WWQP Bulletin Board Chat

Love the horse 'babies', Jane

I just love seeing all the new foals and fillies in the spring around here too, so Jane, thank you for posting such beautiful pictures. Your spring arrives earlier than ours, so this is a bonus for me to see these pictures, particularly the 'green' grass. Ours is still tinged with brown and yellow from winter-kill.

This is quite the country for horses up here and I've always said, if you don't neigh and pass wind, you're nobody around here...(tongue in cheek, of course)...there are many nice folks who don't have horses here and don't ride either but this really is horse-country and Headwaters Tourism had a meeting yesterday, which I attended, about promoting the area's horse industry. They received a grant to do a market survey, entitled: Assessment of Tourism potention of the Equestrian Sector in the Hills of Headwaters. It was slickly presented at the meeting. I sat there thinking that while this is all well and good, the area missed the boat when Toronto was applying for and lost the summer Olympics in the next Olympic year. We have nice facilities for horse events in a village by the name of Palgrave nearby and if awarded the Olympics, this is where the new facilities would have been built. As it is, Toronto lost the bid and the facilities remain seasonal as they've always been. While the presenters were all enthusiastic, after being questionned as to where the money would come from for all this promoting, it was revealed that there is some money left from the grant but after that it would come from the private sector. All it takes is money to develop this concept. And from my experience, horse people put their money into their horses, not in encouraging tourists to take part in their industry. Our area has a lot of horse events that are slowly attracting the public but somehow, I don't think it's going to take off, money being in short supply all round.

Rosey

posted by RoseyP @ 5:50 AM