I grew up across the road from the Ormstown fairgrounds in the seventies and eighties. Back then, the Ormstown Exhibition opened on the Wednesday of the first full week of June. In the days leading up to this, our neighbour would walk up and down the road, warming up his bagpipes for his march in the parade. The trucks would start rolling in carrying the midway, and my sister and I would try to guess which rides were which. And the cattle and horses would start arriving… and then my excitement would be stratospheric.
The horse show was big and very diverse. It was sweet torture for me to run cross the road and wander up and down the stables after the horses had arrived, yearning, getting underfoot, and occasionally helping, which was bliss.
Not only could we just trot across the road to the grounds almost anytime; our mother, who worked for The Gleaner, brought home special yellow midway passes (likely job-printed by the paper) courtesy of Mr. Campbell. We were truly privileged and the envy of friends.
I ran all over the grounds with a pocket of change and those passes – though I always gravitated to the horses. However, that midway was something. We rode the Trabant and the Paratrooper and the Spider and the Bumper Cars (it took me forever to be tall enough) and later the Rocko Planes and even the Zipper. The best was the Scrambler, back when it was powered by a loud diesel engine with a big lever on the side. The old operator knew that contraption like the back of his hand, and he would push that lever to full throttle and then stand oh-so-close as if he was going to grab us, as we rushed toward him in our silver cart with the wings on it until we were pulled back like a ball on an elastic, screaming.
The midway noise went on late into the night, and the symphony of noises and smells was fantastic. On the Saturday night the security guys would loll in our ditch with their stubbies and let everyone get on with it. I would sleep on our upstairs porch, hiding in my sleeping bag from the junebugs and listening to the fair spin out its cacophony of merriment and competition and combustion.
The horse show
Because of the Gleaner connection, we got to sit in the Press Box to watch the horse show and get showered with arena dirt and horse slobber as the heavy horses and the high steppers pounded past. There were big-time jumper classes then, too, and the classic potato race and musical chairs, with kids and ponies from near and far – serious competitors who took no prisoners, whom I admired tremendously and aspired to be, desperately.
One year I painfully fell in love with a horse dealer’s pony who was there to be sold. She got colic, and I was frantic, and I held her while Dr. Whitehead gave her a green drench which went all over me and the pony both, and I walked her and walked her and Mr. Dealer stood chatting with cronies, and I prayed the pony wouldn’t die – until my poor frantic mother appeared, fuming and sputtering that it was past midnight. She said Mr. Dealer could walk his own pony, and she dragged me home (I learned later that the pony recovered nicely).
For years I bugged horsemen at the fair. But then I got my own pony, Suzy. I showed her in a halter class (“Yeld Mare under 12.2 hands”), and I had no clue what I was doing, dropping her rope to place her feet one by one with my hands. Showmanship points: zero. But the next year I rode her in Pony Under Saddle and Musical Chairs, and I now knew not to let her rope go in the halter class, and she got a red ribbon. Triumph! We practiced under saddle as well, and so in the weeks and days before, we would cross the road and ride in the arena where the dirt had been plowed into ridges to dry out the last remnants of skating rink.
An ancient couple watched me ride one time. They had been hackney breeders, and were very kind, and said my pony had “the eye of a hackney” – which was very sweet of them, as she was a very basic Shetland backyard pouf, struggling through deep furrows of dirt with no style whatsoever.
Another time I met a little boy who said he was the son of the midway owners. We were two friendly little kids and a pony pouf just bopping around until some bullies showed up and tried to grab my reins, and who knows what might have happened; but my little friend tackled them, yelling, “Run away!!” and we did. That boy was half their size, but he must’ve been OK due to his prestige on the midway.
A standout memory is of waiting with my pony in the hitching ring, when a vast mass of schoolbus-imported city kids suddenly swarmed us. Their teacher asked me, “Can they pat your pony? They’ve never touched a horse before!” Flabbergasted, I said “yes” – I could imagine nothing worse than having no horse to touch.
Same kid inside
As kids do, I sadly outgrew my Shetland and was on foot at the fair once more. But I had a real taste of the scene now. I pestered more horsemen and got to drive a Percheron in the Ladies Drive when I was 13. I rode with friends, worked, and improved. Then at age 15 I bought my black mare, Abby, whom some in Ormstown may remember. And then I got to experience, 100 per cent, the camaraderie of the fair stables and the hitching ring, and the thrill of jumping courses in the arena at 1 a.m. and really feeling like I had “arrived.”
As a teen and young adult, I showed my mare at the fair in Hunter and Jumper and all the pleasures and games, and others’ horses in the Ladies’ Cart, Ladies’ Team, Roadster Under Saddle (so fun!), and other events besides. My beloved Abby was once a schoolbus in the costume class, carrying my three cousins; she danced on her toes in the parade, snorting at the bagpipes; she escorted standardbreds onto the racetrack in the rain and did “airs above the ground” because of the tumbling midway adjacent. She competed while carrying her colt by a Morgan stallion who was previously shown at the fair by loyal Ormstown exhibitors; I eventually showed that colt, Cajun, at the fair as well.
I constantly learned, made friends and memories, debuted young horses and taught young riders – and I still felt like that same kid inside, drinking in horse lovers’ magic at the fair. And I always let the city kids pat my horses.
And now, each year when June comes along, colourful images raise their heads out of the pasture of memory and stand there, chewing. Those deep feelings of painful yearning, challenge, accomplishment – and nostalgia, and loss – they all reappear. Sometimes they’re hard to bear, but there is always gratitude that I got to experience it all so uniquely and intensely. Pretty lucky.