Ottawa-area horsepeople mobilize to try to save Rideau Carleton Raceway

by Matthew Lomon

When Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa, the owner and operator of Rideau Carleton Raceway, announced last Thursday (April 2) the abrupt conclusion of live harness racing at the Ottawa, ON five-eighths-mile track after 63 years, the immediate reaction from the local horseman’s association was one shared by many.

“Shock, dismay and extreme disappointment,” Gordon McDonald, president of the National Capital Region Harness Horse Association (NCRHHA), told HRU.

McDonald, who was notified of Hard Rock’s decision during a 3 p.m. conference call that Thursday, added he had no reason to believe the conversation would take such a decisive turn.

“I was expecting to get on there and have a discussion about continued negotiations around race schedules for the year,” he said. “I was expecting a shortened schedule, of course, because I had been involved in these discussions back and forth, communicating with Ontario Racing, who were directly negotiating with Rideau, and our rep on the board of Ontario Racing [Bill O’Donnell] as well.

“I had understood that the negotiations were ongoing.”

Following the revelations brought forth by the call, McDonald moved diligently, authoring a response to the notice, which was published on Standardbred Canada at 4:26 p.m. – 26 minutes after the official press release from Hard Rock.

The NCRHHA’s statement, which can be largely attributed to McDonald, also served as a means for the organization to notify its members of the sudden and upsetting development.

As responses from fellow NCRHHA representatives poured in, common themes, including frustration, confusion, and uncertainty, began to emerge.

However, it is the human element amid the fallout from Hard Rock’s decision that McDonald says stands among the group’s foremost concerns.

“We have people who have deep roots in this industry going back to the early days of racing in 1962 onward,” he said. “These are real families and real people who have invested in the community and whose livelihoods in many cases depend on Rideau Carleton racing each year… Families are being affected, many of whom cannot move. There are only a few who can, so a lot of families, I think, are going to be faced with getting out of the industry and losing a livelihood and the long careers in the industry that they’ve had.

“The future for people like grooms, who don’t own horses and don’t own investments, they exist day-to-day with a job in the industry where they care for our equine athletes… So many people’s lives, so many people’s families are going to be affected by this in a significant way.”

The end of Rideau Carleton racing has inspired moments of reflection, not just from McDonald and the NCRHHA, but also from those like Hall of Fame driver Mike Lachance, whose name and legacy will forever be part of the eastern Ontario raceway’s storied history.

The winner of over 10,000 races and $185 million in lifetime prizes has fond memories of spending time at Rideau Carleton in the early ‘60s.

“I used to race there with my dad,” said Lachance, adding with a laugh, “I was in school, and I used to go and race horses at night and come back home tired and go to school the next day and I wasn’t learning anything.

“He was waiting for me sometimes when I used to come back from school on the bus, and I’d step out and just throw my books in the door and go to the track to race horses.”

In 2010, the revered reinsman was feted by friends, family, and fans on Mike Lachance Night at Rideau Carleton, hosted in conjunction with the NCRHHA, Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation and Standardbred Canada.

Unfortunately, nights celebrating the sport’s greats are likely no longer in the cards at Rideau after Hard Rock’s move to make it the sixth North American harness track to close since 2022.

For McDonald and the NCRHHA, a financial gap being the main factor behind the closure has been a difficult pill to swallow.

“Rideau has a long history of a very engaged racing community, a very collaborative racing-community-racetrack-relationship, and we’ve worked very hard at that over the years to make it so,” McDonald said. “It’s extremely unfortunate that it comes down to a financial decision.

“I don’t know what the gap is, but whatever the gap, it’s unfortunate that it comes down to a financial decision, where there is a gap in funding that cannot be rectified, and to lose that history, to lose the only track in this part of Ontario, in this region, is an absolute shame. I’m hoping that the Government of Ontario sees that and recognizes that they can’t let that happen.”

The NCRHHA was kept in the loop as best as the framework allowed through an almost two-year cycle of ongoing discussions between Ontario Racing and the OLG, which governs Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Ottawa.

McDonald, though satisfied with how the NCRHHA was kept informed as talks progressed, still felt the framework fell short of giving horsepeople a fair role in the conversation – financial hang-ups aside.

“We may have been able to help broker a solution to the non-financial discussion points, if we had been directly involved in the conversation,” McDonald said. “But again, that is just pure speculation. I don’t know for sure how the conversations went. I understood the big sticking point was the financial stumbling block and regardless of how involved we were, I just don’t think that we could have gotten over the financial hurdle. We certainly couldn’t have influenced resolving the financial hurdle.”

McDonald and NCRHHA have since turned to what they can control and that is a proactive defense for horsepeople impacted by the closure of Rideau.

The president of the horseman’s association initiated talks with Ontario Racing on Monday (April 6), centered around a funding envelope to assist people who have already invested in horse stock and assets.

“I’m representing a racing community that has already made significant investments and I’m wanting us to turn our attention to not just keeping people in the industry, but also compensating people in part for what they’ve already done in generating economic benefit to Ontario by maintaining their investments through this past winter over the last five months,” McDonald said.

McDonald connected with the NCRHHA in a zoom call on Wednesday (April 8) to brief his fellow members on where the initial discussions with Ontario Racing stand.

He added that no agreement is in place with Ontario Racing and talks remain ongoing.

Efforts adjacent to the NCRHHA’s directives have already begun, as well. Most notable is the Save Rideau Racing initiative.

The grassroots petition has accumulated over 2,600 signatures since being created on April 4.

“The major priority for the Save Rideau Racing group and initiative is that we’re hoping to encourage political involvement to get the government involved over and above their administrative organizations and their funding organizations,” he said. “We’re hoping that the government of Ontario will get directly involved in the communication to Hard Rock and encourage Hard Rock to reconsider their decision.”

McDonald himself isn’t directly involved with the coordination of the Save Rideau Racing campaign, but other members of the NCRHHA are.

He is currently in touch with the leader of the initiative but says he must remain focused on dealing with the government and public sector bodies to push to secure funding in the event Hard Rock’s decision cannot be overturned.

Based on recent discussions, McDonald believes the Save Rideau Racing “is our only hope that remains.

“I’ve been informed that Hard Rock has already begun to step back. They’ve already had conversations with their staff. They’re already taking human resource actions, if you will. It seems to me they’re already getting ready to step back from racing; already taking the actions to do so.

“Our only hope, I think, at this point, is political involvement and perhaps additional funding from the provincial government to correct the gap that exists – the gap to what’s being offered versus what is truly necessary to maintain all tracks in a healthy industry.”

While the sense of urgency around reversing Hard Rock’s decision grows with each passing day, the NCRHHA and the folks behind the Save Rideau Racing movement remain steadfast in the pursuit of their goals.

The NCRHHA, specifically, has spent more than two decades fighting for the interests of horsepeople in the Ottawa area – now, with Rideau facing a grave existential threat, McDonald hopes the government will step up in the same way.

“To our racing community, we started out as a grassroots organization, as the National Capital Region Harness Horse Association back in 2004,” he said. “The representatives with the NCRHHA worked hard, very hard, in the early years to build this relationship into what it was, and to lose all of that now is a shame… a real shame.

“There’s that aspect of community impact, the economic spin-off effect that you have on the economy in the region, all of that will be lost, and that is extremely unfortunate. I just hope the Ontario Government recognizes that history, that this is a sole racetrack in this region, the jobs, impact on the economy, and the community at large, and that it’s too big, and too much to lose for this area.”

with files from Debbie Little