Though not a creative solution, it has much to recommend it.

Once unchallenged as the primary means of conveyance in our society, horse-based transportation has fallen on hard times. The horse in the modern era has become a mere bauble, conspicuously owned by our richest, typically kept at stable. This regrettable state of affairs has been brought about by the success first of the locomotive as a long distance transporter and then of the automobile and airplane for short-to-medium and ultra-long hauls. At some point people also started using boats for stuff.

Today however, a noticeable shift is occurring in attitudes. Many current and prospective car owners have noted that ownership brings with it an implicit duty to give rides to people, which result in more bonding and conversation opportunities than they would otherwise seek. Bicycle riders are universally derided as utterly worthless worms eating away at common dignity. Pedestrians are quaint.

Now, the recent reorganization of Guelph bus routes into a morass has set the stage for the propulsion of Guelph to centre stage in transportation innovation. Many travelers are shunning the bus system here, and many times more are being effectively shunned by a system that has introduced the slightest form of complexity into its scheduling, and further (mockingly) then adhered to no set schedule at all. One can easily imagine the invigoration and joy felt by drivers arriving twenty minutes late to a stop only to drive on by the snow-pelted throng, and so it is difficult for anyone to actually blame them for their behavior. Nonetheless, travelers are left looking for an alternative.

Not being a creative people, Guelphomites are almost certain to come to this alternative by de-innovation. Thus, the horse.

Though not a creative solution, it has much to recommend it.

Riders, having tethered their horse at a campus bike rack, can moderate those moments of boredom classes thrust upon them by reflecting on the plight of the horse, standing pointlessly for hours, waiting for their master’s return. In this they may glimpse some of the aforementioned invigoration and joy the bus drivers have been dining on. The resulting increase in energy and happiness will assuredly create a virtuous circle, whereby more engaged students inspire professors to greater heights, and vice versa.

Horses are also a cost effective solution as measured in time and money. Unlike an automobile, horses are maintained trouble-free by stable boys, providing much needed employment to youth too rough around the edges to serve as a footman, but too romantic to be sent into the mines. Again in contrast to the automobile, horses are cheaply acquired, requiring only that the owner-to-be take seat upon the desired horse and fire their pistol three times in the air before riding off. A lawyer consulted on horse law assured this writer that this may well be true, and that if not, surely a judge would be willing to offer correction on the matter. Failing this method which has been attested to in numerous motion pictures, horses may be had for as little as $400 through online horse classifieds.

In addition, horses are much safer than other means of transportation, a constant concern in our coddled and alcoholic society. A common inebriate behind the wheel of a car or on a bicycle courts and peddles death. Sit this sot on a horse instead, and no matter their level of consciousness they will find themselves escorted home by the kind-hearted beast. Horse collisions of any kind in fact require a near unobtainably elevated degree of contrivance.

However much the horse has to recommend it, one intractable problem remains with their proposed use. The greatest joy of horse ownership comes in the behavior of the horse after the death of its rider. Will the horse defend the corpse honourably? Or wander off into the mist, to die of starvation and a broken heart against a tree somewhere, perhaps beside a gently flowing creek? Or will it refuse to be ridden for some years, only to finally give way as part of someone’s heartwarming coming of age tale? The owner, never able to know the answer to this question, will forever be tormented by it, but it may just happen that this is one of the torments that we must, in living, silently endure.

Or if the city took to adequately clearing the roads of snow, motorcycles.

Your anonymous comment may be printed in The Ontarion's print publication.