horses were already nickering for their breakfast when I entered the stable on my first day and since no one else was there, I doled out a generous helping of oats and bran to each of them, then stowed my kitbag in the tack room. I was sitting writing in my memo book when I heard the door to the stable open and close. I shifted my position and craned my neck to see who was coming in. I didn’t know anyone at the station and was about to get up and introduce myself but stopped short.  The fellow didn’t notice me and walked directly towards a row of tall green lockers that lined one wall and opened the door to the first one.  The only part of him that I could see was his back and he didn’t look big enough to be a policeman. When he eventually turned towards me I realized he was just a teenage boy.

“Hi, who are you?” I asked. He didn’t seem startled. Smiling with that special innocent grin that only kids with Downs Syndrome have, he said “Me Jimmy, where Cy?” I said that I didn’t know where Cy was and watched slightly confused as he kicked his way out of a pair of old running shoes, dropped his trousers and squirmed out of a tattered T-shirt. He paid no attention to me as he pulled clothing out of the locker and dressed himself in some pretty respectable duds. After tightening a belt that I recognized as police issue, he took a toothbrush and some paste from the top shelf and went over to the horse trough and brushed his teeth. Returning to the locker, he stood admiring himself in a small mirror mounted on the inside of the door and pulled a comb through his hair.   

            The boy was just closing the locker when the stable door swung open again and an older policeman hurried over to him and handed him a brown paper bag. “I’m sorry I’m late,” he said, “Here’s your lunch. You better hurry along.” As Jimmy left the stable the cop, who seemed to be playing mother, noticed me sitting in the other room and came over and introduced himself.  “Hi, I’m Cy.”  I had already figured that much out myself but I was anxious to find out more about the scene I had just witnessed.  Being a new man at the station I didn’t want to ask too many questions but I was surprised when Cy never even mentioned Jimmy. In fact, he avoided the subject altogether and simply told me about the other men I would be working with and described the various patrol routes we used.  More of the crew began to arrive but they never mentioned Jimmy either and I was reluctant to ask about him. I actually had to wait until the end of the day to find out what was going on.   

It was quitting time and we were on our way to our cars when one of the cops confided in me. He said that Jimmy was Cy’s project; he’d sort of adopted the boy. The relationship had started one day when Cy was on horseback patrolling one of the back lanes in the area.  He heard shouts and laughter coming from behind a board fence and when he stood in his stirrups and peered over the barrier, he startled a group of teenage girls who were circled around a very naked and crying Jimmy.  By the time he dismounted and made his way into the yard, the girls had all disappeared and the very upset boy was leaning on the fence sobbing.  Cy gathered up the boy’s clothes and helped him get dressed. Then with one arm around the kid’s shoulder and his other hand leading his horse, he walked him home. 

                 Cy was not very impressed with the reception he got from Jimmy’s parents. They acted like they didn’t care about what had happened and as Cy looked at the seven brothers and sisters that crowded in the doorway, he thought he recognized two of the girls he had seen molesting the boy.  The proper thing to do would have been to call Child Welfare but Cy was Old School and didn’t relish the thought of the boy ending up in an institution. He thought that it would be better if instead, he kept an eye on the situation and made sure Jimmy wasn’t mistreated in the future.  

                Jimmy was always wearing shabby hand-me-downs.  When Cy heard that the boy was about to start attending a special school, he decided to buy him some suitable new clothes. Jimmy looked pretty spiffy the first few mornings as he passed the station on his way to school but it wasn’t long before he was back in his old rags and his brothers and sisters were all wearing pieces of his new wardrobe. That’s when Cy decided to give the boy a locker of his own at the stables and in it, another set of clothing, He then arranged for Jimmy to come and change before heading to school each day. 

The new arrangement worked well and Cy even addressed the matter of the boy’s personal hygiene, buying him a toothbrush and toothpaste and insisting that he take regular baths in the horse trough. The boy seemed very content and always had a smile for everybody as he went through his daily routine. By the time I arrived at the stables the arrangement, with the collaboration of the other cops assigned there, had been going on for several months so I happily joined the conspiracy.

It was about a month after I had been at the station when things changed. Jimmy came to the stable one day with tears in his eyes announcing that he and his family were moving.  Family Services had decided to move them from the hovel they were living in to a house in the extreme west end of the city. It would be more than an hour away by streetcar and an impossible distance for Jimmy to walk.  It was a sad day when Cy helped Jimmy empty his locker and pack his few belongings into a cardboard box and then reluctantly turn the boy over to his parents. He hoped that now that Social Services was involved things might be better for the little guy. 

