Local horsemen with Maritime roots win top harness racing awards

LONDON – Three of Canada’s top harness racing horsemen hail from the Maritimes but are now based in Wellington County and Guelph. 

Standardbred Canada held its annual O’Brien Awards in London on Jan. 31 and Puslinch veterinarian Dr. Ian Moore was honoured for horsemanship and as top trainer, Guelph-based James MacDonald won best driver and the future star award went to Damien MacLellan of Guelph/Eramosa. 

Moore and MacDonald were born in PEI and MacLellan in Nova Scotia. 

Dr. Ian Moore brings home four awards

Moore is the first person in the O’Brien Awards’ 37-year history to win both horsemanship and top trainer in the same year.

And the 72-year-old trained Beau Jangles, the horse that won awards for overall horse of the year and two-year-old pacing colt. 

Moore said he is honoured and humbled by the awards, calling himself “only a small-time guy” compared with other local stables. 

“It’s an honour to be recognized by your peers,” he told the Advertiser.

Training Beau Jangles is “a big thrill” – and it pulled Moore away from retirement, he said.

“Beau Jangles has kept me going for another year – I have to see him through.” He’s a big horse with a wonderful gait, Moore added.  

The two-year-old won all 12 of his races in 2025, earning $1.7 million. That’s more than any other horse in Canada.

Moore’s 2025 season totalled $3.7 million.  

According to Standardbred Canada, the awards reflect “not only Moore’s elite horsemanship and training excellence, but also his consistent ability to bring out the very best in the horses.” 

Moore received his first O’Brien award in 2013, when a horse he trained – Arthur Blue Chip – won rookie pacing colt of the year. In 2015, he received the O’Brien Award of Horsemanship for the first time. 

He was inducted into the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2024. 

James MacDonald breaks best driver record

MacDonald has won the Keith Waples Driver of the Year award in each of the past five years. 

The 40-year-old lives in Guelph and his home track is Woodbine Mohawk Park in Campbellville.

In 2025 MacDonald had 369 wins totalling $9.2 million. 

He wasn’t expecting the award this year, and he can clearly remember his nine-year-old son’s reaction: “I just saw my little guy jump ... in the air when they called my name.” 

A highlight of last year was winning the World Driving Championship in New Zealand, MacDonald said.

“Getting to represent your country is pretty cool,” he said, and “to be able to get the job done, halfway across the world, was pretty exciting.” 

Racing in New Zealand is “almost like a different sport,” with a shorter track and different bikes (carts), he said. “The horses are about the only thing that makes it the same.” 

Next year, MacDonald is most excited about a two-year-old named Strobe Lite. 

“He showed flashes of real brilliance and won the Super Final,” he said, and the horse should be ready to race by April. “It will be great to get in behind him again.” 

Strobe Lite won the Two-Year-Old Trotting Colt award, and another horse MacDonald drove, Chantilly, won Three-Year-Old Pacing.

Damian MacLellan recognized as future star 

At 23 years old, MacLellan is in the early years of his driving career, but he’s already making a name for himself. In 2025 he had 83 wins totalling over $600,000. 

MacLellan said it was a “pretty special honour” to receive the  Future Star Award. 

“A lot of great people that won this award in the past have gone on to have very great success in the sport,” he said. “I hope I can follow in their footsteps.” 

A highlight of the 2025 season for MacLellan was driving Stmikes Kerryblues in the Prospect Series, in which they went undefeated.  

The young driver is also excited he won a couple races at Woodbine. 

“That’s where all the best horses, drivers and trainers race so any time you get to win a couple races there, it’s always nice,” he said.

Maritime roots

Moore, MacDonald and MacLellan all kicked off their careers in the Maritimes. 

MacLellan was born into the sport and spent lots of time in the barn as a kid in PEI. When he was in his early teens his dad got sick and passed away, and MacLellan took over the family horses. He moved to Ontario after high school, as there are more opportunities here.

“Ontario is the big leagues in harness racing,” MacLellan said. 

“All the best tracks and the best horses are here,” and “if you want to be successful in the sport you have to surround yourself with the sport’s best.”  

MacLellan said Ontario is also one of the only places you can sustain yourself financially as a driver, as there is more money in harness racing here.  

He works out of Robert Fellows Stable in Guelph/Eramosa and said the Fellows are great to him – always supportive and ensuring he has anything he needs. 

MacDonald grew up around racehorses, too. His dad was a photographer at the track in PEI, but MacDonald’s passion for horses didn’t spark until his teens, he told the Advertiser over the phone from Brisbane, Australia. He is there with his wife for the Ultimate Driver competition.

Moore found his passion for horses around the same age as MacDonald. It wasn’t a world he grew up in – his mother hated horse racing because her father was a gambler and alcoholic, he said. But shortly after he visited his first racetrack at 12 years old, horse racing became part of Moore’s life. 

Racing careers 

It’s clear all three men love their careers in horse racing – something MacLellan said is essential: “If you do this sport you really gotta love it, because it’s takes its toll.” 

Finding work-life balance is hard, he said, because 
“it’s a grind – it’s seven days a week” with early mornings in the barn and late nights at the track.

“It’s tough on your body. It’s tough on your mind,” he said. “I personally love it – I wouldn’t change anything about it.”  

MacLellan said his goal is always to have a better year than the last. Next year, he’s aiming for 100 wins and over $1 million in purse money.

Eventually, MacLellan wants to become a consistent driver at Woodbine, but in the meantime, “what I’m doing right now in the smaller tracks – I just hope to keep that success rolling and do better every night.” 

He said regardless of the class or how much money’s on the table, it always feels special to win a race.  

MacDonald and Moore said a highlight of their jobs is working with young horses. 

“Seeing them grow into champions and starts – that’s probably the most fun part,” MacDonald said. “You feel like you’ve played a part in helping them grow.” 

MacDonald said his goal has remained consistent throughout his career – to “show up every night with a good attitude and work hard.” 

He said it’s easy to “get too high with the highs and too low with the lows – you’ve go to keep your head on straight.” 

“You don’t start driving horses to break records,” MacDonald said, but being the first to win the best driver award five years running is “a dream come true and more.”

“As a driver I just wanted to do well and I was pretty happy when I was winning a bunch of races on the B tracks and just kind of making a living at doing something where I got to compete, so to etch my name in record books is pretty incredible.”

He added, “I’m a competitive guy, I love to win. I’d just about do anything to win.”

Moore said he and his wife Nancy made a living and lifestyle out of horses “and enjoyed every minute of it.”

He’s been in the horse racing world for over half a century but said he’s always learning more, such as best management practices. 

Beau Jangles could manage  12 starts this year – more than Moore usually goes for – because the horse handled most of them easily, he said. But that won’t always be the case. 

“Make the plan, have a schedule, but don’t necessarily follow it always” – be ready to put on the brakes based on how the horse comes out of a race, Moore said from his Florida kitchen.

He has taken horses with him to winter in Florida for most of the last 20 years, and said while the hope is the change in climate helps the horses, the number of recent winning horses that trained in the Maritimes suggests a different story. 

Asked about his revised  retirement plan, Moore said “we’ll see what happens in the fall.” Moore is an active guy – he swims, plays ball hockey and pilots a plane – “but I’ve got a lot of sore spots … training horses is a physical thing.” 

And he’s looking forward to spending more time with his grandchildren in retirement.  

For more information about the O’Brien Awards click here.