Brookview Tony Charity Makes a Shiny Return to the Royal Winter Fair - Cowsmo

Brookview Tony Charity Makes a Shiny Return to the Royal Winter Fair

Brookview Tony Charity was virtually unbeatable at Holstein shows during the 1980’s and is one of the household names of our industry.

This year, little more than 30 years after her last Royal win, Charity made her triumphant return to Toronto in the form of a stunning chrome statue.

Charity looks over the Ring of Excellence, 25 ft in the air.

The statue was commissioned by Helen Roman-Barber, daughter of Steve Roman, of Romandale Farms. Completed in 2017, the 25-ft chrome statue was placed in a park in the Cathedraltown neighbourhood of Markham, ON, not far from Romandale. Unfortunately, the statue was not well-received by the residents of the area and many of them wrote to the city to have Charity removed.

Delayed by a lawsuit that was filed by Helen Roman-Barber against the city of Markham, the vote to have the statue removed was passed in September 2017, and workers carefully removed it from the park.

But as the saying goes, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”, and it seemed awfully fitting that one of the winningest cows in history would return to the site where she was Grand four times, the Royal Winter Fair. Once again, Charity didn’t disappoint as she gazed over the Ring of Excellence and this year’s fair with a wreath of chrome maple leaf’s around her neck.

The statue wasn’t the only contribution that Charity’s memory made at this year’s Royal. During the Sale of Stars a true-type model, painted with Charity’s markings, was auctioned off to raise money for the Ontario Holstein Youth Program. Selling three times after a flurry of excited bidding, the model was purchased by Dave Eastman of Vogue Cattle Co. for $1000.

It has been 31 one year’s since Charity won her fourth Grand Champion title at the Royal, the only cow in the history of the show to achieve the feat. So, while her presence was rejected in Markham, Charity was welcomed with open arms to her new home at the Royal, the chrome embodiment of one of the breed’s greatest legends.

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