                Several weeks of a long hot summer had passed since we had said goodbye to Jimmy. On one of the hottest days of all and my last at the station I was packing my gear into my car and looked up to see the boy staggering into the stable yard. He looked exhausted; he must have been walking for hours.  As he got closer I could see that he was holding something in his arms.  “Where’s Cy? I want show Cy my pup” he said. Draped over his arm was a large Collie puppy, glassy eyed and very dead.  He kept stroking the puppy and asking for Cy as I helped him into the stable and onto a chair. I found Cy in the station turning in his gun and memo book at the end of his shift and when I told him about Jimmy and the pup, he said, “You head out. I’ll handle this.” I never saw Cy again but I‘ve never forgotten my last glimpse of him.  Framed in the tack room doorway, he sat kneeling in front of the boy still seated in the chair holding his dead puppy in his arms.  His big hand was covering Jimmy’s as together they patted the pup while the old cop searched for something to say.                

             Several years after I had left the police force, I was shopping at a farmers’ market in Stouffville, north of Toronto, when a minibus pulled up and several people from a group home piled out and headed for the foodstalls.  The last person out of the bus must have been in charge of the home mascot because he held a beautiful Border Collie dog on a leash.  As he passed me our eyes met and his face broke into a wide smile.  I know he didn’t really recognize me-- Jimmy smiles at everyone.   

High Park (An apology to the gay community)

I don’t remember seeing many openly gay guys in the cells during
my time on the police force. There were still plenty of outmoded draconian
laws in effect that might have had the jails and prisons bursting at the seams
but that wasn’t the case. I don’t think it was because of any understanding
or tolerance on the part of the Dept. Although, there may have been a
smidgen of humanity involved because everybody knew what a hard
time homosexuals got when they were thrown into jail with the general
population.
Remembering the lecture a typically sensitive duty officer gave prior
to one of my first tours of duty- I can only conclude that their exemption
was only due to limited space in the cells. “I don’t want you dragging any
of those ‘homos’ in here tonight,” the Sgt. exclaimed as he paraded us for
duty, “If you see them walking down Young St. holding hands just ease up
behind them and hit their paws as hard as you can with your nightstick,
they’ll get the picture.”
The Sgt.’s attitude was typical of the unwritten policy of the Dept. in
those days: unless you caught two or more men actually engaged in one of
the litany of sexual offences still laid out in the Criminal Code it was more
or less hands off! As long as the gay community remained in their closets
and the braver ones only came out once a year to participate in the annual
Drag Queen competition at Letro’s tavern, everything ran along smoothly.
That event was a great source of entertainment for homophobes and
crowds numbering in the thousands that would gather to watch the dazzling
cross dressers emerge from their limos and strut into the tavern showing off
the fancy gowns they were required to make for themselves.
It took a long cordon of big policemen to keep the crowd at bay.
Many plainclothes men were also sprinkled throughout the throng separating
the rednecks that might do real harm from the hundreds that simply came to
hoot and jeer and reinforce their masculinity. The Police Dept. was not
alone in its ignorance. Nobody really understood homosexuality in those
days so I suppose that was why the Police Department’s policy was to group
gay men, lesbians, and pedophiles together under the same general heading
of Pervert. It was actually speculated that young gay men were pedophiles
in training waiting their turn to mature and start hanging around schoolyards
and parks.
Gay guys were misunderstood but the ladies in the lesbian community

