60 Years Behind the Wheel. Bill Sherk
McLaughlin factory in Oshawa. Sam McLaughlin began building cars bearing his name in 1908 with components purchased from Buick in the United States. In 1918, General Motors of Canada was formed with Sam McLaughlin as president. He led an active life and passed away at age one hundred in 1972.
Grandfather’s Centre-door T, 1926
IAN MARR WROTE: “THIS PHOTO, taken in 1926 shows me at the age of 1 1/2 years with my grandfather’s Model T centre door Ford. Note the chains on the rear wheels. This was the start of my love affair with antique cars.”
The centre-door Model T first appeared in 1915 and remained in production until the end of the 1921 model year. It was designed to equalize the ease of entry into the front and rear seats, but was an awkward compromise at best. The conventional two-door T sedan gave easy access to the front seat, and the four-door T easy access to front and rear. Both these body styles were introduced in 1923, the same year that nearly two million Model T Fords of all body styles were built.
Ian Marr’s Rockne Convertible, 1944
MARR RECALLED:
This photo taken in the fall of 1944, shows me sitting proudly behind the wheel of my first car, a 1932 Rockne convertible coupe. This car was built by Studebaker only during 1932 and 1933. It was named after Knute Rockne, the famous Notre Dame football coach. The Rockne had a rumble seat and the upholstery was green and yellow leather — pretty snazzy! Beside the Rockne is another rare car — my father’s 1942 Pontiac sedan.
Toronto Water Works Trucks, 1914
YOU HAD TO BE TOUGH to drive a truck some ninety years ago. Many trucks, like the ones here in St. Andrew’s yard on Tuesday, November 17, 1914, had no doors, even if they were driven year-round. And the ones with solid rubber tires could shake your teeth out. They were usually geared low for hauling capacity and didn’t have much of a top speed. Ron Fawcett recalled a Model T tanker truck he drove years ago: “It had two forward speeds — slow and slower.”
HARRY MITCHELL OF WALLACEBURG, ONTARIO, no doubt enjoyed seeing his name on the radiator badge of his Mitchell touring, but he did not manufacture it. Mitchell automobiles were introduced by a long-established carriage builder in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1903 and remained in production until 1923, when Nash bought the factory. Like many early cars, Harry’s Mitchell was right-hand-drive so he could keep an eye on the ditch. It didn’t save him from the mishap seen here.
A CROSS BETWEEN A MOTORCYCLE AND a car was the so-called “cycle-car.” Reverend J.D. Morrow of Toronto owned this one, and swore to wear no hat till his Queen Street West church at Gore Vale had a roof on it. The church finally got its roof, and here is the Reverend Mr. Morrow finally wearing a hat. Note the chain drive. Some of these cycle-cars had a V-2 engine with the steering column through the V. A cycle-car known as the Imp was built in Toronto in 1913.
On His Majesty’s Service, circa 1915
THIS BRASS-RAD MODEL T Ford served as a commissary wagon for the 83rd Battalion with Major Wilson and Captain Barker around 1915. Although Henry Ford’s favourite colour for the Model T was black, this T was an exception. The year 1915 was automotively significant in Canada for two reasons: Tommy Russell of Toronto stopped building cars bearing his name, and William Gray of Chatham, Ontario, began his ten-year run of building Gray-Dorts.
Canadians Celebrate Armistice Day, 1918
THIS TRUCK WITH SOLID RUBBER tires rolled through Toronto as people celebrated the end of the Great War (as it was called until the outbreak of the Second World War). The conflict officially ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Canadians now turned their attention to a future that held the promise of peace and prosperity.
Following a brief post-war depression, automobile production skyrocketed during the 1920s on a wave of prosperity unimagined by previous generations. By 1929, nearly everyone in Canada who wanted a car could buy one, even if it meant shelling out a dollar or two for an old jalopy that still ran.
In 1919, 90 percent of all cars produced in North America were open cars with a folding top and side curtains. By 1929, 90 percent of all new cars built in North America were closed cars. Motorists were demanding — and getting — cars that protected them and their families from the weather. This protection was especially important in Canada, where long, cold winters forced many motorists to put their cars up on blocks until the spring.
By the mid-1920s, motoring had become a national pastime, whether it was a Sunday afternoon drive or a motor trip of several hundred miles. Good paved roads and “filling stations” (as they were called back then) catered to the motorists’ growing demand for more roads, better roads, wider roads — and more powerful cars to reach their destination in half the time.
Hauling Telephone Poles, British Columbia, circa 1920
ED BROWN STARTED ONE OF the first trucking businesses in Burnaby, British Columbia, perhaps as early as 1910. His grandson, Jim Ervin, wrote:
The business was located at the family home at 3131 Royal Oak Ave. in South Burnaby. That was close to the top of one of the steepest hills in Burnaby and must have made for a real test of man and machine to drive it, especially in winter. The children loved it for sleigh riding but probably not their father.
Most of the area was forest at that time and one of Ed’s first jobs was to haul shingle bolts out of the forest with a team of horses. My mother used to have to grease the skids placed on the logging trails for the loaded sleds to be pulled out on. One time, as she told me, there was a huge forest fire and my grandfather barely escaped with his life and one last load.
Later, when the area had been cleared, he helped to build the Oakalla Prison Farm, now replaced by townhouses on Royal Oak Ave. This job led to him becoming the first contractor to haul the license plates made by the prisoners. Some of these plates would be worn by Ed’s own trucks.
His trucks included some pretty obscure makes such as Hufman, Garford, Stewart (which my mother often said was no good), Gotfredson