Today’s post comes in the form of a warning: according to my research, Horse Council BC is making a desperate bid to turn itself into the seventh ‘hell no’ province. And they are doing it without communicating a single word of it to their member. As a BC resident and longtime HCBC and EC member, I am throwing up in my mouth over this. I know HCBC signed an affiliation agreement in 2009 that stated unequivocally that they accepted a $5 EC fee for members in 2010 and a $10 fee for 2011. I don’t know who Smitty thinks died and made him king but he’s dead wrong in his reckoning. I know some of you Backcountry Horsemen types hate EC and all it represents. As you can see from past posts I am not an undying fan of Mission Control either – but you folks SIGNED ON THE DOTTED LINE. Oh if I only had more time today to pull out all the dirty laundry – all the underwear with skid marks, the dirty socks with holes in the toes and the t-shirts with ketchup stains dribbled down the front. But I don’t.
All I’m going to say is this: if you are a member of HCBC and you are one of the thousands of people who can’t renew your EC sport license, I encourage you to attend the HCBC AGM on March 26 at 1:15 pm. Ask to sit in on the Board meeting. I’ve been told all members are allowed to observe the Board meeting. Get a bunch of friends together. Crowd the place with bodies. Then stay awake for the proceedings because I don’t think you’re going to like what you see. My bet is there are a lot of members of the HCBC Board who will be just as disgusted by developments as I am. Whether they outnumber the Board members who want to jump off the cliff and join six other provinces in the Abyss of Irrelevance remains to be seen. You know what this whole mess that HCBC has brought upon us is over? FIVE DOLLARS. If there are people who would choose not to renew their HCBC membership because of a $5 fee increase, I would venture to say perhaps they should not own horses because they obviously can’t afford to feed them.
HCBC Board, please. Stop the insanity. Cooperating with the National Federation doesn’t prove you are weak. It proves you are intelligent enough to see the only reasonable (and ethical) course of action. Or is it just the case that, as one disappointed stake holder said, some people would rather reign in hell than sign a service agreement in heaven?