were a true enigma. Unless you knew where to look they were almost
invisible in the 1960’s. Unfortunately the women of that community that
were first to come out and declare themselves were definitely not
representative. When I was a kid living near Cabbage Town I often
encountered them and they left a lasting impression on me. I had to walk
passed the Spot One Grill on Dundas St. on my way to school each day. It
was a greasy spoon that was the major hangout for the city’s prostitutes and
a small number of women desperately uncomfortable in their gender. They
were male wannabes who bound their breasts, butched their hair and dressed
in men’s suits and shoes. These Dikes as they were crudely labelled all acted
tough and macho and I had to be very careful about what I said or did
around them. They delighted in beating the hell out of any male they felt
they could overpower. These women were anomalies and not representative
of the lesbian population as a whole but they certainly made a lasting
impression on a ten-year-old boy.
It was these often-violent women and the guys who used the glory
holes and bathhouses that members of the force were most often in contact
with. Somewhere along the way the powers that be decided to group
homosexuals, gay and lesbian, together with pedophiles and simply label
them all perverts.
Of course we all know now that pedophiles are a different story; some
like many of the priests and scoutmasters in the city, in those days, merely
cherished children from a distance and kept their urges under control. Those
who did not and actually physically interfered with a child were shown no
mercy when they encountered the police. Most cops were family men and I
shudder to think of what went on behind the closed doors of the detectives’
offices when they interrogated a confirmed offender, and that was nothing
compared to the treatment they later got from cellmates. Even convicted
murderers took exception to being locked up with the low lifes they called
Diddlers. These child molesters, for their own good, were always isolated
from the rest of the prisoners but somehow it often happened that a few
uncomfortable days transpired before suitable safe accommodations could
be found.
It wasn’t until much later, after Trudeau’s famous “Bedrooms of the
Nation” directive that we realized how wrong minded we all had been.
That’s when closet doors flew open and several friends I knew and
respected took the opportunity to declare themselves. It was because of that
enlightenment that I was happy to be only slightly involved in the clean-up
campaign that took place in High Park in 1965.
Because the parks were the responsibility of the Mounted Unit we

were often in contact with members of the gay community who used certain
of these quiet places to meet other guys. In the sixties High Park was the
location of choice. Anticipated liaisons were not a simple matter of boy
meets boy. In those days it was against the law and a certain amount of
discretion and stealth was essential. To that end, a pair of binoculars was
required so potential partners could be checked out from a safe distance.
These young men were still unfairly grouped together with the
pedophiles and since they both carried field glasses it was sometimes
difficult to tell them apart. Maybe that was why the Dept. found it so
convenient to just call them all perverts and let God sort them out.
In retrospect we probably could have easily distinguished between
them because the gay guys were all young men who used the park at night
while the pedofiles were usually dirty old repeat offenders who we caught
hiding behind trees dressed in long overcoats and ogling the kids on school
outings. These, of course, are gross generalities. However the confusion did
exist and as a result the lockers in the stable at the centre of the park were
crammed with confiscated binoculars from both sources.
During the daylight hours and early evening the guys assigned to the
park patrolled on horseback but for a period of the shift the horses were left
in the stable and the guys went out in plain clothes hoping to attract the
attention of some of the more persistent offenders. I say plain clothes but as
time went on some of the cops, wanting to maximize their effectiveness,
started wearing more flamboyant outfits and affecting what they considered
typical gay guy mannerisms. One cop, who was particularly good at this
ruse was a comical cockney named Chris Sandwell. He would strike out in
the evening in an outfit he termed fetching and flit around the park till he
snagged a guy or two that he could arrest or caution. When any of us would
accuse him of being a little too good at what he was doing he would assume
a typical pose and lisp out, “Oh grow up!” I guess ten years in the navy had
given him a broader perspective than ours. In any event he had the largest
collection of binoculars on the unit and was instrumental in making the park
safe for kids and persuading the gay community to change hookup locations.
That was the last campaign of its sort in the Toronto parks and shortly
after tolerance and common sense prevailed. Today men and women of all
persuasions rightfully enjoy the freedom of the greenbelts. Pedophiles,
however, still cringe when they hear the sound of approaching hoof beats.

Bermuda

Okay, so now we had a place to move to; selling my stable business in Toronto wouldn’t be a problem because there was any number of jealous bastards already nipping at my heels and trying to wrangle it out of me. I decided to let one of my riding instructors, Jelko Krcmar, take over. He had a backer who was willing to put up the fire sale pittance I was asking for it and I knew he would continue with the sort of programs I had started, at least for a while.

It was a relatively simple process. I gave them everything involved in the business: horses, equipment, the lot, and they gave me a small down payment and some promises.
For some reason Andrea felt that we needed a small vacation before we rolled up our sleeves and tackled the logistics of our big move and we had to wait for the snow to melt in Nova Scotia, so I let her talk me into going to Bermuda for a week or so. Big mistake. I was bored to tears. The only thing that kept me from hopping on a plane and returning home early was a small interest I had developed in the horses on the island.
One day we stopped our mopeds in front of a large hotel and I noticed a large tallyho wagon being pulled by a pair of Belgian mares. There was something about them that I couldn’t quite put my finger on so we sat and watched for a while. Then it dawned on me: “Watch that mare on the off side,” I said, “I bet she walks off a little lame.” Sure enough when the driver moved the team and wagon ahead to let a car in behind them, the horse I was talking about walked with a bit of a hitch in her gate.
I had to know more so I dropped the kickstand on my moped and went over to speak to the driver. “Nice horses, mister,” I directed to the young black man who held the reins. “They sure are; I just love them. The boss imported them from Canada last week,” he replied. “I knew it,” I confided in Andrea as we walked away. “I almost bought those horses at the Kitchener Livestock Sale about a month ago but decided not to because one of them seemed lame.”
I could have bought those same horses at the stockyards for about $200.00 dollars apiece. I found out later that their landed price in Bermuda had been $7000 each so naturally I became interested and spent the rest of my vacation traveling from stable to stable trying to put together some deals on horses and hay imports. It kept me amused for a while but nothing really came of it because I found out that it cost in excess of $5000 to fly a horse from Ontario to the island and more than $ 15.00 dollars a bale for hay and that $20.00 a bale that the locals were buying was probably a bargain.

