Cadillac Truck, Toronto, circa 1906
IF YOU WANTED SOME FRESH fruit or game delivered to your house in Toronto around 1906, you picked up your phone (if you had one) and asked the operator for Main 7497 or 7498. The driver at Gallagher & Co. Ltd. crank-started the Cadillac delivery truck from the side and drove off to your address, powered by the ten-horsepower, single-cylinder engine mounted under the front seat. This particular vehicle was perhaps a car converted into a truck, a common practice back then.
Note the folded top behind the driver. This truck no doubt made deliveries in all kinds of weather, and a top would be deemed a necessity. The Cadillac nameplate is visible below the phone numbers, and the hole for the crank is below that. When these noisy engines fired up, nearby horses often reared up in fright.
The Cadillac was named after the French explorer who founded Detroit in 1701, and the car quickly earned a reputation for precision engineering, beginning with its very first model completed in October of 1902. Six years later, eight single-cylinder Cadillacs were shipped to England. Three were selected at random, driven twenty-three miles to the new Brooklands Motordrome, and then completely disassembled. The 721 parts of each were scrambled with the others, and 89 parts were replaced with off-the-shelf substitutes. Cadillac mechanics reassembled the three cars from the 2,163 parts, then drove them at top speed for 500 miles, earning for Cadillac the highly coveted Dewar Trophy for excellence in standardized interchangeable parts.
Breakdown Near Sarnia, circa 1908
SCENES LIKE THIS INSPIRED THE lyrics of a song: “Get Out and Get Under.” The car is a Rambler Type One Surrey with a two-cylinder, eighteen-horsepower engine, a model in production from 1904 to 1908. The secondary “steering wheel” operated the throttle. Note the absence of a top or a windshield (usually available at extra cost).
The license number (2994) is clearly visible but with no year of issue. Ontario introduced license plates in 1903 as a convenient new source of revenue, but did not issue annual plates with the year displayed until 1911.
The Rambler was renamed the Jeffery in 1914, after the founder of the company, Thomas B. Jeffery. The Jeffery was renamed the Nash in 1917 when Charlie Nash took over. The Rambler name was revived in 1950 with the introduction of America’s first commercially successful post-war compact car, the Nash Rambler.
Engineless Car, Leamington, circa 1908
BILLY COLEMAN, OTIS DELAURIER, AND Richard Malott were photographed sitting in this car of unknown make and year with the engine out. Perhaps its parked outside a shop that rebuilds engines while you wait. The tires are white because that’s the natural colour of rubber. Black tires appeared around 1916, when carbon was added to the tires for greater strength.
When this photo was taken around 1908, the Ontario government had been licensing automobiles for five years — and with the steady increase in car ownership, the flow of money into provincial coffers was increasing too. Maybe local county governments could also get a slice of the action.
The following item, entitled “Would Regulate Auto Traffic,” appeared in the Leamington Post on December 17, 1908:
The Essex County Council has adopted a resolution asking the Ontario legislature for an act permitting each county to regulate and license automobile traffic through its territory.
The action is directed particularly against automobiles from outside the province passing through Essex county, and especially those touring from Detroit, many of which have made nuisances of themselves in every way.
As first introduced by Warden O’Neil, the resolution asked authority to charge a license fee of $25 on each automobile passing through the county. It was pointed out that if adopted in each county, say between Detroit and Niagara rivers, this would make touring prohibitive, and the cost between Detroit and Buffalo would be about $300 in license fees. The resolution was finally adopted without naming a specific amount.
Unfortunately, that news item doesn’t explain how Detroit motorists “have made nuisances of themselves in every way.” But its easy to speculate. Some motorists bypassed their muffler with an exhaust cut-out for greater acceleration and top speed, with a deafening increase in noise. And that noise was sometimes loud enough to frighten a horse into bolting — even if the horse was pulling a carriage.
Born to Sell Newspapers, circa 1909
A TORONTO DAILY NEWSPAPER, THETelegram, was founded in 1876 by John Ross Robertson (1841–1918), photographed here standing in the front seat of his chauffeur-driven touring car around 1909. The family is in the back, the luggage is strapped on behind, and the car is ready to go. Robertson himself went many places during his newspaper career, including an 1869 visit to Fort Garry (in what soon became Manitoba), where he was arrested and held for a week by none other than Louis Riel. Robertson devoted his long life to the betterment of Toronto, and he wrote and published the Landmarks of Toronto series, which is still used as the standard reference work on the city’s early buildings and people. During his lifetime he gave away large sums of money to worthy causes, and near his death he remarked, “I will surprise everyone by the small amount of money I will leave.” He passed away on May 31, 1918, at his home at 291 Sherbourne Street.
In the early 1920s a public school was built at the northeast corner of Glengrove and Rosewell in North Toronto and named in his honour. His newspaper lived on until 1971, when it finally went under. A new paper arose phoenix-like from the ashes of the old: the Toronto Sun. What became of Robertson’s large and luxurious touring car is unknown.
FRED FOSTER OF BOWMANVILLE, ONTARIO, is seated behind the wheel of his new 1908 McLaughlin Model F two-cylinder touring. Sam McLaughlin began building automobiles in Goshawk, Ontario, in December 1907 with Buick engines imported from the United States and bodies built by McLaughlin. Fred is seen here with his family ready to leave for Midland, Ontario, to attend a family wedding. He was so pleased with his new car he wrote the following letter to the factory that built it:
Bowmanville, December 14th, 1908
Messrs. McLaughlin Motor Car Co. Ltd.
Oshawa, Ont.
Dear Sirs:
The Touring Car I purchased from you last spring has given me the very best of satisfaction. It is economical in consumption of gasoline, and will climb any hill I have yet met. My repairs for the entire season have cost $2.00.
When I purchased the car I had no knowledge whatsoever of Automobiles. After a few days experimenting I took my family for a trip covering
