Canadian

The Canadian horse descends from stock Louis XIV shipped from France to Quebec between 1665 and 1670. There were few of them and no way in or out, so the population stayed pure while a century of hard winters and hard work shaped it. They picked up the nickname the little iron horse and earned it: farm work, transport, riding and racing, all from the same animal.

By 1800 Americans knew them well. They pulled stagecoaches across New England, and they went into the making of the Morgan, the American Saddlebred and the Standardbred.

Nobody in the US ever set up an association or tried to keep a purebred population here, and the export market did the rest. Thousands went south through the 1800s, many became cavalry horses, and many of those died in the Civil War. By 1880 the breed was close to extinct in Canada itself. A handful of Quebec breeders opened a studbook in 1886 and pulled it back.

They are versatile, strong, well balanced, usually black or bay, and they make good family horses.