Book review: "A Hoofprint On My Heart" · 11.12.09

For many years, the late Jim Coleman (1911-2001) was one of Canada’s leading sportswriters. From 1939 to the day before he died he covered every sport imaginable with eloquence and wit, eventually becoming Canada’s first nationally syndicated sports columnist. He saw the Victoria Cougars win the Stanley Cup in 1925, and the original, legendary Canada/USSR hockey series of 1972. He watched Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, and Jackie Robinson do their thing when they were still legends-in-the-making. But Coleman’s first love in sports was always horse-racing.

A Hoofprint On My Heart is a memoir of his life at the track, beginning at the hard-scrabble tracks of Western Canada: Whittier Park and Polo Park in Winnipeg, Edmonton’s Northlands Park, Exhibition Park, Lansdowne, and Brighouse in Vancouver, and Colwood and The Willows in Victoria. Coleman would eventually move to Toronto, and would eventually see the half-dozen shoe-string operations around southern Ontario be bought out by E.P. Taylor, and racing operations concentrated at Woodbine. His narrative always returns to the “bull-rings” of the West, however, and makes the book a useful and necessary antidote to the Ontario-centrism of Peter Gzowski’s otherwise excellent An Unbroken Line.

Coleman’s stories are peppered with names that would have been worthy of Damon Runyon: Calgary Spud Murphy, Whittlin’ Knifey, High-Ball Kelly, Irish Davy, and The Good Kid, among others. Unlike Runyon’s characters, however, they actually existed — and Coleman was lucky enough to get to know all of them, and become good friends with many. The horses are there too: beat-up old warriors like Joe Geary and Mess Hall, as well as Coleman’s own horses like Leonforte and Broom Time.

Coleman was fortunate as a youngster, as he had the opportunity to accompany his father to many sporting events across North America. His father was D.C. Coleman, president of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and he timed his business trips to coincide with major races, boxing matches, and hockey and baseball games. Perhaps the best part of the book is the first chapter, an extended reminiscence of a trip that Coleman took with his father and step-mother to Saratoga — a powerful example of a grown child remembering and honouring a beloved parent:

The first beams of that August sun were creeping over the tops of the giant elms as a chestnut colt, his hoofs pounding rhythmically, swung into the stretch.
His coat glistened as thelong slanting rays splashed him and threw his racing shadow against the white rails that fenced the track. Each hoof kicked up a tiny puff of dust as it bit into the soil. The air was cool and full of the sweet smells of early morning and as the colt pounded down the stretch his hot breath condensed in little wisps of steam.
The simple splendour of the moment took my breath away. I felt tears starting in my eyes. Stupidly, I didn’t risk looking at my father, but I could feel his gaze. And after I had composed myself and turned in his direction, I saw that expression on his face. It was the same expression that he’d worn when I was only an eight-year-old boy, returning with him in the car from my mother’s funeral.
… Our affection had always been very strong but it had been inexpressible in words. There were too many puritanical repressions in our background to permit easy conversation on filial relations. Here, we were still wordless but, suddenly, the lines of communication had been opened — never to be closed again until we buried him beside the river in the little town of Arnprior.

Originally published in 1971, A Hoofprint On My Heart is long out of print, but used copies are still available through Amazon, or at any good used book store. Go, find, read, and enjoy.

If you liked this you might like:

What do you think?

Textile Help