As our departing plane tipped its wing to give us one last glance at the pink paradise I leaned over to Andrea and whispered, “They can have it!”

The Pool

After the first successful year at Central Don I decided to expand the scope of the business; I had spent several summers working at summer camps as a teenager and often thought that I would like to operate one of my own; I had experimented with a day camp for young kids, on site in the park and the response had been very encouraging. What I really needed was a place where the kids could come and stay full time during the holidays, eating and sleeping on site; it would be like the traditional camps in northern Ontario but with a major difference; we would be offering the kids formal riding lessons and unlimited use of ‘a horse of their own ‘ for the summer.
I needed to find a rental farm with lots of pasture for my horses, suitable spaces for training rings, interesting stretches for trail rides, and the right kind of barn and house. It was a tall order the house had to be of sufficient size to accommodate the twenty or so campers I expected to accommodate a well as my mother and father who agreed to help me with the project.
I found the place I needed just north of Toronto near the town of Stouffville, about a half hour drive from my stables by car and about three and a half hours if you rode or drove the horses, as we often did.
I negotiated a lease with a lawyer who represented the owners and a short time later moved my mother and father onto the place; they would live there year round but during the summer would be in charge of the camp, my mother doing the cooking and acting as den mother and my father looking after the horses and almost everything else.
What we were about to attempt was a first of its kind in Canada and I didn’t want anybody to confuse us with the hokey” double crossed piss off” dude ranches that existed further north. We would have qualified instructors giving formal English riding lessons. To that end we decided to promote the camp as an extension of the stables in the city and called it ‘ Central Don Resident Riding School
Before any of this could happen I had a hell of a lot of work ahead of me; the barn had been used to house dairy cattle, shades of Windy Hill, and all the concrete had to be busted out to make room for horse stalls. The house also took an enormous amount of effort to bring it up to specs but when we were finished we had two comfortable second floor dormitories equipped with army surplus bunk beds; my parent’s room was at the foot of the stairs so they could watch the nightly comings and goings.
We had to advertise for the coming season before we finished the renovations and the response to our campaign, which consisted of manning a small booth with a live pony in it at the Sportsman Show, was so good that we needed to arrange for more space; the garage behind the house would now become a bunk house for the boys.

Every camp should have a swimming pool but I wasn’t about to sink thousands of dollars I didn’t have, into paying for a professional installation, I had another idea.
Several years earlier I lived with my father, mother and my sister Brenda in a little old rented cottage on Bayview Ave. the house was situated on a large tract of land that had once been a monastery but was currently owned by developers; it’s now the site of the new Granite Club. The shabby little place sat a stones throw from the first of the line of pretentious mansions that face the road and back onto the Don Valley.
I had several horses, my mother kept some chickens and we may have had a goat or two but I still didn’t think that that was reason enough for our neighbors to refer to us as the Beverly Hillbillies.
It was pretty hard, during the heat of summer, to listen to our neighbors splashing around in their Olympic sized swimming pools while we sweated away just over the hedge. It must have been particularly irksome for my dad because one day, while I was at school he started an amazing project.
When I got home there was a huge deep trench excavated not far from the house on the rim of the slope that overlooked the valley. He had bribed a bulldozer operator who was working on a nearby hydro easement to dig it on his lunch hour; a case of beer had been the incentive. Dad was down in the trench with a square mouthed spade carefully sculpting the walls; he stopped what he was doing and explained to me that back on the prairies it was common practice to make large cisterns by simply creating a nice, square, cube like hole and then parging a thin layer of cement over the sides and bottom. “ If it works for a cistern it should work for a pool!” he said. I got out of my school clothes and we both set to work; two weeks later we were all splashing around in our own pool, it lasted the whole summer and after repairing some winter damage the following one as well.
This was the sort of thing I had in mind for the summer camp but when I consulted my dad he said that the soil didn’t have enough clay in it to support the thin walls he had plastered in the pool on Bayview Ave. We would have to use cement forms and pore some real concrete; I was still up for trying but I would have to keep the costs down.
I got a backhoe in to dig the hole for me, about 25 ft. wide and forty feet long; the depth of the excavation was about 5 ft. at the deep end and 4ft

