Page 34 - August/September 2008 The Game

34 The Game, August/September 2008
Bush Tracks and Beer Gardens
Canada’s Thoroughbred Racing Newspaper
The History of Princeton Days
by Jim Reynolds
by evenSteven
front side where half the crowd was packed into the relative shade of the grandstand. On a day where the temperature soared well above thirty degrees, sitting in the bleachers felt like taking refuge in a dusty hayloft. With its long stretches and short, tight turns, the track looked hard and loose, like an old dirt road speckled with stones as big as robin’s eggs. The horses prancing by on post-parade raised a cloud of dust that rolled over the crowd thronging
For years I’ve been listening to tall tales about the good old days of racing on the bush tracks of the British Columbia interior. More than a few jockeys began their riding careers at these wild and wooly meets before moving on to bigger and brighter horizons. Most old-timers are happy to tell you that today’s jockeys have it easy compared to the old days when every rider worth his salt cut his teeth on the bush circuit. I’ve heard
the stands. Within minutes you could taste dirt as ne as talcum powder gritting be- tween your teeth. Between the heat and the dust we decided to escape the grandstand for the most popular shade on the premises: the beer garden.
‘Klootchman’ is a Chinook Indian word mean-
ing ‘wild woman’ and according to historian Nick
Mills of the Princeton Museum back in the day these ‘wild women’ would race their horses at festivals and gatherings in the Princeton, BC area. According to the London Daily Graphic of October 13, 1900, “It was a sight not to be seen everyday!” The Siwash lady, when on riding bent, entrusts her papoose to the elder women
of the tribe, fastens the brightest hander kerchief in her possession around her head, her smartest blouse around her body, ties her skirt tightly around her knees and is ready for victory! They all sit astride and many ride without saddles, the course is quite at and straight and is situated amongst tall pine trees.”
stories about horses dump-
ing their riders and jumping
the outside fence and run-
ning away, still wearing the
tack, never to be seen again.
When I hear these stories,
what I enjoy more than
anything is the sense of loss
the old race trackers express
for a time when horse racing
was comprised of colourful
and cantankerous charac-
ters—and that included the
spectators. The kind of men
who’d bring their families
down from the mountains
once or twice a year to kick
up their heels and bet their
savings in the bush meets of
the BC interior. After years
of hearing these stories my
curiosity nally got the
better of me. On the hottest
weekend of the summer my ancé and I packed our gear and headed southeast to Sun ower Downs on the edge of beautiful Princeton, BC.
Strategically located beneath a low-slung steel roof, the beer garden seemed the best choice to beat the heat. From here you could watch the races and escape the sun, drown your sorrows and sweat out your poisons, all at the same time. Apparently the vast majority of the spectators had the same idea, because it was standing room only until we managed to locate a few chunks of up- turned cordwood on which to sit. We ventured out into the sun long enough to watch the
Newspaper records report that on Dominion Day, 1899 horse races were held on the main street of Princeton with over 1,000 people in attendance with the Klootchman Race as the main event. Accounts say Chin-Chin Agnes, and Princess Julia Arcaat were among the riders and their descendants still live in the area including great, great grandson, Chief Joe Dennis of neighbouring Keremeos.
The drive to Princeton along the number three highway runs right through the green majesty of Manning Park and some of the most rugged and beautiful scenery in the province. As you begin the long descent from Manning to the semi-arid desert of Princeton below, the lush greens and soaring peaks are gradually replaced by rolling hills and sagebrush so pretty it almost takes the breath away. Welcome to the Wild West, BC style.
make-shift crew scramble to load an unruly group of Arabian horses into the starting gate. A moment later they were off.
