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Breaking up is hard to do, even when the lost love is a place rather than flesh and blood.
“I’m going to wear water-proof mascara,” says Noreen Taylor, as the auctioneer’s gavel hovers over the remnants of her father-in-law, E.P. Taylor’s Windfields Farm.
It is the birthplace of Northern Dancer, the most famous horse ever produced in Canada.
The 1,240 acre farm on the northern edge of Oshawa once was home to 600 stallions, mares and foals; one of the premier racing and breeding farms in North America. Three of Northern Dancer’s sons, Nijinsky, Secreto, and The Minstrel, would win England’s most prestigious race, the Epsom Derby.
It is where Sandy Hawley was introduced to his first horse - and ended up on his rump, getting dragged down an icy lane that meanders between trees which now stand a solitary death watch. Most of the 100 or more workers left years ago, the last of the horses went four months ago. “It’s not eerie but it is nostalgic. Quiet. All you hear is the trees moving,” says Bob Dickenson, an auctioneer who specializes in farm and horse sales. “It’s like going through a time tunnel. It’s stopped in time.”
And, after (Saturday March 6) it will live only in memory. Dickenson expects nearly 3,000 horsemen, farmers, nostalgia buffs and former workers to pass through the gates one final time as he sells off everything from tractors and signs, to 38 paddocks, more than 50 miles of fencing and “the nuts and bolts” that held Taylor’s empire together.
Dickenson has been salesman to the equine world for 30 years but admits this is special.
“There’s only one like this. It’s like a big Kentucky farm sale ... and it’s a legendary place,” says Dickenson, “it’s beautiful; the old barns are there, the graveyard for Northern Dancer and all the legendary horses are there. It’s part of history; a chance to go see it even if you don’t buy anything.”
The meadows where Northern Dancer once romped are being carved into suburban lots. Cranes and bulldozers are menacing the barns and paddocks where Hawley was first introduced to a horse - even if it was the back side of one. “I mucked and cleaned a lot of stalls here,” says Hawley, who lived about 10 minutes from the farm in 1967 when his uncle helped him get a job at age 16. “I didn’t have a racing background and had to learn everything. I worked hard here and it has a lot of great memories.
“I remember getting thrown off when I was breaking yearlings in 1967. One time I was walking a horse to the paddock, leaned down to open the fence and the horse took off on me and dragged me down the road.” Little more than a decade later he would ride Taylor’s Regal Embrace to victory in the Queen’s Plate. “It was my fourth Plate but my biggest thrill at Woodbine because it was for E.P. Taylor - the biggest race horse owner in the country and because it was where I started.”
Hawley would become the first jockey ever to win 500 races in one season in a Hall of Fame career. Taylor’s colors would grace 361 stakes winners and the breeding operation produced an incredible 48 champions.
“It’s beyond comprehension these days,” says Glenn Sikura, president of the Ontario division of the Canadian Throughbred Horse Society. “Mr. Taylor is the reason we have a somewhat vibrant racing industry and why we have a breeding industry of any account. He was able to do in this country what people all over the world have dreamt of doing. Once he developed horses like Northern Dancer and Nijinsky he forever put North America on the map.”
Taylor bought the farm in 1950 from Sam McLaughlin, founder of General Motors. “When E.P. set foot on the grounds of a race track it was like the president of the United States arriving,” recalls Sikura. When he died in 1989, the lifeblood of the farm died. His son, Charles, was an accomplished journalist and began to downsize the operation. When he died of cancer in 1997, it also sounded the final death knell of Windfields.
Charles’ wife, Noreen, and the Taylor estate decided to sell. The last two dozen horses were sold in November. The University of Ontario Institute of Technology and Durham College have expanded onto part of the property and 2,000 homes are to be built on the grassy lands once called home by Nijinsky II and The Minstrel.
Windfields was more than a farm. It was a community. “It’s kind of full circle. I started here and now I’m back,” says Hawley, who, in a curious twist of life resides in one of the homes in the new development. “Back then, the place was alive with people and horses. It was a working farm, the breeding operation was in full swing. Northern Dancer was at the farm. It was an exciting time.”
Now it is a ghost farm waiting to be scavenged.
“There’s been a lot of interest the past eight weeks. We’ve had phone calls from Nova Scotia to British Columbia from people who worked here or had some affiliation,” says farm manager Warren Gibson, who isn’t keen on more publicity about Saturday’s liquidation sale. “I’d rather not have any more media attention. To be honest I’m a little worried about how many people might show up. There’s a lot of sentimental interest. I had a guy from Manitoba who grew up in one of the houses on the farm phone and ask if he could drive out and have a look.”
The workers’ barracks sit empty; most of the 30 houses are set for demolition and the bucolic laneway will soon be dwarfed by a five-lane highway connecting the 401 and 407. Taylor says the agreement with the college calls for preservation of Windfields’ core as parkland, including its historic barns, Northern Dancer’s grave and a breathtaking trillium forest where 15 horses are buried. But, admits Taylor, “I cannot give assurance how other people will maintain those facilities.”
For the Taylor family it was a multi-million dollar horse factory. But it was not a labour without love. “It’s a business and we had a pretty good ride but,” says Taylor, “it’s also a love affair ... a great way of life.”
While the balance sheet may have dictated the arrival of the auctioneer, Taylor does feel more than a hint of nostalgia as the final chapter unfolds. The one thing she wanted to rescue before the gavel came down was a simple halter. “I have a couple from Northern Dancer and I wanted a Vice Regent. To me that represented five generations from Neartic ... to Silver Deputy. To have all those generations of the same bloodline is just astonishing. To some people they’d just look like dirty smelly bits of old leather. I knew the horses who lived inside those halters.”
Her sister-in-law rescued a couple horse blankets. “It’s emotional. Why we’ve fixated on this stuff, I don’t know,” says Noreen. “It just meant a lot to us.”
At its mercurial height in the 1960s, Windfields was earning more prize money than any other stable. But at the passing of an era what she misses most isn’t notoriety or the business.
“I miss the horses. I miss them as individuals. And, I miss seeing the babies. I used to love this season because there’d be a new baby born lots of days and I’d go out and watch. I’d go out in the middle of the night just to see a foaling. A birthing is magical.
“I miss turning up the main drive ... I miss the apple orchard that used to be there.”
There were Christmas parties in the big stone house, home cooking and sleigh rides. “There’s going to be a lot of people looking for nostalgia stuff. But if some people are coming because they think they’re going to buy E.P. Taylor’s bed, well, it’s not there. That’s not happening,” says Dickenson, “he didn’t live there.”
Neither did Charles, or Noreen who has had a home in Toronto for close to 30 years. But hundreds of other farm workers, horsemen and families did call it home. The work could be sweaty, dirty and back-aching. The holidays could be like stepping into a Currier and Ives print.
“I have moved on,” says Taylor. She pauses and there is a heavy sigh. Perhaps a reconsideration? “I’m hoping I will move on; at the same time this has been such a part of our existance it would be lovely to go back. You shed a tear for the memories and things you won’t be able to do anymore. And, yet I can not go backwards. I have to be responsible. I hate the responsible part.”
The auction begins at 9:30 a.m. Noreen will be there.
“I don’t want to be there but I can’t imagine not being there. I have to be there,” she says. “I know it’s just equipment and tractors but I owe it to the farm to be there; I owe it to the people who worked there, I owe it to the horses, the land ... it’s a place that deserves to be treated with dignity.”
bill.lankhof@sunmedia.ca