at the shallow; of course it wouldn’t be that deep after I poured the concrete for the bottom.
Dad’s assumption that the soil would not be the right consistency to allow us to simply parge the walls and bottom proved correct but I shaped them up as best I could and then started constructing the forms that would sit inside the perimeter of the hole. The wall would be about 8 inches thick for the most part but much thicker in a lot of places due to the irregularity of the dirt sides.
“That’s a lot of cement and a hell of a lot of weight, you better make sure those forms are good and strong!” Dad said, as he headed for the city and left me to build the barriers. I constructed the inner walls out of plywood over two by four studs and braced them with long two by sixes anchored to stakes driven into the mud at the centre of the bottom. When Dad returned the next day he found me down in hole admiring my handiwork. I gave one of the braces a test kick where it joined the stake and posed the question. “ What do you think? “ It didn’t take him long to answer, “ I think you’ll need twice as many studs and braces or she’ll never hold when they pour the cement in!”
I was taken back and a little offended; “ Hell it’s only four feet deep, it should be good enough!” He just gave me his familiar “ Whatever!“ look and walked away; I guess he figured it was time for another practical lesson for me.
When the truck arrived the next day and started to disgorge its heavy contents down the chute and into the cavity behind my flimsy forms I immediately began to appreciate the wisdom my Dad had tried to impart the previous day. As the concrete flowed like lava around the perimeter of the pool the forms seemed to come alive, first vibrating then shuddering and creaking loudly. As the concrete slowly rose the plywood sheets began to bow toward the centre of the hole, sliding the braces and their pegs inward. By the time all the concrete had been poured, each sheet of plywood was buckled to capacity and watery cement was seeping under the forms. I figured it was just a matter of time till the whole thing was going to let go; the truck driver seemed to be of the same opinion because he quickly retracted his chute and drove off; he didn’t want to be there when it happened.
The vibration of the departing truck caused further movement in the hole but miraculously the forms continued to hold.
I was about to jump down and see if I could shore the barrier up a bit more when I felt my fathers hand on my shoulder, “ Don’t even think about it,” he said “ You could get killed down there!” I figured it was time I started taking his advice so all I could do was wait and watch. I held my breath and tried not to move for the first hour or so then I started to relax; the shape of the pool would be horribly distorted but as the cement began to cure and set up, it looked like the forms had held up after all.

Two days later, after I had removed the plywood and timbers from the hole and had a closer look, I realized that the forms had buckled uniformly and created a scalloped effect that almost looked intentional, anyway that became my story and I stuck to it.
When I finished pouring the bottom and gave the whole thing a coat of aquamarine paint it looked like a miniature version of the pools I used to see in the old Ester Williams flicks; of course it was only four feet deep so when we took promotion pictures I got my most diminutive campers to pose on their knees in the murky water.
This allusion aside we pretty well delivered on everything we promised and the kids went away at the end of the summer having had a hell of a time learning to ride and porking up on Mom’s cooking. They all looked forward to coming back the following year. 

Festival Italiano

I suppose every kid dreams of running away and joining a circus but that sort of dream, as well as other childish notions, almost always gets stored away, abandoned and forgotten in a dusty toy chest in the deep recesses of our mature minds. Once in a while something very special happens that allows us to lift the lid on that box and revisit one those childhood aspirations, if only briefly!
In 1967 I was spending a lot of time breaking and training remounts in the Horse Palace at the Exhibition grounds in Toronto. It was a dark, dreary, tomb of a place when the C.N.E. or The Royal Winter Fair wasn’t in session and I’m sure the horses must have felt like pit ponies longing for the light of day. I know the gloom was getting to me.
One day when I showed up for work expecting more of the same I was greeted instead with a bright and wonderful surprise. It was still dark outside but light shone from every window of the old building and the place was a hive of activity. Numerous trucks, vans and trailers filled the parking lot and what seemed like hundreds people were milling around and moving in and out of the big stable doors.
I found a parking spot for my old Volkswagen Bug and stopped the first man I encountered, “What’s going on?” I said, “Cosa vuole? Non parlo inglese,” he replied. I was no further ahead.
Instead of going directly into the Police stables, I made my way up a lane that skirted the building and led to the huge sliding doors that opened directly onto the large training ring where I generally worked. When I finally wove my way through the throngs of people carrying trunks, floodlights and armfuls of strange looking equipment and turned into the big doorway I was stopped in my tracks, dumbstruck by what I was seeing.
My gloomy old cave of a work place had somehow been transformed into a magical glittering cavern. The once dark long aisles that led from the centre paddock to the distant ends of the building were now fully illuminated and hundreds of brightly coloured costumes hung from seemingly endless rows of clothing racks on either side of the alleyway. A slight breeze was making its way into the building causing the gaudy clothing to sway, the sequins shimmering and reflecting multicoloured stars of scattered light. And it was not just one aisle. As I walked towards the centre of the building where I generally worked training the remounts I saw that most of the space on that side of the huge building had been put to similar use.

