The month of August is a busy one across North America, with numerous feature events from the historic Hambletonian Day program at the Meadowlands to the Gold Cup and Saucer, Battle of Waterloo, Milstein Memorial, Nassagaweya, Eternal Camnation, and many, many more. It will be a wonderful month for everyone to come out and experience the thrill of live harness racing.

Another feature of this month will be held on August 26th when Standardbred Canada will stage the National Driving Championship in conjunction with Red Shores at the Charlottetown Driving Park. This event brings together the top finishers from our regional competitions, and will decide Canada’s representative to the upcoming World Driving Championship in Australia. Good luck to our competitors Marc Campbell, Ryan Ellis, Jody Jamieson, Billy Davis Jr., Brandon Campbell, Jim Marino, Guy Gagnon and Sylvain Lacaille.

A unique part of the August 26th event is that the Provincial Premiers will be in attendance at Red Shores that evening, as part of their visit to Prince Edward Island for a meeting of First Ministers. We are very fortunate on P.E.I. that our Premier Robert Ghiz is familiar with, and supportive of our industry. For some other First Ministers, it may be their initial opportunity to see first hand our wonderful industry and the great people working within it.

That evening, Red Shores will be staging the Founders Cup Invitational race, as well as the inaugural Builders Cup, in honor of those many individuals who built our provincial industry. Two gentlemen, Doug Hill and Eric Johnston, have been asked to present the Builders Cup in recognition of their decades of involvement in our provincial industry from horse ownership to track management.

2014 is a very special year on Prince Edward Island as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the historic 1864 conference which lead to the founding of our country. All year our province has been celebrating the visionary builders who joined together and structured an alliance of ideas to form Canada. History tells the story of the many conflicting views on the best path forward, of the principled people involved, and of their many passionate debates as they worked toward the ultimate goal of nation building.

The task of those visionary builders at the 1864 and subsequent 1867 conference must of at times seemed insurmountable, as they balanced competing interests, regional polarization, and occasional indifference to the goal. However, in the end, despite the difficulty of the obstacles, mutual interest and benefit were ultimately found.

As an industry we can learn a great deal from the examples of those builders of our country. Rather than turn within, and attack competing viewpoints and objectives, we can all become our best by looking for the best within others and their ideas.

We all share a great love of the standardbred horse, and a passion for our industry. Commonality of purpose should lead us to working together, and forging an alliance of ideas with our governments to sustain our industry’s future.