Postcard Memories is a series of historic views, stories, and photos of Bradford and the area, a trip down memory lane on a Saturday morning.
The sound of thundering hoofs has returned to Innisfil’s Georgian Downs for a second season, albeit stymied by COVID-19.
The horses will be on the track, but there will be no fans in the stands, as pandemic restrictions are in place.
Since opening in November 2001, the Innisfil oval has been hosting harness horse racing — to one degree or another — after the owners of the former Barrie Raceway (what is now an empty expanse at Essa Road and Highway 400, where overgrown remnants of the old track are still visible) saddled up and made their way south.
While Georgian Downs has its roots at the Barrie Raceway, that raceway has its roots in the Rowe family, a horse family if there ever was one.
“It was 1971 and we opened in a snow storm,” Scott Rowe tells BarrieToday of the first night of racing at the Essa Road facility.
The Rowe family built the local track.
“Our family built Windsor Raceway in 1961, so we had some previous experience," he says. “Barrie Raceway was our second project and my generation built Georgian Downs.”
That would be his grandfather, the Hon. W. (William) Earl Rowe; Scott’s uncle, W. (William) Howard Rowe and Scott’s father, W. (William) Lennox Rowe. “Most of us go by our middle names,” he says with a laugh.
They didn't own the Essa Road facility, however.
“We had a long lease, I believe it was 99 years, with the Barrie Agricultural Society,” Rowe says. “So that’s the old days when there was a fair there and fair racing, so there was a bit of a track and a very, very small grandstand, basically bleachers.
“My grandfather kept a majority interest (of Barrie Raceway) in our family and a number of prominent businessmen came in and bought shares, and actually we became lifelong friends. It was a great experience," he adds.
Back in the heyday, Barrie Raceway was a busy place.
“We used to have big crowds,” Rowe says. “We kept it immaculate. It looked like a golf course on the infield. There was a closed-in grandstand area for seating and a dining room that sat 250 people. We had one of the best buffets in town at the time.
“We tried to race all year round and the horsemen appreciated that,” he says, adding at one point upwards of 75 or 80 horses were boarded at the raceway.
And then the May 31, 1985, tornado decimated the Barrie facility.
“We were down for 18 months after the tornado, reconstructing the track,” Rowe says. “Our best estimate is we lost a third of our attendance. They never came back, even though we had a brand new facility, a beautiful dining room and everything.
“I said (to some friends), ‘Watch what happens when we’ve had our lodges (horse stalls) closed for a year and a half and the guys find other things to do.' We never had the crowds again after the tornado. It was discouraging.”
It might’ve been a sign of the times, he adds.
“My uncle Bill used to say it was the number of lotteries coming out (at the time). (We) were competing for the gambling dollars with the government,” Rowe says. “When (some people's) money used to go to horse racing, we were the only legal gambling game in town. Very quickly it started to go to the lotteries.
“That’s when all the tracks — especially little tracks like Barrie — were really hurt once the lotteries started.”
Enter the match-up of live harness racing and… slots.
“No track was making a whole lot of money until the slot machine initiative of Mike Harris,” Rowe says.
Depending upon who you talk to, the Slots at Racetrack program was either a boon or a bust.
“Basically, what it did was share slot revenue generated at the racetracks equally,” Ontario Harness Horse Association general manager Brian Tropea tells BarrieToday. “There was a percentage that went to the industry and that percentage was shared equally between the horse people — who breed, train and race horses — and the racetrack operators.
“When they (the Liberal government of the day) ended the Slots at Racetrack program back in 2012, the racetracks continued to receive rent from the casino operators to host their casinos at the racetracks," Tropea says. "But they cut the horse people out of the revenue-sharing agreement.”
That affected the number horses racing in the province, Tropea says.
“In 2004, we had over 11,000 horses that made at least one start in Ontario and last year there was 4,013,” he says. “In 2004, we had the highest purses and the most horses competing in Ontario. It was at the height of the Slots at Racetrack program.
“We raced 16,881 races in 2004. Last year, we raced about 6,000.”
The initial slots program was in the works in the late 1990s when Barrie Raceway officials made a decision, much to the consternation of many residents.
“Basically, Barrie didn’t want it,” Tropea says of a slot-machine facility in the city. “For whatever reason, the council voted not to accept the slot program and the fact of the matter is it moved five minutes down the road (Highway 400) and (the city) cut themselves out of the revenue-sharing agreement (as the host municipality).
“The only way the racing industry could capitalize on the slot program was to move to a community which would accept the slots.”
The Town of Innisfil has appreciated the addition to its municipal coffers from that revenue-sharing agreement.
And now, ironically, it’s the slots that are idle and the horses that are on track.
“We survived through some tough times,” Rowe says, taking a break from his woodcarving that he has taken up while in retirement.
But none more so than a horse that survived Barrie Raceway’s close encounter of the tornado kind.
“It’s not just an urban legend,” he says of the flying horse. “The roof was taken off one of the barns and we found one of the horses running down Essa Road. When we went back (to what was left of the barn), the stall door was still locked. So he was picked up and set down again.”
Safe bet he won his next race.
