The Rescue of Belle and Sundance (22 page)

 

Kim and Tom have seven horses on their ranch (including one who is thirty-six years old!). The herd—with Belle and a gelding in charge—has the run of a hundred acres of pasture and bush. Kim, who calls herself a novice rider, planned to have me train Belle at Falling Star in the spring of 2010. Once she had a few miles on
her, Belle would become a cutting horse and trail horse. Kim wasn’t sure about her breeding but guessed by her big feet that she is a blend of quarter horse and maybe Belgian or Percheron.

The hair on Belle’s belly—where she made contact with snow during all that time on the mountain—is now tinged with white. That bleaching might remain with her all her life, a reminder of what she endured.

By spring of 2010, Belle weighed thirteen hundred pounds; the bony mare I first saw on Mount Renshaw was some six hundred pounds shy of that. Kim said that when Belle first arrived at the ranch, she was very possessive of food. Woe to any other horse who came near her at mealtime. She soon became less food-aggressive and—to Kim’s delight—incredibly affectionate with humans. “When she sees me,” Kim said, “she’ll rest her head on my shoulders. She loves the attention.” That and apples and carrots and those once forbidden alfalfa cubes have worked wonders.

As for Sundance, he, too, landed softly—on an eighty-acre ranch called Poplar Springs near Kamloops in south-central British Columbia. His new owner, Catie Ward, has been riding horses since she was a kid growing up in southwestern Ontario, where she
rode bareback. Catie has three other horses—all rescue horses—grazing her forty acres of mixed pasture, but it wasn’t long before Sundance was top horse in the herd.

 

“Sunny is in charge of the world,” Catie told me. “He’s definitely the leader. But he’s such a gentle giant, a true gentleman and such a source of enjoyment for us. He’s so sweet. He’s a big doll—with the biggest head I’ve ever seen on a horse. I adore him. He’s the best, and I’m blessed to have him in my life.”

Unlike Kim, Catie—who volunteers with the SPCA—was well aware of Belle and Sundance’s story as it unfolded. A friend, a cruelty investigator with the SPCA, showed Catie pictures of the starving horses. As soon as she saw the photograph of Sundance, she knew she had to have him. When he first came to her ranch in early March of 2009, he, like Belle, was very protective of his food. And, like Belle, he would eventually become more relaxed at mealtimes. In the spring of 2010, Sundance weighed fifteen hundred pounds; he, too, had gained six hundred pounds since coming off the mountain.

Sundance will one day be a trail horse for Catie’s youngest daughter, Sarah. “He has a tendency to startle a bit,” Catie said, “so we’ll work with him to gain confidence and trust.”

In the meantime, like Belle, Sundance has been enjoying his treats: soaked beet pulp, apples and carrots in abundance.

The reader unfamiliar with horses may wonder whether two creatures that bonded as Belle and Sundance clearly did might pine for one another when separated. It’s true that horse pals will show signs of distress when one is removed from the other: they may call out to that lost friend in hopes of being heard; they may pace or eat less for a few days. But horses are wonderfully resilient creatures, and they quickly make new friends and attach to another horse—which is precisely what Belle and Sundance did soon after settling into their new digs.

O
n February 24, 2009, following a lengthy B.C. SPCA investigation, Frank Mackay was charged with three counts of animal mistreatment—two counts under the Criminal Code of Canada (causing unnecessary pain or suffering to an animal and willful neglect in the feeding or care of animals) and one count under the British Columbia Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (causing an animal to be or to continue to be in distress). If convicted of the more serious Criminal Code offences, he could face a maximum fine of $10,000, up to five years in jail and a prohibition on owning animals.

Mackay was to make his first court appearance in McBride provincial court on June 12, 2009, but that was adjourned to August 14, and then once more to October 2. Some wondered if the case would ever be heard. Finally, on December 4, 2009, almost a year after the rescue, the erstwhile owner of Belle and Sundance faced the music.

There is no actual courthouse in McBride, but about five times a year a provincial court judge comes to town and sets up shop in the village council chambers, housed in a one-storey strip mall. The room used is modest, with high-backed faux leather chairs and armrests for the judge and court officials, low wooden chairs for everyone else, a framed picture of the Queen flanked by the provincial and national flags to lend the room a little gravitas and, finally, that traditional symbol of authority—a judge’s wooden gavel resting on a sound block.

