In 1926, as the cold winter was setting in at Whittier Park in Winnipeg, Canada,
a tragic fire in a stable caused 11 horses to flee in panic across the Red
River. Unfortunately, the horses were unable to cross the freezing river and
died, their bodies frozen solid forever.
The terrible incident.
The story goes that a deadly polar vortex struck Winnipeg that winter of
1926. No one in all of Manitoba had ever experienced such bitter cold in
their entire lives, even though the region was then inhabited by trappers,
miners, and loggers who knew all too well the harsh winters of that land.
Those adventurous men knew the harshness of winter so well that every winter
they took refuge in Winnipeg to wait for spring and return to their work,
while they spent the long, freezing days in bars, brothels, or gambling. But
that year the cold was so severe that not even the Whittier Park racetrack
opened. The beautiful horses waited in their warm stables, heated by stoves
and cared for by an old Swede with a fondness for bourbon.
One night, snow blocked the barn doors, so the Swede broke through the frozen
back door—the one leading to the Red River—with a shovel and went out to get
more bourbon. The wind was battering the door, and the warmth lured the
starving squirrels inside the barn, where they simply walked right in.
Unfortunately, one of them was electrocuted, causing a terrible fire inside
the barn. The horses panicked, and terrified, they fled in terror from the
flames through the only open door, the one leading to the Red River.
They stampeded out into the cruel bite of the intense cold and leaped into the
Red River, which was in the midst of freezing over, and tried to swim among
the jagged chunks of ice floating on the slow, icy current. Trapped in that
icy trap, they struggled to escape until, within minutes, another blast from
the polar vortex froze everything... The horses remained frozen like macabre
sculptures of black bishops on the white chessboard of ice. Their heads,
motionless in the frenzy to survive, still bore the terror etched in their
large, fixed eyes.
When the cold eased a little, the people of Winnipeg came out of their homes
to witness the tragedy, and since the locals had plenty of time on their hands
during those days of confinement and were accustomed to the sadness of loss,
seeing the frozen horses became a public spectacle. The eleven horses remained
there all winter, until one night the following spring, without anyone
noticing, the Red River thawed and carried them out to sea.
