It's the final quarter mile of the George Murphy Memorial race at the Charlottetown Driving Park Entertainment Centre in P.E.I.
Known as the most spectacular part of any harness horse race, the last quarter mile is when the standard bred horses, known for their ability to race at a quick trot or pace instead of the wild gallop known in thoroughbred saddle racing, pick up the most speed. The finishes are often down to a nose or a head, and it's not uncommon for the judges to require photo evidence to determine the exact order of finish. This particular race is no different as Zodiac Mac, the brown horse with the black legs and the quirky personality, is literally neck-and-neck with Josh's Deal and Harold Sheppard. Over the sound of the driver's whip snap continually echoing off the shaft that connects his "bike" or "sulky" to the horse, Zodiac Mac finds one more burst of speed at the last minute and wins by a head.
It will be the first of three straight wins for Mac, a nine-year-old horse in a sport that sees them usually retire at nine or 10. P.E.I. is a notoriously competitive league for horse racing, especially for horses that originally come from outside the province, like Mac does, so for him to win three straight is impressive.
"Back in his day Mac was known as a classy horse with a decent record," says well-known P.E.I. equine veterinarian Kathleen MacMillan. "All of a sudden he went on this winning streak. It's surprising that he went as hard as he did, as long as he did."
But for Mac's owner and "retired" mortgage broker, Gerry Walsh, it makes perfect sense, because as he says, "Mac's a tough old bird."
The trailblazer
Like Mac, Walsh also comes off as tough and classy in the several conversations leading up to this article, but perhaps that's due to the fact that he's been in the business for so long. In fact, the 70-something-year-old ("well if I was 21 in 1953 you can do the math from that," he says in his Irish accent) was the very first mortgage broker in P.E.I., a province of only 35,000, or, as Walsh puts it: "Barrie, Ont. is bigger than the whole island, and the biggest occupation is tourism."
Tourism is an industry he knows a lot about, too. Before moving to Stratford, P.E.I. just outside of Charlottetown, where he has lived for the last 16 years, he was a tourist - for eight straight years.
"I always said I would like to retire here, and now here I am. It is a beautiful place, but P.E.I. is small though. I've maybe only done 600 or 700 mortgages in my life here."
Over the course of those 600 or 700 mortgages Walsh has built up a solid reputation, both within the industry and with his clients. Operating on a 100 per cent referral basis from his home with zero advertising, Walsh still receives deals even though he is retired. He just finished a deal two weeks before this interview.
"I'm supposed to be retired but what do you do when people come to you?" he says. "I like the people I deal with and they wouldn't know what to do if I said I couldn't do it. Plus, if they're giving me the compliment to come to me then I don't care if my two legs are cut off, I'm going to see what I can do for them."
While Walsh admits running a business entirely on word of mouth isn't easy - and just like in horse racing, it's even harder for someone from out of province to make a name - he did have some help from his wife, a native to the island.
"My wife was a school teacher, a damn fine one, who taught everybody in town," he says. "You can't walk down the street without her being stopped 10 times. She comes from a long line of islanders and is actually where a lot of my referrals came from when I started off."
And while it was just 16 years ago that Walsh moved to the island without much of a plan, his customer-first attitude and wealth of experience in the finance industry helped him quickly establish his name in the community, not to mention other parts of the country.
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