Maybe most people are more worldly than I am when it comes to off-the-beaten-path sports, but when I heard that one of the events at the Festival Country de St-Antonin was going to be “bull jumping”, I had exactly zero idea what that might entail. The term initially brought to mind images of cowboys navigating a course of stadium jumps on bulls instead of on horses. But then I wondered, was it going to be some kind of Evel Knievel thing where some guy on a motorcycle soared over a lineup of twenty bulls? Or maybe it would be the same as vaulting, only on bulls?
I could have Googled it, but I didn’t. Because sometimes, in this world of smart phones and instant answers, it’s more fun to just… wonder. To wonder, and then to be surprised.
So wanna know what bull jumping is?
Enjoy wondering for a while before you find out.
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From Atikokan, there are two options of how to get down to Eastern Ontario. One is the northern route, which runs through Cochrane, and whose miseries I chronicled in this post from my first X-Canada-with-horse trip in 2012. That’s the one and only time I’ve taken the northern route, because that lonely, desolate, charmless road made me want to curl up into a ball and cry hot tears of despair.
The other route skirts the edge of Lake Superior. Aside from being interesting enough to keep me awake at the wheel and not being eerily devoid of human life, the southern route – with its pink rocks and tiny black lakes and miniature islands and its cliffs and its views over expansive bays – also has at least a few gas stations and rest stops and shops along the way. And radio stations and intermittent cell service.
What it doesn’t have is much in the way of horsey accommodation. Shortly before I set off on this year’s trip, I threw out a hopeful (hey, maybe something new will pop up, right?) request on a horsey Facebook group for layover recommendations on the southern route between Nipissing and Sudbury, just to broaden my daily driving options. One commenter suggested that I take the northern route instead of the route I’d specified in my query, and I made a jokey reply about the mind-numbing tediousness of the northern road and how I preferred the southern route. Something about my answer must have been triggering, because the commenter came out with guns blazing, vomiting up a vitriolic tirade about how I was more or less a jerk for slamming my horse around on those curves just because I liked the scenery better.
We’ve all learned by now that getting into it with bizarrely hostile strangers on Facebook never ends well. Ain’t nobody got time for that shit, so I just muted her comment. I shall be taking the southern route, every time. The road is well-paved. The curves are gentle. The grade is never more than 7%. In short, it is a well-constructed highway that is as nice or nicer for my horsie than are the passes I regularly drive at home. I don’t know where the commenter learned how to drive, but wherever it is, it must be pretty effing flat.
Despite my Facebook query, novel equestrian camping/stabling options remained elusive, and so I ended up laying over at a couple of my tried-and-true overnights, Neys Adventures/Neys Lunch and Campground (Neys) and Cedar Rail Ranch (Thessalon/Wharncliffe).
Neys has scaled back since COVID, and now has none of the services (flush toilets and shower, Wifi) it used to offer when I first stayed there five years ago. For me, it matters little, and the price, at $20, is now half what it was back in 2018. For that I have the group camping field out the back all to myself, and can set up a roomy e-fence paddock on the grass for my kiddo. We arrived mid-afternoon and had a lovely, relaxed evening.
Cedar Rail Ranch makes for an easy overnight for self-contained campers (there is water for the horse, but no toilet or shower): I can just arrive and plonk my horse in a corral. Easy peasy. Our dog walks were brief but scenic.
On our drive down between the two, we stopped on the shores of Lake Superior at Batchawana Bay for lunch. Spy enjoyed some fetch in the water and I had time for a nice swim.
We had one final overnight before hitting my hometown of Cornwall, Ontario, and that was with family friends in Orillia. As she did last fall, Pai got to bunk down at the Chad and Melissa’s highland cattle farm and maple sugar bush while Spy and I hung out at Mark and Margaret’s lakeside house.
I spent the next three days chilling at my Dad’s, having deposited Pai once again at the always-accommodating TP Quarter Horses, where they looked after her every time-consuming need. And from thence we were off to the Rivière-du-Loup area: Royabie, in St-Antonin, where, last fall, the delightful Steve Roy had saved my ass, accommodation-wise.
When I’d gotten Steve Roy on the phone a few days before, and asked if he’d have a place for us, he said he did, and asked if I’d be staying the weekend. It seemed like a weird question from a layover barn, and I said no. All became clear when he told me that it was the annual Festival Country de St-Antonin, for which he is the rodeo co-ordinator, and went on to enumerate the events and activities that would be going on, including bull jumping. SInce I couldn’t remember the word for “intriguing” in French, I went with “interessant”. I checked the festival out online – it attracts some 35,000 visitors to the tiny village every year. Intriguing indeed.
It was early afternoon when I rolled into Royabie with my little dog-and-pony show, and so there was plenty of time to settle the horse, take the dog for a long walk, cook supper and do dishes before walking the 2 km into St-Antonin for the evening’s rodeo. There were cowboy hats everywhere. And the locals had gone all-out in decorating their yards and houses.
I’d been to exactly two rodeos before, and St Antonin’s rodeo showcased the usual array of events featuring calves getting tossed off their feet and people getting tossed off various bucking animals. There were also some competitions I’d never run across before, like “Le sauvetage” (I think the English equivalent is Pickup), which involves extremely fast horses and extremely nimble cowboys doing some impressive leaps off of and on to horses traveling at the gallop.
The feature event of the evening was the bull jumping. I did Google the term after the fact, and it is also known as “bull leaping” or course landaise. Considered to be a non-violent form of bull-fighting, it is a tradition that is hundreds of years old.
The evening’s bull jumper was Manu Lataste, from France. And what did the bull jumper do? He jumped over a bull. Which makes it sound ho-hum, but what I mean is that the man performed aerial acrobatics – somersaults and flips – over a cattlebeast that was full-on, head-down, horns-forward charging him.
That, my friends, is bull jumping.
My shite phone photos don’t do him justice, so here is a YouTube video of Manu in action (courtesy of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, PRCA).
The following morning, I was tempted to take Spy for another run out on those hilly farm fields, but memories of last fall’s dawn encounter with a skunk made me re-classify my idea as being Not Very Smart. So once breakfast was done, we loaded up and headed to Nova Scotia.
Camp Notes for Horsey Folk
Neys Adventures (Neys Lunch and Campground) – Neys is not an equestrian campground, but it is a great spot to set up an e-fence corral in the group camping area out the back. It’s currently best-suited to self-contained rigs – there is an outhouse back there, but no water. I have yet to explore the ATV trails adjacent to the campground. Apparently, the neighbour has horses (this was my fourth stay at Neys, and I had no idea), and those are the the trails she rides. Cost is currently $20.
I’ve previously mentioned Neys here (very long post) and here.
Cedar Rail Ranch see the long post above – nothing has really changed at the bed & bale/ layover camp since 2018. I have yet to check out the two outpost cabins on offer – they look fantastic.
Royabie, Inc and TP Quarter Horses
These two fabulous layover spots are described in this post from October 2022. Scroll down to the camp notes.
una chica y su caballo 