The Canadian horse industry lost an iconic member on May 25th when Barbara Mitchell of Mono, ON passed away at the age of 79. She will be remembered for many decades of coaching, organizing, officiating, and shaping equestrian sport in Canada.
From 1975 to 1993, Mitchell owned and operated Heritage Farms with Canadian Equestrian Team member Danny Foster. Together they trained many junior riders and ponies as well as producing many winning grand prix show jumpers, including Forever Diamond, who won individual gold and team silver medals with Foster at the 1991 Pan American Games in Cuba. The next year, it was Heritage Farms’ Zeus who earned the distinction of being the leading Canadian horse at the Barcelona Olympics with Jennifer Foster.
“I was in business with Barb for eighteen years and I can’t imagine what path my life might have taken without her,” said Foster, who is now in great demand as a course designer, official, and clinician. “Why she picked me I’ll never know. I was right out of college, my dad had recently passed away, I was in debt and had to sell my horses to break even … I was at the bottom of the barrel. It was absolute dumb luck that Barb started chatting to me one day while I was sitting on a fence at the Sutton Horse Show and she asked whether I wanted to go in business with her.”
Foster credits Mitchell’s foresight and uncanny business sense in creating the professional show barn business model that is the norm today.
“We were one of the original show barns,” Foster explained. “At that time there was no proper horse business, it was mostly just riders working for wealthy families, but Barb had this brilliant idea about taking kids to shows and giving lessons and charging for services. She always believed we could pull it off, which resulted in many successful years together. We had such a great business relationship based on mutual respect and 100 per cent trust.”
While accompanying Foster to a wedding, Mitchell met her husband of 30 years, John “JT” Taylor. Foster still recalls the moment clearly. “We happened to be sitting in front of JT and when she turned around and they looked at each other, it was like a Disney movie – a real fairy tale story of love at first sight.”
Together with JT, Mitchell operated CornerStone Farms until 2004. Barbara’s background as a high school teacher, combined with her excellent horsemanship skills, made the barn one of the first high-calibre riding schools in the area.
Then the couple saw that there was a need for dressage shows and they started hosting the FEI-rated CornerStone Dressage competitions at Caledon Equestrian Park, which included her famous Strawberry Socials. The pair’s talent and proficiency in competition organization led them to be named to the dressage management team for the 2015 Toronto Pan American Games.
A renowned judge and clinician, Barbara held countless accreditations. She was a certified EC Senior Judge for hunter, hack and hunt seat equitation, and jumping, and also held all of her judging cards with the United States Equestrian Federation. Barbara was also an EC-certified High Performance 1 Coach for jumping. She coached many athletes in their junior years who went on to be incredible high-performance careers, including Canadian Olympian Amy Millar and Nicole Walker.
In recognition of her passion for and dedication to equestrianism, Barbara won Equestrian Canada’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. The award capped off a series of other impressive accolades she won over the years that included:
– 2010 JC Volunteer of the Year Award
– 2000 Ontario Equestrian Millennium Award
– 1991 Volunteer of the Year for Equestrian Sport by the Ontario Provincial Government.
Barbara was generous with her time and expertise and shared her wealth of knowledge with the community in many capacities. She was president of the Ontario Hunter Jumper Association, and a member of the Jumper Committee. She was on the Equestrian Canada Board of Directors, as well as Jump Canada, where she also acted as chair of the Athlete and Domestic Development Committee. She was also involved with EC’s coaching program since its inception and gave her time as an evaluator for many years. Barbara also helped shape the future of Canada’s success on the world stage when she formed the Ontario Government Best Ever Program in 1985, a program that encouraged and developed aspiring Canadian Show Jumping Team members and is now known as the Under 25 (U25) Series.
A tree will be planted in memory of Barbara in the Dods & McNair Memorial Forest at the Island Lake Conservation Area in Orangeville. Visitation and funeral service information is here. In lieu of flowers it is requested that you “take a friend to lunch and drink a toast to Barbara.”
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