Some areas contained strange looking props and equipment, full suits of medieval armour, spears, swords, shields, jousting sticks and piles and piles of unidentifiable paraphernalia. Parked in the open area at the centre of the building were two beautiful golden chariots. On the walls beside each of them hung four sets of the most incredibly ornate jewel-encrusted harnesses. Beyond these vehicles sat several other authentic looking carts beautifully painted and decorated with scenes and landscapes that suggested a Mediterranean origin. Then I recognized some strange sounding neighing in the distance and decided to follow a man who was pushing a trolley with several bales of hay on it; he turned into the last aisle and I could hear several horses nickering to him. About fifty horses occupied the stalls. The first boxes held four matched pure white geldings, the second a similar number of identical blacks; they had to be the teams for the chariots. The rest of the horses were a mixed batch, all sizes and colours, well bred and in superb condition. I started back towards the Police stable determined to find out what the hell was going on-- all the pockets of people I had encountered so far had been jabbering away in some indiscernible lingo, no point asking them!
I had to pass through an area near the end of the riding ring where a crew were setting up a long row of dressing tables, the large mirrors framed with rows of small light bulbs. As I stood for a moment thinking what a strange place for a dressing room the man who seemed to be in charge accosted me. He was over fifty, small and pudgy and looked rather like an effeminate Danny Devito. He started shouting, waving his hands and rattling along in his foreign language; I couldn’t understand a word he was saying but it was obvious the little bastard was trying to kick me out of the building.
Of course I was not about to comply and the only way I could think of to communicate my intentions was a universal form of sign language: I gave him the finger. At this he became more heated and agitated and started tapping my chest with his finger.
I was about to pick the little bugger up and give him a shake when fate intervened. One of the crew who spoke English and had been witnessing the encounter, came over and offered his services as a translator.
When I explained to him that I was a policeman and that if anyone was infringing on anyone’s territory, it was the crusty little curmudgeon that I was standing toe to toe with. He began a rapid, long-winded explanation to his little associate in what I now knew was Italian; I didn’t understand any of it but I did pickup on one word that he seemed to be emphasizing.

“Carabiniero, carabiniero!” he repeated several times pointing at me.
“ Carabiniero...” the little guy repeated slowly to himself as he took a step back and the blood drained from his face. He was old enough to have survived Mussolini’s reign of terror. I wasn’t in uniform but the brown shirt I was wearing may have been adding to the effect.
Through my translator he explained to me that he was the dresser for the ballerinas that were due to arrive shortly and that he thought that I was just another stage door Johnny waiting to ogle them while they tried on their costumes.
“Whatever!” I said with a dismissive gesture. I was about to turn and leave but the little guy rushed at me saying “Scusi, scusi" then wrapped his arms around my waist, hugging me and laying the side of his head on my chest. I felt that although his apology appeared to be sincere, it was a bit over the top so I pried him off me and took my leave.
When I got to the Police stable I found Inspector Johnson and Sgt. Peddler in conversation with two men who I later learned were executives from MGM and that was when I learned what was going on.
A production called Festival Italiano that was due to tour in the U.S. was going to be rehearsed and opened in the Coliseum next door to the building in which we stood; the huge cast and the large number of props and costumes involved had made it necessary for them to make an impromptu decision to spill over into the stable area and use it for storage and a large dressing room as well as housing their many horses.
Because it was a last minute decision, the Police Department had not been informed in advance and the Inspector and Sgt. weren’t all that comfortable with the decision. “We’re training men and horses in the riding ring right in the centre of all that hoopla and we have deadlines to meet; we can’t stop or move now.” he said. The guy from MGM assured him that they would not in anyway interfere with what we were up to and the conversation went back and forth several times before a compromise was made.
If the production company agreed to have their people stay out of our riding ring and leave a gap in the dressing room tables that surrounded one end of the enclosure so that I could get my horses and students in and out then things would be all right, -- and they were for a while!

