Horse’s death prompts calls for carriage rides to stop soon
Horse collapses while pulling passengers through streets of old Montreal
MONTREAL — The sudden weekend death of a carriage horse on a cobblestoned Old Montreal street prompted calls Monday for the city to accelerate plans to end the caleche industry.
But the horse’s owner said the animal had recently been ill, and he rejected the idea that his workload contributed to his death.
“He wasn’t a young horse,” Luc Desparois said. “They’re big. They’re strong like you wouldn’t believe, but they still have a fragile heart.”
The horse, named Charlot, arrived at Desparois’ Lucky Luc Stables last summer. He had shown signs of a minor gastrointestinal pain that took him out of service, but he returned to work Sunday after tests showed nothing wrong.
Charlot collapsed that afternoon as he was pulling passengers through Old Montreal.
“I don’t really know (what happened),” Desparois said Monday at his Montreal stable. “From what we know, he just started coughing, and he didn’t stop.” The coughing spell lasted 15 minutes, and “once he laid down, that was it,” Desparois said.
Quebec’s Agriculture Department is conducting a necropsy to determine the cause of death.
Desparois said he is eager to know what happened to the horse — and whether his other 20 horses could be at risk from an infectious disease.
The Montreal administration has already promised to ban caleche rides by the end of 2019, but after Sunday’s death there are calls to speed up the process.
“Unfortunately this happened, and it could have been prevented,” said Mirella Colalillo, a spokeswoman for an anti-caleche group. She called for an immediate seizure of the horses housed at Desparois’ stable.
Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said the death of Charlot has convinced her more than ever that the caleche industry needs to be shuttered.
“It says to me: ‘You made the right decision . . . the caleche industry has no place in Montreal anymore,”’ she said Monday.