Former Bomber selling his house stable

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/12/2014 (4193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. FRANÇOIS XAVIER — Seeing as it’s the season for a tale that takes place in a stable, here’s a different one.

Former Winnipeg Blue Bombers lineman Jim Heighton lives in a stable, or at least on top of one. “I live in a hayloft,” he quipped recently.

Heighton has a stable house, or house stable. That’s not to be confused with traditional Mennonite house barns. “It’s a European equestrian-style home with the horses down below and the living quarters on top,” he explained.

The two floors are 10,000 square feet in total: 5,000 for the horses, 3,000 for the people above, and 2,000 more for the hay to feed the horses.

The upstairs has five bedrooms. Heighton bought it from a family with five children. Today, it needs a new owner with the energy to spruce it up, Heighton said.

“This is a place you can come to, to get away from the noise,” said Heighton, 70. “I guess you have to put up with a bit of horse smell, but that’s OK.”

Heighton has owned the unique residence since 1973 when he was starting a career in pro football. The place is now for sale, listed at $1.65 million.

What’s a former CFL lineman doing in a $1.65-million house and stable? “The NFL was almost on the same pay scale as the CFL in those days. We’re talking about only a few thousand dollars difference,” he said.

In Heighton’s best year, 1977, he made $60,000, including a signing bonus, the equivalent of $220,000 today when adjusted for inflation. That was before pro sports salaries ramped up to today’s levels.

Heighton, recently elected to the Bombers’ Hall of Fame, is a great CFL story. He never played junior or university football. He was working for a mortgage financing firm in Penticton, B.C., by day, and playing football on the side for the defunct Victoria Steelers for $50 a game, when the B.C. Lions discovered him.

He made the club in 1969 at age 25 as a backup, but was cut the next year after coach Jim Champion was replaced by assistant Jackie Parker.

The Blue Bombers were terrible back then, and a friend cajoled Heighton into phoning the team. Winnipeg head coach Jim Spavital said he’d get back to him, and didn’t. So, Heighton phoned again and Spavital offered him a five-day tryout.

Heighton, a defensive end, made the team and became a two-time Western all-star and one of the highest-paid Canadian players. “For some reason, I could get off the line fast. Only one guy was faster and that was Granville Liggins (with Calgary and later Toronto),” he said.

Heighton, often compared to contemporary Bill (the Undertaker) Baker in Saskatchewan, was a bit of an athletic freak, playing until he was 37 and missing only one game due to injury.

His equestrian house has 15 stalls. Heighton doesn’t keep his own horses anymore but boards other people’s animals. He sleeps above them. He has help looking after the horses.

The 20-acre parcel of land, near the Assiniboine River, has eight corrals and a training track. It’s near Assiniboine Downs and within sight of the White Horse statue on the Trans-Canada Highway, inside the RM of St. François Xavier.

A creek runs through the property and drains into the Assiniboine. It borders Beaudry Provincial Park.

Gordon Goldsborough, web master for the Manitoba Historical Society, has included the building in his database of over 5,300 vintage and historic buildings, cemeteries and monuments across Manitoba, at mhs.ca. “It’s unlike any barn I’ve seen,” he said.

Goldsborough’s research shows Heighton’s place was originally built for businessman Gordon S. Carpenter in 1963, and dubbed Marshall Brook Farms, after Carpenter’s used car dealership, Marshall Brook Motors.

His neighbour, grain merchant George Sellers, owned an indoor riding arena and galloping track. Sellers founded Federal Grain Ltd., the largest private grain company in Western Canada, which was sold to the wheat pools in 1972.

Carpenter staged an inaugural horse show, attended by Sellers, at the stable on Dec. 22, 1963, as reported by the Free Press. “The grain baron and the used car dealer. They seemed to have some kind of partnership,” Goldsborough said.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca