A Canadian Family

Quebec Horse Racing: “a sport offering colour and excitement” or animal cruelty?

1960s Vintage Postcard: Harness Racing in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec

When I opened my Montreal Gazette this morning, this is what I saw –  Ponies put out to pasture, so I decided that this would be a good time to share this vintage postcard of harness racing at the Trois-Rivieres Hippodrome in the late 1960s.

The text on the back of the card describes harness racing as “a sport offering color and excitement”. I’ve never been to a modern horsetrack so I can’t speak to whether it’s exciting, but I can say that even though horse-racing has a century-old tradition in our province, it no longer “attracts large crowds” in Quebec. In fact, Quebec’s horse racing industry has been in steady decline for some time and it’s reached a final crisis over the past few months as first the Trois-Rivieres Hippodrome and now the famous Blue Bonnets Raceway seem to have closed down for good. Read more »

October 15, 2009 Posted by Evelyn Yvonne Theriault | . | A Festival of Postcards, animal cruelty, animal rights, harness racing, horse racing, race track | 7 Comments