Certain words keep cropping up in old newspaper stories about Angus MacPherson. Words like quiet, dedicated, respected, competent.

He was all of those things and the composite was a Hall of Fame trainer of horses.

Perhaps the most fitting accolade was supplied by fellow inductee Sid Martin, who was a young rider when Angus gave him a leg up on Comiston in 1948. “He was a delightful man, a real old school gentleman with a lovely sense of humour. His horses always looked good and they ran good.”

He came to Vancouver from the Isle of Skye on the coast of Scotland in 1930 and began training for Bob Gellatly’s Midlothian Stable shortly thereafter. He stayed with that stable until his death from a heart attack in 1959 at the age of 64.

His only previous experience with horses was as a member of the cavalry but he quickly gained a reputation as a gifted conditioner with the success of the superb mare Dalkeith in the 1930s. Over the years he developed numerous outstanding runners, most of them foaled at the Midlothian Farm in Ladner.

Two British Columbia Futurity winners Princes Street (1955) and Cramond (1956) were out of Dalkeith and there was scarcely a season when Midlothian’s canary yellow and blue silks were not represented in the handicap division. A sampling of their best runners would include Balerno, Barnton, Comiston, Craiglochart, Jazz Band, Lauriston, Inveresk, Rosyth, Tollcross and Princes Street, who finished his career with 36 victories in 133 starts.

The last handicap horse that MacPherson and Midlothian sent to the post was the imported Milstead, who won back to back runnings of the McLennan Plate. MacPherson has taken him to Bay Meadows when he suffered a fatal heart attack in San Francisco.

Once the racing season started MacPherson virtually lived in a tack room at the track, never far from the horses he loved, returning to the farm only on weekends. Evelyn Morison, wife of trainer Don, worked for him as a young girl and has this memory: “He always wore a big hat and was well dressed and when his horses were running he smoked a lot of cigarettes. All his horses were done up in standing bandages, the stalls were banked with straw. His horses were his whole life. When the horses went to California he traveled with them in the van.”

He left behind an enduring legacy. Son Alastair, who shares the old Midlothian Farm with his mother Morag and brother Ian, is currently President of the British Columbia Division of the Canadian Thoroughbred Horse Society, and grandson Craig is an Exhibition Park trainer.