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My love of horses began when I was four years old when my parents bought our first family pony. How could I resist the charms of a paint pony that could do it all? I named him Champion. Every day, my passion for horses grew. When I was ten years old my parents built a small barn at the back of the family business where I shared my passion with my friends for years. I moved to Ottawa in 1990 after completing university. I immediately started looking for a land to build my breeding farm. Six months later I had a 15 box stall stable. I sacrificed two box stalls to build a small bachelor suite inside the barn where I lived for 3 years. I then began to breed Dutch Warmbloods. I extended the barn to 20 box stalls and built a small house. I started by breeding 5 mares with fresh cooled semen from the best stallions in United States.But having a full time job, it got to be too time consuming to make the frequent trips to the airport! So I tried frozen semen from the United States and Holland. Although it was more expensive to breed the mares, I had access to better stallions and I saved a lot of time. I showed my horses extensively in halter classes and had more than my share of success. I was fortunate to have the best handler in the province in Ronnie Davidson who was and still is my blacksmith. I met my husband to be in 1998. Not a horse person at all he started helping with barn chores and learned to love horses. We started talking about having a child, but I was faced with a very hard decision. My job was taking at least 60 hours a week and the chores around the barn where a minimum of 30, so I came to the conclusion that I would have to part with most of my horses in order to be able to raised a child. I got pregnant in early 1999 and by late summer I had sold all of the horses except for 2 youngsters. We then put the farm up for sale, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to buy horses to fill up the empty stalls. I gave birth to a daughter September 1999, and we sold the farm October 1st. We built a new house on a 18 acres wooded property and boarded the only horse I had left. I was saying at the time “I can go back to the horse breeding business when my daughter is in college”. With my busy schedule I could barely find the time to go to the barn to ride my mare, so I decided to sell her in fall 2001. I was heart broken…any horse person knows the feeling of being “horseless”. My husband and I started talking about building a small barn and buying a couple of quiet horses in February 2002. I wanted horses that would be quiet, reliable and versatile. We started studying the various breed and narrowed the choice to Quarter Horses or Canadians. We finally pick the Canadians mainly because we can drive them - an activity we can enjoy as a family. We started looking for a team of Canadians, a mare and a guelding. We wanted to have the opportunity to breed the mare eventually. We started shopping for a team, but ended up buying 3 broodmares in foal. As the barn was not completed yet, we had to modify the plans because it was already too small. With slight changes it was expanded to 6 box stalls and 3 standing stalls. The barn and paddocks were finally finished in September 2002 after a summer of hard work. By then we were the proud owners of 10 Canadians Horses, a new paint pony named Champion and two foals to come in spring of 2003. Marie Josée Proulx
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I am a breeder of Canadian horses for dressage and
eventing.