They’re off and running at Sun ower Downs
It takes fast hands and a head for gures to work the tote board at Sun ower Downs in Princeton, BC
The Klootchman race was revived for this year’s Princeton Days with ve entrants competing for over $2,000 as they whooped and hollered 300 yards from start to nish. Local residents and business owners donated the purse money. For Princeton Days it seems the whole town turns out to volunteer time, materials and themselves to whatever task is at hand— and each one of them has, or is, a story. And in front of all that there is the racing, as wild as it was one hundred years ago and each year traditions are built and anecdotes told and retold. That’s the fun of Princeton Days—everyone pitches
They stormed down the front side in a thick
haze of dust and skittered into the tight clubhouse turn. The spectators cheered in the grandstand as the horses raced down the backstretch. All of a sudden you could hear a sharp intake of breath as
a horse swerved. Whatever happened was lost in the dust as the horses rounded the turn and pounded down the homestretch. They ashed by the wire and the cloud of dust hadn’t begun to lift as the an- nouncer welcomed the victor back to the winner’s circle.
In need of refreshment we retreated to the wel- coming shade of the beer garden, conscious of the importance of keeping hydrated on a day such as this. Now and again I stood up to check the tote board, wondering what was keeping the post parade for the next race. Eventually I realized the swerv- ing horse of the previous race had managed to drop the rider onto the rail. Twenty minutes later the jockey still lay in the ditch while the PA announcer frantically beseeched the ambulance attendant to return to their vehicle. Nobody in the beer garden seemed to notice. Another ten minutes passed while the jockey remained on the track awaiting medical attention. Somebody stumbled into me, nearly knocking me off my stove-wood seat.
“Excuse me, young fella,” a voice said apologeti- cally.
I smiled and squinted up as the ambulance at- tendant walked carefully through the crowded beer garden. Minutes later the ambulance was roaring around the track in a cloud of dust to where the poor jockey had been waiting with untold injuries for nearly half an hour. I wondered if this was what it was like back in the good old days of BC’s bush meets. Maybe things hadn’t changed as much as the old timers liked to think.
in and there’s always something interesting going on, always a story.
It didn’t take us long to nd the half-mile track on the outskirts of Princeton. We pulled up on
the edge of a grassy plateau jammed with a vast collection of dusty four by fours, motor homes, and fully dressed Harley Davidson motorcycles. At rst I wondered whether we’d arrived at the racetrack
There’s the story of the starting bell. You see the gate didn’t have one and one of the riders objected; said he needed the bell at the start. So the starter went home
and got a cowbell and fashioned it to the gate with a piece of string so he could ring it went the gate opened. Unfortunately when he pulled on the string the bell came loose and hit a rider on the head. It was the same rider and as requested he got his bell rung.
or a tractor pull. From the moment we parked the car and climbed out the heat was oppressive. We donned our cowboy hats and trudged across the makeshift parking lot to where we could see the entrance to the racetrack shimmering like a mirage above the sun-baked earth. A rough wooden sign over the gate read ‘Sun ower Downs.’ We were obviously in the right place.
Another story is about a horse that didn’t like the tight turns on Princeton’s 5/8 mile track. As the horses entered the nal turn he didn’t, dumping his rider and, jumping the outside rail, ran up an old logging road with three outriders in hot pursuit and the trainer running after them hollering “Just bring back the tack.”
Inside the entrance we’re treated to the sight
of an old fashioned Wild West town featuring a general store, a blacksmith shop, and of course,
the obligatory saloon complete with dou-
ble swinging doors. As I stood there snapping photographs a local stopped
to inform me that Jack Nicholson shot a movie on this very spot a couple of years before. With the sun beating ercely down, I realized the handful of characters contemplating the photocopied racing forms on the wooden sidewalks could have stepped right from the script of an old Hollywood western. Around the edges of the false wooden fronts, people fanned themselves with folded copies of the form and sought relief in the shadowy fringes, anywhere that afforded some respite from the heat.
And then there’s the Similkameen Cup, Princeton’s biggest trophy and richest race. My friend, the late, great Bill Chipman (Bill would have loved that line) once said of all the trophies in horseracing The Similkammen Cup is the one he wanted to win before he died. Sadly that never happened. The old shoer’s gone now but he would have loved the Klootchman race.
We followed the buzz of noise around to the
Carman Pozzibon wins the “Klootchman Race”
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