urban travel
PEI’s Old Home Week
A rural Feast of colour
Twenty thousand strong they stand, cheek by
jowl, bet ticket in one hand and burned sausage
in the other, cheering and urging their
charges to the finish.
While the culinary delights, sights and
sounds may have changed over the past
century or more, the star attraction remains
the same: Old Home Week is Prince Edward
Island’s limelight and the harness horse remains
uncontested as the star attraction.
It all started in the 1880s when politician
Colonel John Longsworth made his
drill shed and fields available for local
farm folk to showcase their prized crops
and livestock, and maybe have a wee bit
of a wager on whose horse might be the
fastest. What was originally a rural agricultural
affair, where the family’s trotter was
outfitted in Sunday’s cleanest church-going
harness, has since evolved into a highgaited
pageant of sights, sounds and tradition,
which culminates in one of the most
prestigious harness horse races in North
America — the Gold Cup and Saucer.
For a full 10 days, the Charlottetown
Driving Park is a potpourri for the senses:
barbecued sausage and barn manure,
Women’s Institute floral displays and
horse liniment, midway amusement raconteurs
and Boomer Gallant calling the
Gold Cup and Saucer race.
For the photographer, Old Home Week
offers an endless supply of....
By Dale Wilson
Contributing Editor
To read more from this column please ...
|
