Saying farewell to a faithful friend; Grief for a horse no less heartfelt
`Being in the saddle will never be the same'
Mar. 7, 2006. 05:06 AM
JIM COYLE
GTA COLUMNIST
You might say that Brigadier was just a horse, 16 hands and 1,500 pounds, give or take, of equine quadruped.
But it's funny, isn't it, how it sometimes takes an animal to remind us of what's most human.
Not many citizens of Toronto will see their passing mourned with a public ceremony as lavish as that bestowed yesterday on the police horse killed last month in Scarborough.
The memorial at Ricoh Coliseum was the stuff — given the number of local residents dispatched to the hereafter recently with a fraction of the fuss — that will likely have satirists salivating.
But as Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair told reporters, after about 1,200 people joined officers from mounted units around the continent at the ceremony, the critics "just don't understand.''
If the memorial was chiefly about one nine-year-old Belgian cross, it was also about much more.
What it was really about were far bigger things, timeless and profoundly human concerns.
It was a celebration of love and loyalty, duty and selflessness. It was a celebration of companionship and teamwork. It showed how a partnership of any two — the speed and power of one, the intelligence and guidance of another — can be greater than the sum of their parts.
It was a celebration of intimacy — about collaboration so close the mount responds to a subtle change of tone, a shift in weight, while the rider can tell what the horse feels about almost anything by the perk of his ears. It was about relationships, communication and paying attention.
It was nothing less — this memorial to one animal's life and a city's mourning of his loss — than a celebration of mankind's higher aspirations.
And in an age in which self has become a fetish and celebrity the holy grail, it was a powerful reminder of the merits of selflessness and humility, that while men and women might enjoy dominion over the creatures of the Earth, we are connected to them and — more than we care to admit — have things to learn from them.
Those who streamed into the Coliseum understood — all those who honoured conventional rituals of remembrance, who stopped to sign the memorial book, who stooped to place a flower before the framed photographs, who filled out cards to make donations to the Ontario Veterinary College in Brigadier's memory.
After the arrival of the dignitaries, including Lt.-Gov. James Bartleman and Mayor David Miller, after the pipe band's stirring parade, after the honour guard of horses and the four delegates from the canine unit had taken their places, Rev. Walter Kelly, chaplain of the Toronto Police Service, took the podium beside a photo of Brigadier and his saddle and tack.
"God has given us a great responsibility," he said.
"That is to care for the Earth and the incredible creatures that we have in it and to learn from them.''
The power and majesty of horses has always inspired people, Kelly said. "We're attracted to them, we love them, we want their picture, we want to touch them and, yes, we all talk to them.''
What child hasn't seen a police officer on horseback and, looking up, looking way up, tugged a parent's hand for the chance to draw carefully closer, and maybe, if lucky, to stroke a muzzle?
Who'd do the same to a cruiser?
Horses are a staple of childhood literature, books like Black Beauty, The Red Pony, Misty of Chincoteague, My Friend Flicka charming readers for generations. Their presence enriches our language. Hold your horses. Stop horsing around. Don't put the cart before the horse.
And if there was one person more than most with hoofprints on his heart yesterday, it was a young man who rode a horse for the first time at 6 and fell in love.
Const. Kevin Bradfield was Brigadier's rider the day the two were hit in what police have said was a deliberate hit-and-run.
Love is love and grief is grief — no less heart-filling or heart-scalding because it is felt for an animal. And yesterday, voice breaking as he spoke, still recovering from his injuries, Bradfield was a picture of both.
Brigadier was the first horse he rode after receiving his police spurs, the officer said, and he decided to take advantage of "this newfound gas pedal." But Brig had other ideas, speeding off at a gallop around the ring to break the new man in.
"I was quickly transformed from a rider into a passenger holding on for dear life."
From their time together, he remembered the small moments. Children begging their parents to let them pat Brig. Young couples running blocks to take a picture. Seniors saying how much safer their neighbourhood felt with the horses around.
Yesterday, Bradfield said goodbye to his partner and told him this: "Being in the saddle will never be the same.''
And that may be true. But as Blair told the men and women of his mounted unit, there's only one path to follow.
"The best and most enduring tribute that you could make to the lost Brigadier would be, literally and figuratively, get back on your horse.''
