By Doug Draper
Just when it looked like it would be the end for more than 100 years of horse racing in Fort Erie, Ontario, the province’s premier has announced that some “transitional funding” will be made available to keep this track and others at Flamboro and Georgian Downs galloping on for at least one more year.
The details of the deal with the three tracks have yet to be announced, but Niagara Falls MPP Kim Craitor, a Liberal government representative who has been fighting to save the Fort Erie track for years, told Niagara At Large this March 26 he hopes more information will be made available at a media conference scheduled in Fort Erie later this week. The public should no any and all details of taxpayers money spent to save these tracks, he said.
In the meantime, Craitor, whose Niagara Falls riding includes Niagara-on-the-Lake and Fort Erie, called the deal “positive news.”
“As corny as this may sound,” he added in a phone interview with NAL, this (Fort Erie) track has become very personal to me. I have met so many people who work there and who make their livelihoods there and they have driven me to do whatever I can to keep this track alive.”
Indeed, literally hundreds of Fort Erie area residents make their livelihood off this track and there are many more spin-off jobs in Ontario in the horse business.
The Ontario government, under former premier Dalton McGuinty, let these race tracks twist in the wind when his government pulled slot machine casinos and their revenues away from them, but the new Liberal premier, Kathleen Wynne, appears ready to do whatever can be done to keep them alive.
More on this later from NAL and for more at the moment, visit a CBC story on this topic at http://www.cbc.ca/hamilton/news/story/2013/03/26/hamilton-transitional-funding-for-flamboro.html .
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Niagara At Large 
The horse-racing industry is brutal and what some folks might see as an innocent flutter ….is a life of misery for most animals. Many horses bred to race never make it to the races – they are run too soon, ruining their legs or are just not fast enough. When they finished racing, don’t believe that they all are retired to some bucolic field and live the rest of their days munching grass. Too many are disposed of and end up at a slaughter house or in a downward spiral of neglect.
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If Marineland were at risk of shutting down, many readers here would applaud. But there are some who would be sad too, at all the jobs that would be lost (possibly hundreds if you include the spin-off jobs) and I’m sure our politicians would do all they could to keep the marine park alive.
How can people be against one form of animal exploitation but not another? As Catherine points out, the horse racing industry is cruel, animals are forced to race whether they want to or not (often with the aid of drugs and putting the animals’ health at risk) and many horses who don’t perform well are sent to slaughter.
The human slavers in the United States also fought hard to keep their industry alive. It even led that country to a civil war. This stay of execution should not celebrated. The exploitation of others – human or non-human – should be relegated to the history books along with all the other atrocities we’ve committed.
We should know and act better…
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