A splendid afternoon is the best way to describe it. Last Sunday beheld the annual hunter trials of the Montreal Hunt Club up in St-Augustin-de-Mirabel, Quebec. Readers will no doubt remember my previous post on the oldest hunt in the New World. The club treasurer Annette Laroche had suggested swinging by the Club sometime and as it happens my good friend Ezra Pierce recently married and moved to Montreal with his lovely new wife. So when Raymond Côté (seen in the previous post jumping on the beautiful white mare Frimousse) contacted me with an invitation to the hunter trials, I decided it would be foolish not to take the opportunity to visit the beautiful land of Quebec for the first time in many years.

Hunter trials are basically an equestrian competition to test the field hunter horses in a series of jumps, but, as Annette explained to us, it’s also simply an excuse for the club to get together, be social, and have a good time.

The most interesting competition we got to see that day was the jumping in pairs. The riders demonstrated a real skill, more easily appreciable to lay spectators such as ourselves than in the single rider jumps. It was interesting picking up on their little methods: the trois-deux-un leading up to the jump, spotting each other to ensure the correct positioning, and the playful whelp of joy after touching down again. And indeed the joy was infectious: while the skies were grey, the spirit on the ground was quite merry.

The prizegiving.

La belle Frimousse!

Important as riding is, the Club de chasse à courre de Montréal is, after all, a hunt club and the running of the hounds was a helpful reminder thereof.

The hounds respond to the huntsman’s horn calls.

Even though they were working, the hounds were having a ball.

After the demonstration with the hounds, Annette took us over to the stable to meet her horse Roby, currently recovering from a bit of leg trouble.

After meeting this fine, endearing horse we had to head back into Montreal. Nonetheless, I can say assuredly that a good time was had by all, largely thanks to the cheerful hospitality of our Québécois hosts. It is both fascinating and reassuring that this most English of traditions has been so comfortably (and heartily) adopted by these sons and daughters of France. The Montreal Hunt Club is plainly in good shape, and we wish it every continued success in the fields. Bonne saison de chasse!

Category: Hunting

AROUND THIS TIME of year we like to remind our dear readers that out there in the countryside the fox-hunting season has commenced. Charles Moore reports in the Spectator that “there have now been several convictions under the Hunting Act,” the Quantock Staghounds being the most recent victims. “This week, the wretched Ann Widdecombe held a meeting in the House of Commons in which she showed police officers and others a film about how the ban is, in her view, being flouted. Politics has only to change a bit,” Moore continues, “for the police to turn nasty. If politics changes the other way, and there is a Conservative government (no Widdecombe, thank God: she is retiring), the promise of repeal must be cashed in straightaway.” Don’t hold your breath, Mr. Moore!

Of course, the season has begun in earnest not only in Great Britain & Ireland but also here in the New World. The Montreal Hunt Club is the oldest hunt in existence on these shores, having been founded back in 1826. (The same year as the Old Guard of the City of New York). For many years, the club lead a triple life as a social organization, a hunt, and even as a military unit, the Royal Montreal Cavalry. The guidon of the Royal Montreal Calvary was presented by the Earl of Dalhousie in 1828 and is the oldest in Canada. (It is currently housed in the armory of the Royal Canadian Hussars, the successor unit to the Royal Montreal Cavalry).

Whilst perambulating the internet the other day I stumbled upon this 1880s evening coat of the Montreal Hunt Club, amongst the collection of the McCord Museum. The accompanying notes, of course, get quite anthropological:

In The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century: Its Progress and Expansion at Home and Abroad, Comprising a Description and History of the British Colonies and Dendencies (1898), Edgar Sanderson writes in his entry on Quebec that “the Montreal Hunt Club affords the best sport of its kind in America.” Happily, the Montreal Hunt Club carries on its activities to this very day. While it originally drew its members from the Anglophone portion of the city’s elite, French speakers began to dominate the club from the post-war period onwards. (Accordingly, its official legal names is “Le Club de Chasse à Courre de Montréal”). We hope and pray that as the Montreal Hunt has carried on from centuries past, it will continue to carry on into the future.

Previously: New York in November | The New Yorker Hunts | Tally Ho, Empire State!

Much was made over the recent start of the hunt season here in the United Kingdom in spite of Comrade Blair’s ban, but New Yorkers mount their horses a little earlier. Above, a few members of the Windy Hollow Hunt in front of Old Glory.

The Rombout Hunt, in the Hudson Valley.

This little fellow from Long Island’s Smithtown Hunt wants out so he can hunt down that dagnabbed fox!

The Smithtown Hunt in the field.

Of course not all things stay the same. This year Orange County’s Windy Hollow Hunt got a lady to perform the annual Blessing of the Hounds.

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons has to do with the Blessing of the Hounds. I can’t find it online, so I’ll wait until I’m home and then scan in it for your enjoyment.

Below, the Genesee Valley Hunt.

I am sure Professor Scruton, a keen huntsman, will enjoy the Virginia hunt country. In Britain, of course, the traditional English pasttime of foxhunting is illegal and thus the police must take time from fighting and preventing terrorism to try to enforce ridiculous class-warfare laws.

Dr. Scruton, America welcomes you with open arms!