Blue Bonnets in happier days, and someone else’s photo (via Blog Story) Attractions Hippiques finally declared bankruptcy some weeks ago, probably to the relief of all: death throes have been ongoing for two years, thanks to a botched industry reorganization by the provincial government, and decline protracted before that.  When my parents purchased the family home in the early 90s the barnyard odour was a depressor of property values on hot summer days, but I would wake up on sunny Sunday mornings to the sound of trotting hooves beyond the railroad tracks facing my backyard.  Those were the essential tween-age years when horses mattered, to inveterate city girls most of all.  The smell disappeared when the stables and practice yards were moved.  The condo association voted to plant hedges that hid the view.  Tempus fugit. My parents insist that we went to the races once, but I don’t remember ever seeing the place in daylight.  As part of this summer’s intensive practice and refinement of flânerie (feminist at that apparently; theorists of the 19th and early 20th century understood that la flâneuse did not exist, the detached urbanite gaze being male by definition) I hopped the fence dividing the racetrack from the Wal-Mart parking lot a few times, usually around midnight.  I suspect there would be nothing to stop one from doing so at midday, either, other than self-consciousness.  The buildings are always lit up, deserted, ceiling fans turning behind monumental walls of glass.  Before it what amounts to an overgrown hayfield stretches out, wind bowing seeding grasses as tall as one’s chest, soft billows of clover. The view is oddly reminiscent of the Iowa starship yards in Star Trek. Closer to the stands the vegetation is better trimmed, even mown.  The massive screen is still there, dark, advertising deprecated phone numbers and URLs for the benefit of bettors.  Two years of unchecked precipitation runoff have patterned the surface of the track like a riverbed.  The walk that cuts across the central green is less even: there’s a dip and swell in the ground, the usual doomed young poplars that spring up in the city’s “third spaces”.  But few unpleasant things like ragweed or thistle, no swampy bits that ruin shoes and breed mosquitos and spiky sedges.  One can fall over backward into the grass as if onto a mattress.  The growth in August was so tall it narrowed one’s view of the sky to a tunnel, at the end of which were clouds and stars.  The massive floodlights that had made my bedroom bright enough to read by were off forever.  (Property values!  Good riddance, says the condo association.)  Last I checked - on a warm night a couple of days ago - the hay had all fallen over, but it was warm and dry and still sweet-smelling.  The rain’s probably ruined that for good. The debate now, they say, is between 2,000 and 10,000 residential units.  No bets on how much will have been decided (or more likely, “extensively studied”) by next summer.

Blue Bonnets in happier days, and someone else’s photo (via Blog Story)

Attractions Hippiques finally declared bankruptcy some weeks ago, probably to the relief of all: death throes have been ongoing for two years, thanks to a botched industry reorganization by the provincial government, and decline protracted before that.  When my parents purchased the family home in the early 90s the barnyard odour was a depressor of property values on hot summer days, but I would wake up on sunny Sunday mornings to the sound of trotting hooves beyond the railroad tracks facing my backyard.  Those were the essential tween-age years when horses mattered, to inveterate city girls most of all.  The smell disappeared when the stables and practice yards were moved.  The condo association voted to plant hedges that hid the view.  Tempus fugit.

My parents insist that we went to the races once, but I don’t remember ever seeing the place in daylight.  As part of this summer’s intensive practice and refinement of flânerie (feminist at that apparently; theorists of the 19th and early 20th century understood that la flâneuse did not exist, the detached urbanite gaze being male by definition) I hopped the fence dividing the racetrack from the Wal-Mart parking lot a few times, usually around midnight.  I suspect there would be nothing to stop one from doing so at midday, either, other than self-consciousness.  The buildings are always lit up, deserted, ceiling fans turning behind monumental walls of glass.  Before it what amounts to an overgrown hayfield stretches out, wind bowing seeding grasses as tall as one’s chest, soft billows of clover. The view is oddly reminiscent of the Iowa starship yards in Star Trek.

Closer to the stands the vegetation is better trimmed, even mown.  The massive screen is still there, dark, advertising deprecated phone numbers and URLs for the benefit of bettors.  Two years of unchecked precipitation runoff have patterned the surface of the track like a riverbed.  The walk that cuts across the central green is less even: there’s a dip and swell in the ground, the usual doomed young poplars that spring up in the city’s “third spaces”.  But few unpleasant things like ragweed or thistle, no swampy bits that ruin shoes and breed mosquitos and spiky sedges.  One can fall over backward into the grass as if onto a mattress.  The growth in August was so tall it narrowed one’s view of the sky to a tunnel, at the end of which were clouds and stars.  The massive floodlights that had made my bedroom bright enough to read by were off forever.  (Property values!  Good riddance, says the condo association.)  Last I checked - on a warm night a couple of days ago - the hay had all fallen over, but it was warm and dry and still sweet-smelling.  The rain’s probably ruined that for good.

The debate now, they say, is between 2,000 and 10,000 residential units.  No bets on how much will have been decided (or more likely, “extensively studied”) by next summer.