Horse Love

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Mike and I shared many common interests - one of which was a love of horses. When we were young, we took riding lessons together at a stable north of Toronto, called Eglinton Equestrian Club. In the summer, we travelled the long distance to the club by TTC (over an hour each way) for day camp and in the winter we continued on Saturday mornings. This evolved into summer residential camps that specialized in riding. I went to Saddlewood outside of Toronto, while Mike went off to the Horse People in Quebec.

With our love of horses and riding, we were the perfect audience for horse movies. The Black Stallion, The Man from Snowy River and Return to Snowy River became family favourites that were watched over and over again (Sarah spoke earlier of Mike's ability to watch favourite movies tirelessly - it's a Nault thing).

As we grew older, riding lessons were replaced with High School football for Mike and competitive gymnastics for me. However, our love of horses continued and we remained faithful fans of great horse movies (Seabiscuit was the most recent addition to our list).

Our favourite part of the Black Stallion is at the very end when the credits roll, the theme song plays, and scenes of Alex and the Black on the island reappear. We watched and rewatched this so many times that the theme song formed a connection for us. I can't help but think of Mike when I hear this beautiful music by Carmine Coppola, which is still played on classical music stations.

I've attached two links below. The first is the Black Stallion theme song with stills of the movie. The second are island scenes from the movie (with someone else's choice of music - not as good as the theme music in my opinion).