Bill Sherk - 60 Years Behind the Wheel. The Cars We Drove in Canada, 1900-1960

60 YEARS
BEHIND THE WHEEL

The Cars We Drove in Canada
19001960

Bill Sherk

A HOUNSLOW BOOK
A MEMBER OF THE DUNDURN GROUP

TORONTO OXFORD

Copyright Bill Sherk, 2003

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of
Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Publisher: Anthony Hawke

Copy-Editor: Andrea Pruss

Design: Jennifer Scott

Printer: University of Toronto Press

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Sherk, Bill, 1942-

60 years behind the wheel: the cars we drove in Canada, 19001960 / Bill Sherk.

ISBN 1-55002-465-5

1. Automobiles Canada History. I. Title. II. Title: Sixty years behind the wheel.

TL26.S456 2003 388.3420971 C2003-904043-7

2 3 4 5 07 06 05 04 03

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program, and the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

www.dundurn.com

From rumble seats and running boards to power
tops and tailfins, this book captures in stories and
photographs the thrill of motoring in Canada
from the dawn of the twentieth century to 1960

60 YEARS
BEHIND THE WHEEL

To my loving wife Brenda,
my front-seat passenger on the highway of life,
whose faith and encouragement helped make this book a reality

TABLE OF CONTENTS

by Mike Filey

by Mike Filey

WHEN I WAS JUST A young teenager attending North Toronto Collegiate Institute (the finest high school in North America and coincidentally the school at which the author of this book taught, long after I was there), I was never tempted by such mundane propositions as beer, cigarettes, or skipping class. Not me. However, I was often tempted by another, the desire to own a car. In fact, my friend John Ross, who was employed in the family contracting business and really didnt need an education to make his way through life, would just happen to drive by in his new red 1958 Pontiac convertible as I made my way to school along Broadway Avenue. This guy would drive me crazy. He had a nice car, I wanted a nice car. Several times I came close to giving it all up. Id simply quit school, go out and buy myself something new and flashy, and worry about paying for my car in the next life.

Well, that just wasnt to be. First off, I didnt even have my drivers licence. In fact, my parents were adamant that my schooling would come first and if I stuck with it, my dad would teach me to drive and let me use his new, but rather commonplace, 1959 Ford two-door sedan when it came time to take the test. The big day came and I passed. Now it was my turn to get a car. Actually it was a stretch to call what I was able to afford a car at all. It was a 1949 Morris Minor with one option, a heater, the fan of which was under the passengers seat. Turn the device on and the person sitting beside me would rise two or three inches. The car also had mechanical brakes, a set of flipper directional signals, and was constantly infused with a not totally objectionable (at least not to me) aroma of burning oil. Well, I couldnt do anything about the heater, the brakes, the signals, or that smell, but I could certainly make the vehicle look flashier. Id give it a do-it-yourself paint job. (Actually, Id have to do it myself, the fifty bucks I paid for this thing left me flat broke.) So off to the Yonge and Church streets Canadian Tire store I went and bought several tins of paint that when mixed together would give me that turquoise colour I wanted. At least I was pretty sure they would.

As it happened the colour turned out okay, but the amount I had to work with wasnt quite enough. When I reached the trunk area I realized I could never reproduce the colour I had created. What to do? Simple. I went back to the front of the car and pushed the paint towards the back of the car, hoping to move enough along to cover what was left of the original maroon colour.

The old Morris may have been my first car, but it certainly wasnt my last. Far from it. I went through cars like some of my friends went through packs of cigarettes. After the Morris came a 1954 Nash Metropolitan that really wasnt mine. It belonged to Joan Lewis, the wife of druggist Phil Lewis, and as a kind of perk for working in his store at Eglinton and Redpath for an outrageously high number of hours, at an outrageously low hourly rate, I was allowed to use this tiny babe magnet on weekends. Next came a 1958 Hillman (never started when it looked like rain) Minx. On this one I spray-painted the hubcaps gold. One day while driving down a country road north of the city one of the caps shot off the car into a farm field. I could only imagine someone finding it years later and believing they had come across remnants of one of those abandoned gold mines out near Markham.

Finally, I graduated (Ryerson, Chemistry, class of 1965 actually I took that subject cause one of the guys I chummed with had a car and since he was going to Ryerson I decided to join him so I wouldnt have to wait for the bus), got a job, and, of course, bought a brand new car, my first. It was a lovely turquoise and green 1965 Ford Fairlane Sports Coupe. Wow!! One problem, though: I hadnt been working long enough to accumulate a down payment. Heck, I didnt even know what a down payment was. Yarmila, my girlfriend and later my wife, came to the rescue. Hope she doesnt read this, dont think I ever repaid her.

Now a working stiff, the new cars came fast and furious: 1967 Mustang fastback (should have kept that one), 1967 Dodge Monaco (should never have bothered with that boat), 1968 Mercury Montego (that one almost prevented a wedding mine), where am I? 1970 Ford Torino followed by a 1972 version. Now the cars start to blur, but I remember visions of a Plymouth Arrow (a what?), a 1980 Pontiac Grand Prix, a couple of Toyota Celicas, a Honda Prelude (did I have two of them?), and a couple of Saturns. Oh, I hear you ask, what was the best car I ever owned? The one my wife of many, many years bought for me when I turned fifty-five, my classic 1955 Pontiac Laurentian, just like the one I coveted all those years ago.