Less than a year after he was elected to Equestrian Canada’s board of directors, Terrance “Torchy” Millar has resigned, citing his disagreement with the direction of the federation, headed by CEO Eva Havaris. Millar, who has been a pillar in Canadian equestrian sport for more than four decades, noted that he has a number of grievances with the direction of EC, but was primarily concerned that discipline committees were being ignored.
“I was not happy with several things,” he commented. “In my opinion, the management is sidelining the disciplines from any meaningful authority over their owns sports. It appears that the direction they are going is to run High Performance for the various sports directly from the EC office and I don’t think they have the knowledge, background, skill set, or capacity to do so.”
There have been ongoing discussions about how the disciplines should interact with EC under the new leadership. Previously, the sports managed their own affairs, with varying degrees of success. The Eventing and Dressage groups have been plagued for years with oversight issues, while Jump Canada and Para were very successful in guiding their sports. The new administration structure introduced by Havaris, however, has EC staff responsible for the overall management of each sport with input from the specific committees, but giving final approval on all matters to the CEO.