Things started out rather well. Merle Smith, the other trainer I worked with, got two young horses into the ring and started teaching them to neck rein. From where we sat high on our horses’ backs we could see the ballerinas begin to arrive from their rooms at the Royal York Hotel. There were about thirty of them and not a homely one in the batch, although Merle suggested that some of them might have conformation problems when he saw the way they walked with their feet at strange angles. There were also about fifteen male ballet dancers and they seemed to be getting more attention from my little friend the dresser than the girls were. The stunt men, who also looked after the horses and had also just arrived from California, were busy checking and grooming their animals but Merle and I were a lot more interested in what was going on in the dressing room area. Apparently everybody in the show had numerous costume changes and everything had to be tried on and adjusted. As the song went in ‘Oklahoma’: “They went about as far as they could go!” There was nothing shy about those Italian girls, and although we initially tried to avert our eyes, the scene was so continuous and pervasive we finally relaxed and enjoyed the scenery; what the hell! How did the saying go? ‘When in Rome, or Toronto as the case may be, do as the Romans do’. All and all it was a marvelous first day and for the first time in months I was looking forward to coming to work the next day.
When I arrived for work the following morning, things had already ramped up and rehearsals had begun in earnest. The teams of four abreast were hooked into the chariots and were practicing racing in the main arena and what a spectacular sight they were as they flew hell bent for leather around the arena kicking up tanbark dust! These were the same vehicles that had been used in the movie Ben Hur, no cheap theatrical mock-ups, the real thing.
The pure white team was truly spectacular performing perfectly and well in hand as they moved at a fast gallop but the team of blacks that pulled the other chariot was moving erratically and I thought I noticed one of the horses showing signs of lameness. It turned out that my suspicions were correct and the show was facing their first major problem because they didn’t have a horse the same size and colour to replace the injured one.
I went to see the chief stunt coordinator on my lunch break. I was about to garner a few Brownie points and possibly even a few dollars. A few days earlier I had noticed an old black Standard Bred gelding in a group of the horses Alec Stewart had at the stock yards. He was a pacer but that wouldn’t matter because the show required him to be galloping all the time.

A couple of phone calls and a little later he was delivered to our location and he settled into the job like the old pro he was. The next day I received an envelope with a small token of appreciation and a bottle of fine Italian wine. I helped the crew with several other small matters and soon found myself their local ‘Go to’ man whenever they needed special assistance.
Often, while he was picking my brain regarding some local logistical matter, the producer would invite me to join him while he put the various acts through their paces at the rehearsals and as I saw the show coming together I realized that what he was creating was a true spectacle, the likes of which had never been seen before. He would somehow transform the C.N.E.’s contemporary coliseum into a believable replica of its ancient counterpart: gladiators, in full antique regalia, armed with spears, triads, and short swords, fighting to the death in the arena while the producer stood like Caesar in the stands giving thumbs up or thumbs down on their performance. Then the ring would become the Roman countryside with ornate Sicilian carts lumbering past the stands filled with the fruits of a Mediterranean harvest with throngs of beautiful peasant girls dancing around with pitch forks and baskets in their hands Then it would change into the courtyard of a medieval palace where a giant chess board had been laid out with real fully costumed performers acting as the pieces, the kings and queens in large jeweled crowns and the knights in full armour and mounted on real horses. During the actual performance local dignitaries would be invited to play against each other but during rehearsals I gave the producer a chance to humble me at a game I was just learning. The pieces didn’t simply move from one square to the other; they were, other than the mounted knights, all ballet dancers and each move was an opportunity for self-expression. Numerous leaps and twirls were employed during the transitions especially by the men who frequently had to be reminded to tone it down a bit, “Sometimes less can be more,” the producer would shout trying not to hurt their feelings.
Near the end of the show a reenactment of the chariot race from Ben Hur would take place, often with several more circuits of the ring than was originally planned to make sure Ben Hur and his four white horses would win. The black former racehorse I had found for them seemed determined to make a come back and was very difficult to slow down.
The grand finale involved all the gladiators returning to the ring for a rematch; then both chariots joining the melee and with one of the charioteers curling his bull whip around Spartacus’s ankle and dragging him out of the arena on his back, a move that was especially appreciated on opening night when his loin cloth, the only thing he was wearing, was torn off and he was dragged buck naked in front of a sell-out crowd. To his credit, not wanting to affect the show’s rating he attempted to roll over on to his stomach but later claimed that it increased the drag too much so opted for comfort over modesty.

