08/30/2026
đ´ Louis XIV sent horses across an ocean, and three hundred years later they had almost vanished.
Between 1665 and 1670 the Sun King shipped French horses to the colony of Quebec. They arrived into hard winters, thin feed and long distances, and then the ocean closed behind them. Isolation did on its own what breeders normally spend centuries trying to do on purpose: it sorted the population down to whatever could actually survive there. What emerged was small, blocky, unreasonably strong and famously cheap to keep, and it became known as the Canadian Horse, nicknamed the little iron horse.
For a while that toughness was the problem. The breed was exported in enormous numbers to improve other stock, and heavy losses during the American Civil War thinned it further. By 1880 it was close to extinction. Even after decades of recovery work, only around 400 Canadian Horses remained in 1976.
Then came the slow climb back. In 2002 the National Horse of Canada Act was passed, making the breed an official national symbol. A horse that exists because of a king's shipping manifest and three centuries of stubbornness.
Which part stays with you more, the crossing or the comeback?