Mackay’s court appearance marked the first time I saw him in the flesh—a compact man of average height with light blue eyes, receding grey hair and a ruggedly handsome face.

Light snow was falling when he arrived at the chambers around 10:00 a.m., with his lawyer, Alexander Pringle. One lawyer defending another, with seventy-four years of experience between them. He looked decidedly uncomfortable and, as far as I saw, made eye contact with no one.

The docket that day was full, as were the chambers. Several men and women were there to attend to their own brushes with the law—some to contest traffic tickets, some charged with more serious matters—and many others were family and friends of those so charged. Along with one of my farm workers, plus Ray and Lu, I was there to hear item number six on the judge’s list—the Queen versus Frank Mackay. So too was the editor of the
Jasper Fitzhugh
. As far as I knew, the five of us were the only ones present specifically to witness the meting out of justice to Frank Mackay.

The first order of business was to hear the charge. Mackay’s lawyer and the Crown prosecutor, Geoffrey McDonald, had before this day engaged in plea bargaining. In this process, the accused agrees to plead guilty to a lesser charge in order to spare both sides the time, expense and uncertainty of a trial. What then goes to the court is called “a joint submission.” The two lawyers had agreed that the two more serious Criminal Code charges, which would have branded Frank Mackay with a criminal record, would be dropped. But the accused would plead guilty to the third charge, which was read aloud in court:

The judge asked Mackay how he would plead. Mackay, discomfited, replied, “Yes, sir, I plead guilty.” McDonald then laid out the story as he understood it. Calling the case “rather well known,” the lawyer said that “the Crown takes issue with Mr. Mackay’s conduct”—telling the RCMP in mid-September he’d be around to deal with the horses “the following weekend,” then not returning for six weeks. Then, when the accused did finally locate them early in December, the Crown considered unacceptable his decision to “let nature take its course.” Starvation, McDonald reminded the court, “is a rather nasty way to go.”

I had bristled the first time I’d heard Frank Mackay say it—“I let nature take its course”—when I interviewed him for the newspaper on January 7 of 2009. I bristled to hear it again in court that day. Many in the Robson Valley—and certainly the rescuers and diggers—strongly felt that nature hadn’t put those horses on that mountain. Frank Mackay had.

The Crown prosecutor told the court that Mackay had provided his office with pictures of the horses on the trip. Two local horse
experts had determined by examining the photos that the horses were in good health and well trained at the beginning of the trip.

When it was time for Mackay’s lawyer to address the court, Pringle stated that his client had practised law in Edmonton since 1970 and was “well known in the Edmonton legal community as being a very highly regarded, ethical and responsible lawyer.” Mackay had during the past ten years been involved with two charities—the Tegler Foundation, which finances homes for seniors, and Meals on Wheels—and was known as “an extremely generous person who . . . normally would give the shirt off his back to somebody.”

Ten years ago, Pringle noted, Frank Mackay purchased three horses who were supposed to go to slaughter. He bought an acreage and acquired more horses. In September of 2008, Pringle said, Mackay had agreed—“as a fairly noble gesture”—to bring food to a friend who was hiking the Great Divide. It would be his first foray into the high country by himself, and Mackay thought that such a trip would offer a good experience for his horses too. The rest of the story that Pringle outlined was familiar to me: the muskeg encounter, the pack horses’ no longer following their owner, the two attempts to retrieve them and the decision not to euthanize the horses but to abandon them on the mountain.

“The irony,” Pringle told the court, “is that the horses survived by that decision. I am not saying it was the right decision. He has
obviously made an error in judgment here. . . . He, upon reflection, recognizes there is more that could have been done.”

Pringle also described the single-vehicle accident that befell his client as he made his way back to Edmonton that December night in 2008. Mackay’s vehicle went off the road, leaving him with a significant cut on his head and a concussion. “He was in disarray,” the lawyer said, “for a couple of weeks thereafter.”

According to Pringle, Frank Mackay’s “error in judgment” had cost him dearly. He had received threats, been reported to the Alberta Law Society and been brought before the court. “For a man,” said Pringle, “who has never been engaged in any untoward behaviour before, this has been a harrowing experience, and he certainly regrets this event greatly and comes before you remorseful.” Mackay, said the lawyer, had “learned a lesson” from “this entire series of events.”