Thoroughbred › Trainers
Gordon "Pete" McCann is unique among North American Thoroughbred trainers. He habitually exercised the champions he conditioned for 21 years for Mr. E. P. Taylor's Windfields Farm.
Among the horses Pete, who was born in the borough of East York, in Toronto, three a leg over were; Canadiana, Victoria Park Nearctic, Northern Dancer, Lyford Cay, New Providence, Canebora and Flaming Page.
McCann, who was a champion jockey, too, saddled six winners of The Queen's Plate, North America's oldest continuously run stakes race. That's a record that isn't likely to be matched or beaten.
Even more amazing is that McCann, even though he's early into his 70s, still climbs into the saddle to gallop or work his string of horses.
Jim Coleman wrote: "For Pete McCann this is simply an ongoing way of life. He's a horseman and he has no intention of hanging up his tack. Although he spent 21 years as head trainer for Canada's mightiest Thoroughbred racing establishment, the E. P. Taylor stable, he doesn't think it's the slightest bit demeaning, at 70, to be galloping three or four selling platers every morning just after dawn breaks over the shedrows".
"This is the type of life which Pete loves. And, he reasons, why break the habits of a lifetime when you're still nimble and enjoying 100 per cent good health?"
When Pete McCann was 18, he was the champion amateur flyweight boxer in Canada, returned to East York he expected a hero's welcome from his father, Tom McCann, chief constable of the borough and a former heavyweight amateur boxing champion of Canada, wrote Coleman.
Regrettably, Coleman tells the tale, the elder McCann had also read that Pete had been suspended for rough riding in the last race on the final day of the meeting. Chief McCann tossed the prodigal son from the house for allegedly besmirching the family name.
McCann turned to training horses in the late 1930s at the conclusion of his race-riding career. The late Willie Morrissey gave him a couple of horses, including a colt named Willie the Kid, which hadn't started as a two-year-old.
Every morning during the winter of '39, McCann galloped Willie the Kid over the Old Dufferin Park surface five or six miles, clear or snowing. The colt had never started in a single race before he went to the gate for the Plate. "He won by as far as a strong-armed farm boy can throw a big red apple," said McCann to Coleman.
Mr. Taylor hired McCann as his head trainer in 1950 and he saddled the following Queen's Plate winners for Windfields; Major Factor, 1951; Canadiana, 1953; Lyford Cay, 1957; New Providence, 1959 and Canebora, 1963. New Providence and Canebora were the first two horses (and only horses to date) to win the Canadian Triple Crown, comprised of The Queen's Plate, Prince of Wales and Breeders Stakes.
In 1971 Mr. Taylor split his stable into several divisions to race in Canada and the United States, each with a different trainer. McCann was being given a well-deserved retirement.
He couldn't enjoy his rocking chair and the good life on his little farm in Locust Hill though. He longed to be riding a horse and not the pine and it wasn't long before Pete was back at Woodbine with a small string of selling platers.
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