Coyotes and Pony Clubbers

The stunning countryside of southernmost Canada is outshone only by the glimpse of these hounds' "indefinably menacing" prey

- LIAM CLANCY

Toronto & North York Hunt, Creemore, Canada

THERE is an odd mix of the familiar and the strange to a day's hunting in Canada. When I walked down to the barn to help plait the horses, cold, distant stars peered down at me, hounds were singing mellifluously in the kennels, and I could have been anywhere, preparing for a day with any pack. But the music belting out of the radio in the barn was pure country and western, and away in the inky darkness coyotes were yipping.

On the drive north from Toronto the previous afternoon, the country rose and fell in undulating ridges, each successive ridge a little higher than the one before, each valley deeper and wilder.

The Toronto and North York (T&NY) hunt a ravishingly pretty country on the eastern boundary of the Niagara Escarpment; rolling wildflower meadows and fields of maize, clumps of blue spruce and broadleaf forests just coming into their autumn glory.

The quarry is coyote, and game is plentiful. The harsh Canadian winter forces a short season on the T&NY, running from August to mid-November, but the good-hearted, friendly members make the most of those fall days.

They are an unassuming, likeable bunch who freely admit that fresh air and fellowship mean as much to them as the finer points of venery. Many of them, it is fair to say, are past the first flush of youth, and attracting young blood is a priority. My visit coincided with the annual invitational Pony Club meet, organised by T&NY stalwart Janet Feairs.

There were children present from three local branches of the Pony Club: the Dufferin County, Toronto & North York, and Blue Mountain. Members were mounted on conveyances ranging from Emma White's mare Barbie, eye-catching in matching pink fly-fringe and numnah and enjoying her first day's hunting, to Mackenzie Lipchuk's 32-year-pony, Cassis.