ENOUGH RACES HERE’
“The racing industry provided the facilities, the parking, the lighting and, to a large degree, the startup customers. Now they feel they are getting the raw end of the deal.” But OLG held firm. Then everything was thrown up in the air on May 16 when the province fired Paul Godfrey, the head of OLG (Godfrey is also CEO of Postmedia Network, which owns the Citizen). The new premier, Kathleen Wynne, said the Ontario government was going back to the drawing board, and everything was open to debate.
Will the slots-at-racetracks program be brought back? Will Ottawa have one casino or two — or none? No one knows. Nor, to some degree, does it matter. The past two years of uncertainty have led to a mass exodus of breeders, riders, trainers and horses out of Ontario.
John MacDonald began racing his horses in New York state earlier this summer. Even if the slots-at-racetracks program is brought back, he won’t be racing full-time at Rideau Carleton anytime soon. He says he just can’t make a living right now at the track.
“There just ain’t enough races here any more,” he says. “The track went from 54 races a week — 60 in the summertime — to 24 races a week. The purses used to be $115,000 a night. Now, it’s around $50,000. That’s 60 per cent less money for 50 per cent less races.”
Money concerns aside, it wasn’t an easy decision to leave Rideau Carleton. It is like a second family. He has a lot of money invested in the area. The really hard part is his son Alex. “I understand why he’s got to go,” says his girlfriend, Cara Johnston, “but Alex just loves his dad, loves being around him. We’ll try to get down to see him, but he’s going to miss all the little things of Alex growing up — all those little milestones.”
“It’s sad to watch,” says Norm Borg. “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. He could have easily gone ‘downtown’ (Woodbine/Mohawk circuits in Toronto) but he didn’t.
“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.”
In the past 10 years John MacDonald has rarely missed a Thursday-night race at Rideau Carleton. Tonight, however, as the sun sets and the neon lights come up at what he likes to call “my track,” he will be on Interstate 81, making his way to the track at Vernon Downs in New York state.
He’s raced there a few times, to get a feel for the place, and he likes how it went. So this time he won’t be coming back to Ottawa. He’s going to try to make a go of it in the United States, while he is at the peak of his career. On June 9, Alex turned two. His dad drove 10 hours — from Middleton, N.Y., to Ottawa and back again — to see him.
He hasn’t been back since.
‘I understand why he’s got to go,’ says John’s girlfriend, Cara Johnston, ‘but Alex just loves his dad, loves being around him. We’ll try to get down to see him, but he’s going to miss all the little things of Alex growing up — all those little milestones.’