We have arrived in the final night of Standardbred racing at Woodbine Racetrack, as following the completion of the Monday, April 9 card, the Woodbine Entertainment Group (WEG) will only conduct harness racing at Mohawk, now named Woodbine, Mohawk Park, on a permanent basis.  While this move has been lauded throughout the industry, I have many great memories of going to the races at Woodbine. I find that I will miss it very much and I believe the industry at-large will miss it more than they know. A bit of personal history, when I was in college in the mid-2000's, I worked with driver Luc Ouellette on his website and I often visited him and his wife, Anita, in Ontario after he moved to drive at the WEG Circuit.  This meant that for several years, his house and Woodbine and Mohawk were basically my homes away from my home in Pittsburgh.  One of my favorite parts of visiting him was that drive into Woodbine.  Because of its location in the city of Toronto, its proximity to Pearson International Airport, and its size, it always felt like we were going to a big stadium to play a game, especially on North America Cup or Breeders Crown night.  No offense to Mohawk, it is a great facility, especially when watching races compared to Woodbine, and WEG has spent a great deal of money and time this winter to update it, but it just never had that same feeling given its more rural and bucolic setting. Woodbine always had its work cut out for it as a harness track, given it was replacing the popular Greenwood and the layout of the Thoroughbred tracks meant the Standardbred track was on the far inside and far away from the grandstand, but I believe it has been a positive to the industry.  The facilities are top-notch, from the paddock to the grandstand, and at least while I was going there, many businesses and groups from Toronto proper came to the dining room for events and to sponsor races, which is always important to the health of the sport.   Also, Woodbine's place in the sport's history is indelible.  While many of the big races on the WEG Circuit were shifted over to Mohawk several years ago, including the North America Cup, Canadian Pacing Derby and the Metro Pace, the likes of Cam's Card Shark, Bettor's Delight, Bunny Lake, San Pail and Kadabra won major races over the seven-eighths mile track. I was fortunate enough to see horses such as Rainbow Blue and Western Terror win Breeders Crowns and Rocknroll Hanover win the North America Cup.  It also is the home to the Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, where you could walk through and learn about the greats of both Standardbred and Thoroughbred racing, something you won't be able to do at Mohawk. There is no doubt that racing full-time at Mohawk will be more convenient for the majority of horsemen.  Most of the training centers and farms in the province are much closer to that location and they will no longer have to contend with highway traffic on the 401 or 407 to get to the races, but in an era where professional sports teams are building stadiums and wanting to get into urban areas on a consistent basis, I find it concerning that harness racing is taking the opposite approach and giving up a foothold in Toronto to move to rural Campbellville.  Yes, the area around Milton is growing, but for a family or bettor living in Toronto or points east, the drive on a Saturday night to come to the races will now be much more of a daunting one.  On a personal level, I also found the weather around Mohawk much worse in the non-summer months as it's at a slightly higher elevation, meaning potentially more cancellations due to snow or fog than at Woodbine.  Harness racing will also be missing out on the boon the planned development at Woodbine could be.  Wanting to turn Woodbine into a "city within a city," officials at Woodbine want to build houses, shopping areas, and the like under their master plan, which doesn't apply to Mohawk at this time. With all that said, I bid my fondest farewell to harness racing at Woodbine, and hope for all involved that we will not regret leaving it.