Chinook, a 2 month old foal with the RCMP’s famed Musical Ride was just named by a Yellowknife youth.
She is among nine foals born this year, given names chosen from more than 5,000 entries in an annual contest where youth help find names for them.
“[Chinook] is Canadian. It means warm wind,” said Jerrett in the youth’s written description of the name submission.
Draginda, a young mare with the Musical Ride, gave birth to the young “feisty and lively” foal, her second born, just a few months ago. Chinook was born on April 8.
Acting Riding Master with the Musical Ride Sgt. Sarah Parent said there were 4,500 individual submissions plus another 200 from classes and schools.
Parent said the naming contest has been going on for 19 years and each year receives thousands of name submissions. It’s a great way to engage youth in the Musical Ride, a popular Canadian tradition.
“It’s really nice to have the kids name them because we do get lots of very interesting names,” said Parent.
“It’s neat to see all submissions, and sometimes there are lots of people submitting the same names,” added Parent.
Parent explained that after receiving the submissions, a group of about five people from the Musical Ride get together as a committee to review the name entries.
“We go through the entire list of names that are submitted, which is quite large. We try to come to a consensus on names that we all like for different reasons, whether it’s Canadian or means something to the force or policing in general.”
For Parent, who also works acting riding master and instructor, it’s important to picture saying the horse’s name.
“Sometimes, we’re in the riding school I might call out, for example, ‘Chinook. Up.” Instead of using the rider’s name, we might go by horse name, so it’s nice to be able to say the name easily and keep it an easy name to say.”
Once they review submissions, the vote happens.
“If we all like the name, then we will typically pick that name.
This year they asked participants to submit names beginning with the letter C.
“So, this year, the horses all started with the letter C next year. It’ll be the letter D and we just continued down the alphabet every year because we do have some horses that are quite a bit older.”
Each year they choose a letter following a set of letters from the alphabet excluding the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z. The strategy of choosing the names starting with a particular letter helps riders and instructors to more easily identify horses.
“Naming wise, it just helps us to be able to know exactly when each horse was born, and what year that follows. It’s just easy for us to remember without having to go through files and things to see the age of the horse, we just know it follows the letter.”
The next scheduled time for the Musical Ride to visit the N.W.T. is 2029. While Chinook would not be old enough to join at that time, she would have just begun training that year, explained Parent.
“The horses join the musical ride when they’re 6 years old. They start their actual training to be on the Musical Ride at 3 [years of age].”
Parent explained that the contest to name the foals first began back in 2007.
This year the winning names were given to nine foals born at a Pakenham, Ont. farm where horses from the Musical Ride make their home.
The winning names were chosen from youth across the country.
