Legendary horse remembered
SYDNEY — After living for 25 years in Nova Scotia, B.C. native Marjorie Simmins recently received what she considers the ultimate compliment.
“For the first time in print, I was called a Cape Bretoner,” she said during a phone interview with the Cape Breton Post.
“After 25 years of living in Nova Scotia, I thought that was pretty wonderful. I've been a Cape Bretoner in training all these years and now I've been upgraded so I was pretty excited.”
Indeed she has. The D'Escousse-based writer has just released her latest book, “Somebeachsomewhere: The Harness Racing Legend from a One-Horse Stable” (Nimbus Publishing, $24.95), which follows the life and career of the Ohio-born, Canadiansired pacer known as Beach, who achieved legendary status in harness racing.
Some consider Beach to be the greatest pacer and Standardbred sire of all time until his death in 2018. He was a world-champion hall of famer who set a single-season earning record as a three-year-old. The horse was owned by a Maritime syndicate, Schooner Stables, that included Truro car dealership co-owner Brent MacGrath and it follows MacGrath's and the horse's journey from winning
races until Beach's untimely death at the age of 12.
Simmins, 62, has been involved with horses all her life but a few years ago, she became interested in standardbreds.
“I started to have friends and horse people in my life who had standardbreds in their life up in North Sydney and I was just getting more and more interested in the breed,” she said. “And very excited that I had two racetracks basically in my backyard, one being in Inverness and the other in North Sydney. And then the larger one of course in Truro. And I thought well, this is interesting.
"Horse people always want to know more. They always wants to expand their horizons and learn more so that basically was where it started, the developing interest in the breed and also in the sport. And then, we found out that Somebeach had passed away and it took me about a year to refigure out that this was the Secretariat of harness racing who had passed.
“In the early spring of 2019, the realization came to me that I wanted to tell this horse's story.”
Simmins spent the next two years researching and developing the book. It included going to Harrisburg, Pa., to attend a yearling sale in 2019 with MacGrath and her husband, fellow writer Silver Donald Cameron.
“We had an incredible trip down there. I had never been to one of these large auctions before and I learned a ton. I interviewed everybody in sight. It was wonderful,” she said, but a few months later Simmins faced a major loss in her life, the death of Cameron, her biggest supporter.
“In 2020, I lost my husband and I was fortunate that I had a good bit of the book done but it kind of kept me on track, to tell you the honest truth, because I had something that I absolutely had to do. And there was no way I was going to let Don down that way or let myself down or anyone else, MacGrath included. It was two full years of work, research and interviews, and I'm very proud of it.”
Now that the book is out, it's available internationally on Amazon and locally, including at Indigospirit at the Mayflower Mall.
In addition to her latest book, Simmins is an awardwinning freelance journalist with three other books to her credit. She is well known for her expertise in memoir writing, of which she regularly gives workshops across the country. While she has some ideas for her next book, she's hoping for the same inspiration that she had for “Somebeachsomewhere.”
“As a writer you will understand that sometimes an idea chooses you. And that's exactly what happened with the Beach book. I had felt like a bolt of lightning had gone through my body when I realized that the book hadn't been written yet. I thought — this is mine.
“I'd like to have that feeling again if possible. It will come to me.”