Émile St. Godard

Émile St. Godard began training a dog team after his family to La Pas in 1916. He won his first race in the streets of his hometown in 1924, but later became one of the top mushers in Canada. His first major win was the La Pas Dog Derby in 1925, which he also won for the next four consecutive years. In 1930 he won the Ottawa Winter Carnival race, and in the 1930s he had a rivalry with American Leonhard Seppala, when they competed six times at the Eastern International Dog Derby in Québec, with St. Godard winning four times, and Seppala twice.

St. Godard also had a reputation for treating his animals well and, in one instance, forfeited a race near the end because his dogs were injuring their paws on the jagged ice of the course. He retired from the sport after his lead canine, Toby, became too old to race. Such was his prominence that obituaries for both Toby and St. Godard, who died at the age of 42 in 1948, appeared in national American newspapers. He was made a member of the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1956, and the Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame in 2007, the only sled dog racer in either hall.