A Couple of Canadian Friesians

When he was a kid, Hans Vander Boon shovelled out a lot of stables, and, as you might expect, he didn’t really enjoy the job. He took care of the horses his father used to pull the milk wagons and worked at his grandfather’s farm in Friesland, a Dutch province bordering on the North Sea.

The horses Hans cleaned up after were quite distinct. They were Friesian horses. Remember the movie, Ladyhawke? No one who has seen it could forget the style and breathtaking majesty of the Friesian stallion, Othello, ridden by Rutger Hauer of the Netherlands. What some people don’t know is that all Friesians look the same. They are all black, all have the long flowing manes and tails and ‘feathered’ feet, all have that beautiful high-floating trot and smooth movement.

When he was still a boy, Hans and his family left Friesland and moved to Canada. He has lived in Terrace for 42 years now and raised a family here, but because he has no intention of leaving, he never dreamed he would ever own one of the elegant Friesian horses like the ones he cleaned stalls for so long ago.

Then a few years ago, while attending a wedding down south, he came across an advertisement in an Abbotsford newspaper for a Friesian horse farm. After phoning and making an appointment, Hans and his wife, Alice, drove to Abbeyview Farms, where they were warmly greeted by the owners, Hank and Henrietta Vander Kooi. While talking around the kitchen table, Hans and Hank discovered they were raised in the same small town in the Netherlands, Rinsemageest, and had attended the same school while growing up. They brushed up on their Friesian and talked about home.

But what Hans really wanted to do was go see the horses, and finally they headed out to the stables. Hans relates what happened well. "Hank walked into one stable and he said ‘You might be interested. This is Eelkje and she’s from the same town you and I are from. And there is her three-month-old son, Pier.’ I kind of choked up and was stuck for words. And he noticed it and said ‘By the way, if Pier doesn’t make the studbook, you have first chance.’"

The studbook Hank was talking about was the Friesch Paarden Stamboek, first created in 1879. For a few years it was divided into two books, one to register the purebred Friesians and one the partbreds, but in 1883 the studbook opened to horses in other provinces and later the two books were even combined. The number of purebreds began to decline and as the years passed, the purebred Friesian horse became more and more rare.

This wasn’t the first time the survival of the Friesian horse had been at stake. From records of the past, beginning in 1251 in Cologne, we can read about the Friesian horse. The first book praising the Friesian horse was written in 1568 and the first information we have of the export of these horses is from the Chronicle of Dubravius, which speaks of the Hungarian King Louis II using a Friesian stallion when he fought the Turks in 1526. Friesians were also the horses preferred by the knights because they were level- headed, strong and agile. But when the crusades were over the need for warhorses diminished, and so did the Friesian horse populations.

Fortunately, there was another upsurge in the breed’s numbers when the Friesian became popular as both a trotter and a carriage horse due to its high knee action and elegant performance. It became fashionable for funeral carriages to be pulled by Friesian stallions and, during the Victorian era, more than 700 Friesian horses were employed by the funeral business in the area of London alone. Some horses were imported to America and influenced future generations of trotters here. It is even speculated that the well-known Morgan horse is of Friesian descent.

But popularity is not always a good thing, and the purebred Friesian became more and more rare as it was crossed with many other breeds. In 1889, there were only 19 Friesian stallions available and in 1899, only six.

Finally, in 1914, through the efforts of a few dedicated people, the studbook was divided in two again, separating the purebred registry from the partbreds. At that time, there were only three purebred stallions remaining and the breed was almost extinct. Slowly, through careful breeding and by setting up a number of judgings, called keuring, at different stages of each horse’s life, the pure Friesian horse breed has been saved. Today there are approximately 30,000 Friesian horses in the world, with less than 2,000 being in North America.

Like all Friesian horses, Pier was judged as a foal. He passed inspection and was entered into the foal book. But that was only the beginning. His second judging was to take place when he was two-and-a-half years old. If he passed, he would be entered into the studbook and be considered a breeding animal. If he failed, he would be gelded. Quite the test! Once a year, officials qualified by the Friesch Paarden Stamboek are sent from the Netherlands to North America to judge Friesian horses born on this side of the water. The horses are judged in-hand - 60% of the evaluation is based on the quality of movement and 40% is based on conformation.

Hans waited for two years before he finally got a call from Hank. No, Pier hadn’t passed the keuring. His hocks, the joints in the back leg, were one centimetre too big around.

On his birthday, Hans met Hank and Pier in Prince George. "I parked out by Richie Brothers' yard on top of the hill, made up big sign that covered the whole pickup that said on it ‘Hank and Pier.’ And sure enough, at 1:30 in the afternoon on May 19, there was Hank and Pier," he says, his voice full of emotion.

It’s easy to notice the connection between them when you see the pair together. Pier follows Hans around like a big dog when Hans goes out to work in his stable yard. When Hans exercises him in the round pen, he speaks softly in either Friesian or English and Pier’s fine ears are always swivelled towards him. Hans says "Walk," and Pier begins to move forward with his head tucked in and his long tail almost brushing the ground. In his gentle voice, Hans says "Trot," and Pier breaks from a walk to a stunning, high-stepping trot.

But Pier’s beauty is more than skin deep. Five years ago, Hans was in a logging truck accident. He has slowly been recuperating but is disabled to work. When Pier came, however, Hans’ recovery sped up dramatically. He is healthier than he has been in years, both physically and psychologically.

"Pier relies on me to keep him happy and he doesn’t realize it but he’s keeping me happy at the same time. We’re quite a meant-to-be situation. It was a blessing in disguise."

Many miles and years from Friesland, Hans is still shovelling out stables, but now its a labor of love. "If I’d known that in the future I would own one of these majestic horses," he laughs, "I would have been cleaning stables day and night when I was a kid."

The relationship between Hans and Pier can possibly best be described by the comment of one of Hans’ neighbours. She had come over to see Pier for the first time and after watching Hans and Pier for a few minutes she asked, "Are you sure you two aren’t related?" It’s a tough one to answer, but I think that with Hans and Pier, it is kind of like coming home to family, even though they’re meeting half a world away.

(Angela Dorsey is a writer in Terrace.)

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