Feeling a bit uninspired about a title for today’s post, I looked up what meaning March 11th might have out there in the wider world. It’s one of the less distinguished dates on the calendar, unless of course it happens to be your birthday. Now, if you’re in the mood for a little Hump Day symbolism, here it is. Today is Johnny Appleseed Day. And given the fact that Johnny was a planter of trees that produce the fruit that our beloved horses most enjoy consuming with drooling abandon, this factoid is at least one split hair away from being totally irrelevant.
I’d like to thank my fearless editor at Horse Sport Magazine, Susan Stafford-Pooley, for entertaining us these past few days from her second annual adventure to Doha. And thanks Susan for coming back. Now I can go on a rant about the Middle East and Endurance (yet again, I know) without fearing that I could be placing you in harm’s way.
If memory serves, I believe I promised I would tell you how I voted on the new EC bylaws once the voting period had closed. Strictly speaking, there are still votes to be cast, since attendees of this year’s convention (which is unnaturally late at the end of March) will have the opportunity to vote in person. And only then will we learn the fate of the bylaws and then be able to speculate on what nice or nasty will happen next. But since the attendance at convention is woefully low (I was told that there were around 100 ‘regulars’ at last year’s shindig – as opposed to active volunteers on committees and what not), and since presumably the people who bother to drive, fly or hitchhike to the EC convention are likely to be fairly engaged individuals who are not easily influenced by skeptics like me, I feel safe to go ahead and tell you how I voted.
As an EC Sport License holder, and as a member of the Canadian equestrian community with both a professional and personal interest in sport, I decided that the prudent course of action was to vote ‘yes’ to the bylaws. So I did. It wasn’t an easy pill to swallow. The pragmatist in me won the day over the idealist. In the end I decided that JT, Chair of Jump Canada, was right. It isn’t in the best interests of the sport or its participants in this country to shoot down bylaws that have very, very little material impact on most of us. I want EC to be able to send me my horse’s FEI passport in a timely manner, which they did a couple of months ago. I don’t want to have to beg the FEI to help me because my national federation has ceased to exist due to its inability to pass bylaws that meet the requirements of Canada’s Not-For-Profit Act.
BUT. My vote was an ethical compromise, no doubt about it. In the end, I determined that there was no right answer, only lesser of evils. But hell, at least I voted. I’m betting most of you didn’t, which I’m afraid just highlights how little the right to vote on the bylaws even means to you.
In case you haven’t been following the truly astonishing revelations from my fellow blogger Pippa Cuckson, please have a look at her blog post of today, after doing a bit of background reading of her Telegraph story of a few days ago. And then please tell me your hair isn’t standing on end. It makes EC’s bylaw woes look like a hang nail compared to the train wreck that is the FEI right now.