The event that I was most interested in preceded the finale but was equally exciting: a jousting court was set up with a contraption that the knights of old used to improve their skills. It consisted of the torso of a dummy knight in armour suspended on a pivoting post. On the end of one extended arm was a shield and at the end of the opposing arm was a mace on the end of a short chain. The challenge for the mounted knight was to charge the device at a full gallop with his lance engaged and strike the shield; of course the impact would cause the dummy to instantly pivot and swing the mace at the knight. He had to be really quick and agile to avoid it. Luckily the studded ball on the end of the chain that was traditionally made of cast iron was now made of foam rubber but the thing could still give you a hell of a whack if you weren’t careful; that’s what happened one day as I spent my lunch hour watching a practice.
One of the stunt men was swept from his horse and landed in a clattering heap on the ground. The crew got him up and out of his armour and off to the hospital. Although he wasn’t seriously hurt it was clear that he wouldn’t be getting back on his horse for a few days and there was nobody to replace him.
This posed a real problem for the producer because he had a dress rehearsal coming up shortly and some of his backers were flying in from California to check out the show so he surprised me by asking if I thought I could stand in for the injured man.
I was dying to give the jousting a try anyway but it wasn’t all that simple for me. Technically I would be moonlighting and although I knew most of the brass on the Mounted Unit would turn a blind eye, I wasn’t so sure about Sgt. Peddler. For some reason he had been giving me a real hard time lately. I hadn’t given him any reason but he seemed not to trust me and was constantly riding me but the lure was too strong so I decided to throw caution to the wind and accepted the offer.
I spent a couple of evenings and early mornings practicing and after getting a couple of hard slaps on the back, seemed to get the hang of it. The rest of the cast members were starting to treat me like one of their own.

The ballerinas would spend a lot of time watching me when I was on duty training the Police horses or conducting riding classes. One in particular was constantly bugging me to let her ride one of our horses and although I explained that it was strictly against regulations, she persisted day after day till finally, in a moment of weakness, I succumbed to the way she pleaded in her cute, lisping broken English and gave her a leg up onto old Roy, tutu and all. I gave her a few elementary instructions and hoped that she would be satisfied but she was back the next day looking for more. This time she had three more of the girls with her and they were anxious to join the class.
Well, fair is fair! I didn’t want to show favouritism-- somebody might get the wrong idea. Besides, we had several older horses in the stable that hadn’t been getting much exercise lately. Emboldened by the fact that Sgt. Peddler hadn’t been around hassling me lately, I decided to take a chance and increase the size of my class. I knew there would be hell to pay if the sergeant ever caught me but as I watched those beautiful women bouncing around the ring in their tights, leg warmers, and braless bikini tops it seemed well worth the risk. The girls were quick learners and before the week was out they were trotting and cantering around the ring like real pros.
At the beginning of the following week, midway through our now regular class I caught a glimpse of something that made my blood run cold; in a darkened corner outside the ring Sgt. Peddler stood leering in my direction.
“That’s it, the jig’s up, I’ve had it, and my career is over!” I pretended not to see him as he opened the gate and started walking over to where I waited in the centre of the ring. I was not going to demean myself in front of my ladies. He might be able to take my job away from me but I was keeping my dignity. I could hear him breathing over my shoulder as he stood behind me watching the ballerinas circle around us at a sitting trot. When he finally opened his mouth and started to speak I was ready for the worst. Instead he simply pointed in the direction of the class and said, “Tell the one with the big tits to keep her heels down!” then he turned and walked away without a further word.
The days of magic lasted for about two weeks more and I gradually became more involved with the production, occasionally filling in for the charioteers and knights at the performances. I was also included in all the cast parties and informal gatherings and it was during one of these that the producer asked me to join the show. He assured me that the money would be good and that when the tour ended in Los Angeles he would find me a permanent job with one of the studios.

I actually considered the offer for a matter of minutes and then reality set in and I knew I had too many responsibilities where I was for it to be a real possibility. I enjoyed every remaining precious minute of my time with the show and when I had to say goodbye and watch the long line of buses and trucks turn out of the Exhibition grounds and head out on their way to New York I looked at the street sign which said ‘The Queensway West’ but for me it said ‘The road not taken!’