By Laurence Heinen
Jamie Laboucane has a soft spot for Marshmallow.
For the second year in a row, Laboucane’s dependable left wheeler earned a coveted spot on the World Professional Chuckwagon Association’s Equine Outfit of Excellence.
“He’s a phenomenal horse,” said Laboucane of his seven-year-old Florida bred gelding, who he purchased in the fall of 2022 after a racetrack career that saw him win four races. “Right from the first year, he’s been a monster and he keeps on proving it day in and day out.” Formerly known as Make Good Choices, the horse was lovingly renamed Marshmallow by Laboucane’s daughter Ella.
Along with five other horses, Marshmallow was honoured at the WPCA Awards Banquet on Oct. 19 at the Carriage House Hotel and Conference Centre. Also earning accolades were Jason Glass’s right leader Chaska, Chanse Vigen’s left leader Grayson, Rae Croteau’s right wheeler Law as well outriding horses Hume and JJ out of the barns of Kurt Bensmiller and Chad Fike respectively.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Equine Outfit of Excellence was the brainchild of former WPCA outrider Eddie Melville back in 2005 with help from his older brother Billy. “Me and Billy talk all the time about wagons and everything,” Melville reminisced. “I said, ‘We’ve got to come up with something for the horses.’”
While on a lunch break from training horses at former WPCA driver Norm Cuthbertson’s place one spring, a plaque on the wall caught Melville’s eye. “I just remember looking at this plaque and it had one horse on there – a brand new rookie of the year kind of thing,” recalled Melville, who decided to expand on the idea and eventually presented it to the WPCA’s Board of Directors.
The board liked the idea, but members had questions about who would look after everything to tabulate the results throughout the season. “Well, I’m looking after it,” Melville responded confidently. “Outriders weren’t known for doing anything more than riding. They weren’t dependable. You could never count on one of them to do something and carry it through. I told them I will look after it and I won’t let you down.”
Melville didn’t disappoint and he put together a presentation for the 2005 WPCA Awards Banquet to honour the first Equine Outfit of Excellence winners: right leader Smoothy (Luke Tournier), left leader Mirage (Hugh Sinclair), right wheeler Midnight Bob (Reg Johnstone), left wheeler Hotshot Robbie (Neal Walgenbach) as well as outriding horses Ice (Tyler Helmig) and Abby (Rae Croteau Jr.).
“I’ve got to give credit to Steve Fountain, who was our president at the time,” said Melville in regards to Fountain trusting him and letting him show a video at the banquet with highlights of all the winning horses. “When it was all over, he came up to me and he said, ‘Well done, it was the highlight of the show and great job.’ I knew we had something.”
That 2005 banquet was the culmination of all the hard work that Melville put into making the new award a reality. “The first year during the summer when I first started going around barn to barn, nobody had a clue what this thing was all about,” he said. “They were just like, ‘Melville’s up to something, we don’t know what it is.’ I think when it really resonated was at that banquet when they saw it.”
Melville’s bosses Peter Aiello and Bob MacLeod at Import Tool Corp. liked the idea so much that they decided to sponsor the award, a partnership that continues to this day. “I was just working one day at the office and my boss (Aiello) sticks his head in the door and asks, ‘What are you working on?’ I said, ‘Well I’ve got this idea for this horse award.’”
The award didn’t even have a name yet, but Melville told Aiello that he wanted to incorporate something to honour the horses and their drivers. “He said, ‘what are you thinking?’ I said, ‘I want the drivers to get some money. I want to see it go to the driver. I’m talking to a few people who might be interested in sponsoring this thing.’ He goes, ‘Well, no we’ll sponsor it.’”
After starting off giving $500 to each of the six drivers whose horses were named to the Equine Outfit of Excellence, that prize eventually went up to $1,000.
Melville’s proud of the fact that six different drivers and their horses are honoured at the end of each season. “That’s important to us, because we wanted six guys up there,” he said. “Not one driver with six horses. Some people questioned that, but I think it’s been right. Everybody’s got good horses.”
While people in the barns didn’t know what Melville was up to during the summer of 2005, they definitely knew why he was there the following season. “The second year, I’m booting by on my little motor bike. People are stopping and saying, ‘Hey, you didn’t come to my barn last night.”
Even when he didn’t get a chance to visit all the drivers, Melville had his trusty notebook where he recorded the names of all the horses who earned points on any given night.
“Wayne Dagg one time, he hit the points and I’m booting by,” Melville recalled. “He waves me over and goes, “I got fifth two nights ago and you didn’t come by my barn.” He was a little upset and Wayne was a good friend. I showed him and I said, you had this, this, and this horse and he smiled and said, ‘Oh, you got ’em, eh?’ “That just showed me that it wasn’t just about the big guys, that it’s about the little guys and how much pride they had in their horses, too.”
Now, two decades later, Melville beams with pride each year at the banquet when watching the winning drivers go up on stage to accept the award on behalf of their equine superstars. “I love it,” he said. “It’s something that you create and you watch it grow. It was something that we needed to do because you’re trying to showcase your sport.”
Photo – Shellie Scott Photography
