After Bob Barker died last year, I read a story about how in 2013 the old icon of the game show business had paid a substantial sum—$880,000—to rescue three elephants from the Toronto Zoo and spirit them off to a sanctuary in California. That got me to wondering. Given how long elephants can live, I might well have encountered one of those elephants years ago—and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
I was a policeman on the Metro Toronto Police Mounted Unit, a new man at the stable, when one day a more senior officer suggested that I take out one of the horses that needed some exercise. He looked at the other
