The Queen’s Plate was inaugurated, with royal blessing, on Wednesday, June 27, 1860, at the Carleton track in Toronto, located in bucolic surroundings near what is now the traffic-strangled southwestern corner of Keele and Dundas streets.

Sir Casimir Gzowski and Thomas Patteson were the two men who brought the race into close association with Buckingham Palace. Back on April 1, 1859, the Toronto Turf Club petitioned Queen Victoria to grant a Plate for a race in Ontario. The president of the club was Gzowski, a distinguished engineer whose father had been a Polish officer in the Russian Imperial Guard.

There is no reason to believe that Queen Victoria was a wild-eyed devotee of horse racing. However, Her Majesty granted the petition of the little turf club in the boisterous Upper Canada community (the population of Toronto was 44,425) and offered as an annual prize, “a plate to the value of Fifty Guineas.”

Canadian horse-racing had fallen on evil days in 1881, when Joseph Duggan, owner of the Woodbine race course, decided that the only person who could save the situation was Toronto’s postmaster T. C. Patteson, a remarkable man who was recovering from the financial disaster of funding the old Toronto Mail. When he died, the Toronto World described him as “the man of the most distinct personality ever known to Toronto and probably to all Canada.”

Patteson was a paradox - a courtly Etonian and Oxonian who insisted upon transplanting the gracious living of upper class England to rowdy Toronto although for personal protection, he carried a pair of brass-knuckles in his jacket pockets. (Twice, he was knocked senseless by footpads in the Toronto streets.)

Patteson attacked the racing problem with his customary vigour. He called the formation meeting of The Ontario Jockey Club at the Queen’s Hotel in June, 1881. Sir Casimir promptly subscribed $500 and attempted to leave the chair, saying, “There, that’s all I expect that you want of me.”

But Patteson had other plans which he confided to Sir Casimir. They agreed that horse racing would be established for all time as a Canadian institution - not alone as a sport - if a member of the Royal Family could be persuaded to attend the races at Woodbine. In his personal writings, Patteson envisioned the day “when the Queen herself would be present for the running of The Queen’s Plate.”

The plot was hatched guilefully. The incumbent Governor-General of Canada was the Marquis of Lorne. The Marchioness of Lorne was Princess Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria. In his capacity as aide-de-camp to the Queen, Sir Casimir invited the Lornes to be his house guests in Toronto. Remarkably, their visit coincided with the spring racing meeting at Woodbine. Remarkably, too, they agreed to accompany their host to the races.

It was perhaps, typical of Patteson that, writing of the event under a pen-name in The Mail, he remarked testily that “it was unfortunate that Her Royal Highness delayed the start of the racing by being 15 minutes late.”

Sir Casimir and Mr. Patteson had turned the trick. Canadian racing was established as “the sport of royalty”.

Queen’s Plate Oddities

• There are ironic notes here and there in connection with The Queen’s Plate, the annual Gallop for the Guineas. For example, The Queen’s Plate is not a Plate and the Queen’s guineas are not guineas. Outside of that, The Queen’s Plate is indeed the “Gallop for the Guineas.”

• About it not being a Plate; King Charles II began awarding silver plates as racing prizes in the seventeenth century at Newmarket, the size of the plate indicating the value of the race. But the practice became outmoded, perhaps as variety was sought in the prize. Other pieces of silver were instituted as awards and then other metals were used. Nowadays, The Queen’s Plate is actually a gold cup, about a foot high.

• The guineas? Minting of guineas was discontinued in England during the reign of George III whose forbear, George I, had instituted the gift of fifty guineas in racing, a tradition that remains though the guineas do not.

• Although the Windfields Farm colours of Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Taylor have gone to the winner’s enclosure 11 times, they are a long way from record success, in The Plate. The Seagram family of Waterloo won the Plate 20 times between 1891 and 1935 (eight times in succession 1891 through 1898, and 10 times in 11 years 1891-1901). Joseph E. Seagram was one of only two men ever to win both The Queen’s Plate and The King’s Plate. He won the race during the reigns of Queen Victoria and Edward VII. Taylor horses won during the time of George VI and Elizabeth II. The unique distinction of winning The Plate in a reign in which no other owner won it was achieved by Harry Hatch whose colt, Monsweep, won when Edward VIII was King in 1936.