A year to the day of the tragic barn fire at the Classy Lane Training Centre, the CBC has run an article that profiles some of the individuals that were the hardest hit in the heartbreaking ordeal. Through the generosity of the equine industry and followers of the sport, those affected were helped back onto their feet.
"It's a fortunate thing that [Kinetic King] was actually racing that night," said Mayotte, who lost four horses in the blaze. "[He] probably kept me in the game, because at that point I wanted out."
Mayotte has said that it was training and taking care of Kinetic King which kept him anchored in the industry until he was ready to introduce a new batch of young horses to his operation.
Veteran conditioner Ben Wallace lost 16 horses in the tragic blaze. He has told the CBC that he wanted to get right back to building his outfit back up because it was all he has known.
"There was no, 'Why me?' situation,” said Wallace. “It was, 'Let's regroup here and see what we can come up with.'"
Wallace has said that you just don’t go out and simply restock a barn full of successful Standardbreds, even though that is what he is trying his darnedest to do. "You can't buy a stable, you have to develop a stable," he said.
"Hopefully there's some light at the end of the tunnel with the ones we're training now and hopefully, down the road, we will trip over a couple good horses again."
Like Mayotte, trainer Chantal Mitchell was racing a horse at Woodbine Racetrack the night of the blaze, which meant that she still had stock to keep herself leveled.
"There wasn't much downtime, which I think was a good thing," she told the CBC. "If I would have gone from having a bunch of work to do one day, to absolutely nothing the next day, I might have had more time to wallow and maybe it might hurt a little more."
Like the other trainers that were essentially wiped out in the blaze, Mitchell said that it was not easy to wrap her head around accepting charity following the tragedy, but it was that charity that truly helped her operation get back on its feet.
"I found it quite difficult accepting charity," said Mitchell, "but at the end of the day, I was extremely grateful to get it, because it was a huge help for everything. I couldn't even thank everybody enough for how they helped us out."
(With files from the CBC)