The Fraser Valley Hunt Club has been organizing “drag scent” hunts in British Columbia every fall and winter for almost 50 years. A local horse and hunt enthusiast hosts the opening hunt for the club each fall from his farm on the upper slopes of Mount Elphinstone on the Sunshine Coast. This story begins in early November when the core group of dedicated hunters arrive from the Fraser Valley by ferry with several trailers of horses and one of hounds.

He was just a little guy when he was born on May 27, 1961 at business tycoon E.P. Taylor’s Windfields Farm in Oshawa, Ontario. In fact, when Taylor put the 14.2 hand unruly Thoroughbred colt in the yearling sale the following year, he didn’t even fetch the $25,000 reserve due to his small size. It was the best sales failure Taylor ever had, but at the time he had no idea what his colt, Northern Dancer, had in store for him.

Horseback riders across Canada are advocating for horse use on provincial and regional trails. In Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia (BC) that often means resolving potential conflicts with other user groups. On Prince Edward Island (PEI) it’s meant trying to gain access to the Confederation Trail — a 470-kilometre stretch of Canada’s Great Trail, previously called the Trans Canada Trail, which follows a former railway bed across the island.

In the last few years, teenaged horses have been making headlines by winning some of the biggest competitions on the planet. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games (held in 2021), over half of the three-day eventing horses were aged 13 through 19. The oldest horse was Tayberry, a 20-year-old ridden by Hong Kong’s Thomas Heffernan Ho.