{"id":3497,"date":"2022-07-24T03:13:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T03:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/?page_id=3497"},"modified":"2026-04-07T00:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T00:56:09","slug":"romance-and-horses","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/true-life\/1978-1984\/romance-and-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance and Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Most of my life was spent in cities or towns. I was an urban kid. So, why did everyone in my family know how to ride horses but me?<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After Mum had been out of the house and living in hospitals or care homes, Dad told me stories about how my mother could ride a horse as a girl. I found this idea fascinating! I was an urban kid, and up to the age of twelve, I’d never seen a horse up close in real-life. I’d only seen them in westerns on TV, or maybe in a parade or two. There was something very fantastic and romantic about being able to ride a horse, whether it was for fun or for practical transportation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dad used to tell me that Mum and her family had horses when they lived in Vanderhoof (not far from Prince George), up in the interior of BC.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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My mother Angela, on her horse (c. 1940?)<\/em><\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n

My mother’s father had been a Mountie, so I figured that some level of horsemanship was required of him by definition (although I don’t know the particulars of the RCMP training regime of 1918, when he first signed up as a young man). I pictured him teaching his daughter how to ride, up on some wild pasture in Vanderhoof.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My sister Kim loved horses, and showed an interest in riding too, so when she was in her teens, our Dad bought her English riding lessons. Kim so loved riding, and took to the lessons easily! Years later, when she was about seventeen, Kim worked as a stablehand for an owner down at Hastings Park racetrack. Right in the heart of East Vancouver, she’d work with horses every day, mucking out the stables, feeding and grooming the horses, and getting to know some of the owners and jockeys. The pay was low, but she really loved it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

After Poppy passed away, Dad kept Poppy’s ivory-handled riding crop, and was very proud of it. It was symbolic of Poppy’s past horsemanship. Dad explained that you could use the crop to give your horse “a little flick on the withers” if you needed them to run faster. I had no idea where the withers were located on a horse, but I figured that it would have had to have been one hell of a flick. Ouch!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Dad could ride too, and many times he regaled me with his tales of working as a stablehand in North Vancouver when he was a young man, before he enlisted in the army in 1945. In his story, there’d been a riding contest of sorts, “musical chairs” he called it, at some local fair. Everyone would ride their horse in a ring around a collection of chairs (one less than the number of riders, of course). When the music stopped, everyone had to dismount and run as fast as they could to sit on a chair. At some point in my Dad’s telling of the story, there was only one chair left, with Dad on his horse and a local Mountie on his. When the music stopped, Dad got to his chair first. Then the Mountie dumped him out of the chair and sat down, to the delight of the crowd. Dad might have just been a stablehand, but he wasn’t going to let that stand. He got right up and dumped the Mountie out, and reclaimed his place, more to the audience’s delight!<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

To me, it sounded fantastic – like some kind of western comedy routine. “Dad versus The Mountie”.<\/p>\r\n

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Most of my life was spent in cities or towns. I was an urban kid. So, why did everyone in my family know how to ride horses but me? After Mum had been out of the house and living in hospitals or care homes, Dad told me stories about how my mother could ride a … Continue reading Romance and Horses<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1575,"menu_order":51,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3497","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3497"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4201,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3497\/revisions\/4201"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ejohnlovebooks.com\/true-life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}