Jim Lawson entered the board room at Woodbine racetrack for one of his first directors’ meetings as Chief Executive Officer of Woodbine Entertainment with a plan in hand. It was 2015 and horse racing in Ontario had been crushed just two years earlier when the provincial government shut down the slots-at-racetracks partnership program.
Lawson, who had joined the Woodbine board seven years earlier when called upon to assist with a stalled real estate deal, presented two ideas: Standardbred racing would move to Mohawk year-round (rather than splitting dates with Woodbine) and the inner harness track at Woodbine would be made into a second turf course.
“There was dead silence; no one said a word for about a minute,” remembered Lawson. “I said, ‘Well I guess that didn’t go over very well.’”