GIVING UP ON ONTARIO TRACKS
When Ontario shut down the slotsat-racetracks program, purses and races at Rideau Carleton Raceway dropped by half. Whether or not the program is revived, the top harness racer at RCR has already left. The Citizen’s JULIE OLIVER followed John MacDonald as
When the province stopped giving a cut of gaming money to Rideau Carleton Raceway, top-earning harness racer John MacDonald decided to seek his fortune elsewhere.
In May, John MacDonald packed his bags and loaded his horses into a trailer. He’s a harness racer. One of the best to ever race at Rideau Carleton Raceway. Last year, MacDonald earned $1.4 million in purse money. In 2010 and 2009 it was $1.8 million, and in 2008 he almost broke $2 million.
“John is one of the best drivers we’ve seen here,” says Norm Borg, Rideau Carleton’s track announcer and handicapper. “Patience, iron nerve and that mystical element in the hands to keep the horse steady and calm. It’s what all the great drivers have.”
On this day, MacDonald should be making the short drive from his farm in Russell to the track, suiting up in his orange silks and getting ready to race. But he’s not. He closes the doors to the noisy trailer and kisses his young son Alex goodbye. He’s off for another weekend of racing in New York state.
MacDonald, now 31, was raised in Charlottetown, P.E.I. His father was a horseman who both drove and trained, but he tried hard to get his son interested in something else, anything else.
“I never wanted him to get into this business,” says Toby MacDonald. “It’s too unstable. Not enough steady work.”
But there was no turning the kid away. The best his father could do was wring a promise from the teenage MacDonald that he would finish high school before trying to break into the business.
On his last day of school — right at 3 p.m. — MacDonald walked out the doors of his high school for the last time and by 6 p.m. was on a plane heading west. Never went to his prom. Never went home. Never spent another night in P.E.I.
“Those weren’t easy times,” MacDonald recalls of his first few years in the business. He was 17. He’d come to Ontario with $50 in his jeans. That first year he worked as a groom for his uncle Ron, then began grooming for other owners.
His income was so low he slept in the stables.
“It’s like a room attached to the end of the barn,” says MacDonald of the dorms at Rideau Carleton.
“People use it for their harness and equipment, but a lot of the grooms fix them up and live in them. Winters could be tough, but there was a bunch of us and it was fun at the time.”
A few years later MacDonald started driving.
And like Norm Borg says, there was something special about him. Perhaps it was the supple hands that seemed to calm even the most agitated horse.
Or the skill and audacity that let him take chances on the track that other drivers would never dare. It was hard to say exactly what it was. Before long he was offered better horses and was running for bigger purses. It all coincided with the “glory days” for Rideau Carleton Raceway.
In 1998, the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) partnered with horse tracks across the province to put in slot machines that would return a percentage of the take directly to the tracks. It was a classic winwin situation.
The OLG expanded its casino operations with almost no capital costs (they didn’t need a building) and the tracks got 20 per cent of the profits, reversing a steady slide in horsebetting revenue.
As soon as the slots-at-racetracks program started, the purse money got better. The horses got better. Within 10 years the program grew an indigenous, rural industry that employed
‘Here’s a guy that came from P.E.I. with little more than his silks and he developed a career everybody’s taken notice of. Now the situation has prompted him to go down to New York, where he’s making a name for himself already. It’s just sad.’
30,000 people across Ontario, according to provincial statistics. The Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association, however, says that figure is 60,000.
“Purse money went from being not so good to being one of the best in the world,” remembers MacDonald. “Drivers were coming from Sweden, Norway, the States. Everybody was in Ontario. It was the spot to be.”
MacDonald prospered. He began buying horses. Then a five-acre farm in Russell. He built barns and stables. In 2011, he spent $100,000 to build new paddocks and an exercise ring for his horses. Around the same time his girlfriend gave birth to a son, Alex, so he got some monkey bars, a slide and a swing set. John MacDonald’s life — and he was not yet 30 — had surpassed the dreams he had in Prince Edward Island as a young boy.
Then, in early 2012, the Ontario government announced it was cancelling the slots-at-racetracks program. The 14-year-old profit-sharing arrangement would officially wind up a year later, in March 2013.
The horse racing industry in Ontario could not have been more gobsmacked. The program had built an industry with 17 tracks across Ontario. It had pumped millions into municipal coffers ($5 million in Ottawa alone last year) and anywhere from $1.7 to $2 billion a year to the province for the last seven years, according to the OLG.
The OLG argued it needed to maximize its return on investment. It had to stop giving 20 per cent of its profits to the racetracks. It was time to build its own casinos and keep all the profits.
“Maximize” was heard as “greed” at racetracks across the province, each of which felt they had been used by the OLG.
“They came in, pilfered our customers for 14 years, built their business up and then said ‘it’s over,’ ” Sue Leslie, president of the Ontario Horse Racing Industry Association, told the Citizen earlier this year.