Childhood interest in horses became a career

Jim Corbett and his granddaughter, Chase Belair at Cedar Ridge Stables

Jim Corbett was a young city boy with an infatuation for horses. While many children have an interest in horses they eventually out grow at some point, Corbett’s hobby became his profession.

“I just had a vested interest in horses like a lot of kids do,” Corbett says. “I more or less started hanging around them when I was about eight-years-old and one thing lead to another. So, here I am, 54 years-old and working with horses is what I’ve done all my life.”

Corbett recalls how he used to ride his bike to the country each weekend to hang around the stable when he was as young as ten.

“How times have changed,” he says. “There used to be a stable on Fifty Road in Winona and I’d ride my bike from Queenston Street, in St. Catharines, along the old number 8 to get to there. I would go on a Friday afternoon, right after school, and spend the weekend.”

Corbett cleaned stalls and did “pretty much whatever (he could) just to be around the horses.”

He says if he “got a couple dollars for working it was great” but the trek out to the stable each weekend was “worth it just to maybe get the chance to ride a horse.”

Corbett’s interest in horses did not wane and he soon became a riding instructor; which lead him to meeting his wife, Brenda Belair.

“You could say horses brought us together,” he laughs. “I was one of a very small handful of male instructors and Brenda brought her son to take riding lessons with me. Oddly enough we were in the same high school and had a lot of the same teachers, and we never met each other at all until the lessons started.”

Corbett says the relationship grew and in 1999 he and Belair became business partners when they opened Cedar Ridge Stables in Pelham.

“We weren’t even dating,” he says. “But things happen for a reason and one thing lead to another and we were married in October 2004. It’s damn lucky to have your best friend possible be beside you all the time.”

Cedar Ridge Stables offers boarding, lessons, training and resale.

Corbett says he and Belair opened the facility “certainly for the love of the animal because, for the most part, you’re not going to get rich doing this business.”

Especially when unemployment rates in the area have risen, he says.

“Unfortunately, in this area, the manufacturing sector is getting a major hit, so obviously the effects of that trickle down to the industry we are in.”

Corbett says working with horses “keep you physically and mentally fit” and provides a “comradeship with fellow riders.”

He also says instructing is “very rewarding” particularly when a student has been “struggling and then things come to fruition and they’re doing really well; whether it be just in a riding lesson or certainly in the show ring.”

Corbett says good riders have to want more than just a ribbon; they need to love horses.

“It’s not necessarily a case of hoping to go to the show room and win,” he says. “Because if it’s all about ribbons, just drop me off a cheque every month and I will give you some ribbons. You certainly have to have love for the animal.”

Corbett says people interested in signing their child up for horse riding lessons, or considering taking lessons themselves, should always take the time to “thoroughly do their research” and make sure they choose “an accredited coach or instructor.”

“We really push for new people to come in and just watch a lesson first,” says Corbett. “Take a walk around and look at the place. Meet us. Ask us questions. It’s important that you make the right choice when picking a facility and/or instructor.”

Corbett and Belair are devoted to running Cedar Ridge Stables, and they only take a two week vacation each year.

“It’s very time consuming,” he says. “We go away in February, but other than that it is a seven day a week job. But, again, it’s the love of the animal that I’m in this business. That and maybe the fact that I’ve never gotten smart enough to try something else.”

Corbett says his horses are always there when he needs to talk.

“If things are going kind of crummy, or I’m up in the middle of the night, I can always go out and shoot the breeze with one of the horses. And they understand a hell of a lot more than most people do. Or at least I think they do,” he chuckles.

Cedar Ridge Stables keeps Corbett busy, but he says it is worth it.

“Probably the most important thing to me is that I can open the door every morning, pretty much expecting that I’m going to learn something new,” he says. “If there’s ever a day, for whatever reason, I think that I know it all, I better run the other way real quick. Because it’s improbable, if not impossible, to know it all in this business. You are most definitely always learning.”

Cedar Ridge Stables is located at 522 Sixteen Road in Pelham. For more information visit www.cedarridgestable.com or call (905) 651-5867.

Published in Farmer's Monthly- December 2010