Page 12 - December 2018 Thoroughbred Highlight

Continued from Page 10
racing driver/trainer, veterinarian and breeder who bred and raced under Madawaska Farms for four decades.
At age 12 Bill was working at Doc Findley’s farm and would be tasked with jogging mares 10 miles up a road and back. “It was the middle of winter and it didn’t matter how cold it was.” recalled Bill, “After the end of the war there was a shortage of help and kids helped do the men’s work.”
Wanting to become a veterinarian, Bill went to school in Detroit however he ran out of money while in pre-med, “It was the best thing that ever happened to me.” he smiled explaining that his lack of funds sent him to the racetrack to groom standardbred racehorses. From Detroit Bill traveled with the horses to
New York, Chicago and Cleveland. He
then began grooming Thoroughbreds
and would spend his days in California
at iconic tracks Del Mar, Hollywood
Park and Tanforan Racetracks.
“I saw Citation go over $1 million in earnings at Hollywood Park.” gleams Bill, “It was a fabulous summer that year.”
Fast forward to 1957 and Bill was rubbing White Apache as a 2 year-
old for trainer Willie Russell, Frank Russell’s father, who was also known as the Mayor of Dufferin Park. The imposing chestnut horse by Blue Royal ll - Fun Time, by Gala Hour, made one start that year, a second place nish in the Yearling Sale Stakes for Canadian- breds.
The following year, Willie Russell had passed away and son Frank took over the stable and Bill had begun a new position with the Ontario Jockey Club (OJC). White Apache, who was owned by 4 brothers racing their horses under the name of FourL’s Stable, went on to win the Prince of Wales Stakes after nishing second in both the Plate Trial and the Queen’s Plate Stakes. A win in the Connaught Cup would be the colt’s last and only start in 1959.
Bill’s employment with the OJC began when John Mooney hired him to work in the jocks’ room, rst in the colours room and then in the race of ce as Assistant Clerk of Scales, then Placing Judge and eventually Assistant Racing Secretary.
It was during this time that Bill and friend former Jockey David Stevenson Jr. (winner of the rst Queen’s Plate held at the new Woodbine aboard Canadian Champ in 1956) began the popular Guineas’ Gazette Magazine. The pair’s rst edition was a four page issue dated May 11, 1959. It wasn’t long before the initial musings of life at the racetrack took hold and expanded to bi-monthly twenty page issues featuring The Woodbine Beat, Shedrow Con dential
and episodes of Red the Racetracker and much more. Artist John Verdura provided all of the original artwork and photos and articles came in from all over North America to be published in both the Ontario racing season editions and the Florida (winter) editions.
The Guineas’ Gazette continued until Bill was asked to assist the publicity department at Garden City Raceway, a harness racing hotbed in St. Catharines, Ontario. It was there that his prowess for creating successful promotions were cultivated with such events as spotlighting young drivers, and bringing in foals to captivate and entice a young audience to the raceway. Bill wrote and distributed a nightly lead for the newspapers recapping the evening’s harness results with his column appearing every day in Toronto, Kingston,
Ottawa, Hamilton, Brantford, Cambridge and London newspapers.
His are for publicity did not go unnoticed. The Canadian Trotting Association (now Standardbred Canada after amalgamation with
the Canadian Standardbred Horse Society) offered Bill the plum role
of Director of Publicity and Public Relations. He turned the offer down instead accepting a move to the OJC Executive Of ces to become Director of Special Promotions for Thoroughbred, Harness and Quarter Horse Racing.
In the 1970’s Bill brought
back Trotting Under Saddle, an event recently documented on Standardbred Canada’s website:
Back in 1974, in an effort to attract Thoroughbred fans to harness racing, O.J.C. publicist Wm. Galvin devised a series of Trotting Races Under Saddle, with Woodbine’s
top riders in the tack. The rst
event was staged opening night of Grand Circuit Week at Greenwood and Thoroughbred fans ocked
to Greenwood to see their jocks
in action and help set an opening night attendance record of 13,598, an increase of 1,600 over the best previous opening night attendance. Talented riders like Canadian Hall
of Fame jockey Sandy Hawley competed in the one-mile test, with French-bred Varioca M, a nine-year- old French stallion, ridden by Jimmy
Walford and trained by Gordon Baxter for Carol and Rex Bailey of Burlington cruising to a handy 2:06.1 World record for Trotting under Saddle on a ve-eighths mile track.
The Harness Driving Championships was the next successful event to come from the desk of Bill Galvin followed by the Inter- Collegiate Driving Championships, an effort to attract younger drivers to the sport. Bill reached out to universities across Canada asking for drivers to compete in qualifying meets to be held at local rural
Thoroughbred Highlight, December 2018, Page 12
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