It has been 65-years since the last wager was placed by emotional race fans on thoroughbreds plowing down a back stretch at the long-forgotten Long Branch Race Track.

Called Ontario’s leading horse racing track at the time, the Long Branch track operated for more than three decades from 1924 to 1955 and took up 39.7 hectares of prime land bounded by Evans, Kipling and Horner Aves., and the Canadian Pacific Railway to the west.

The facility, which attracted thousands, was owned by mining magnate Abe Orpen and his family before being sold to Toronto Racing Securities Limited which closed the track with the development of a new Woodbine Race Track, in Rexdale.

The Long Branch track was hugely popular with loyal fans travelling here by train from the U.S. and the southern Ontario area. It was a place where the rich mingled with the working class in hopes of winning big.

Each year thousands of fans would flock to the track for thoroughbred and standardbred races, according to City records.

The Canadian International Championship was first run as the Long Branch Championship Stakes in 1938 and the Cup and Saucer Stakes for Canadian foaled two-year-olds began here. Both of these races are still part of Canada’s racing season.

All that is left of the many years of excitement and wagering is a plaque by the City of Toronto, on the north side of Horner Avenue, just east of the railway tracks.

The brick and stone gatepost directly opposite this plaque was one of two marking the main entrance to the track. A so-called ‘avenue of maple trees, which still survive, highlighted the entrance.

Track owner Orpen designed the Long Branch track to be ‘Ontario’s leading and most-modern race track establishment.’

He had arranged for Canadian and Grand Trunk Railways to be built and service his racetrack with passenger trains full of horse betting patrons coming as far as the U.S. to the racing mecca.

Orpen, or Uncle ‘Abe” as he was called, was also president of the Long Branch Racing Association Ltd. , and an executive with the Ontario Jockey Club. During the thirties he paid for and ran a soup kitchen that would feed 500 men twice weekly until he passed away in 1937.