had no mishap or trouble. During the season I have travelled over 3500 miles, and the car is practically as good as when it left the factory.
I thank you heartily for the great courtesy you and your employees have shown me, and conscientiously recommend the McLaughlin car to anyone desiring a reliable and commodious machine.
Yours truly,
Fred Foster
The little girl seated in the back grew up and became a doctor. Her married name was Ruby Tremer, and she passed away at the end of a long and eventful life. Noel Hamer of Odessa, Ontario, purchased this photo and papers from her husband after she died.
Noel has been restoring antique cars for over forty years. His favourite is the 1932 Ford roadster. He has restored twenty-seven of them.
“Why Not Own an Automobile?” 1909
IT’S INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT this ad from Hyslop Bros. in Toronto appeared on Thursday, March 18, 1909, in the local newspaper, the Leamington Post, in Leamington, Ontario, a community over two hundred miles from Toronto. The ad likely ran in papers all over Ontario and reflected the aggressive marketing policy of this enterprising dealership.
Instant Grandstand, Weston, 1910
WHAT WERE THESE PEOPLE WATCHING from their car parked in a farmer’s field in Weston, Ontario, in July 1910? It was the first airplane flight over Toronto. The pilot was French Count Jacques de Lesseps. Grounded by bad weather, Jacques’s monoplane, La Scarabee, finally lifted off into clearing skies from the rain-soaked field around 8:00 p.m. and flew at 2500 feet over the Exhibition grounds, then over downtown Toronto, at a speed of 70 miles per hour. Mike Filey of the Toronto Sun describes the city’s reaction: “Bewildered citizens filled the streets and sidewalks, lined porches and roof tops as they gazed skyward for a glimpse of the first airplane to fly over their city. Torontonians were thunderstruck.”
And what about the car itself, serving as a mobile grandstand? It was right-hand drive, and judging by the cap on the head of the driver, it was chauffeur-driven. Chauffeurs back then had to know how to repair cars as well as drive them, since flat tires and mechanical breakdowns were an everyday occurrence. The tool box on the running board was an absolute necessity. The number on the licence plate also appears on the cowl lamps, as required by law — probably to aid the police when the licence plate was too muddy to read. Introduced in 1908 with a price tag of $4,500, this car is a very luxurious Canadian-built Russell Model K “seven-seated” tourer with a fifty-horsepower, four-cylinder engine.
More Cars than Horses, Toronto, 1910
THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN AT Bay and Adelaide, in front of the Farmers Bank of Canada, which was suspended on Monday, December 19, 1910. Already it was apparent that automobiles were beginning to outnumber horses, at least in downtown Toronto. But traffic was still light, enabling the chauffeur and limousine to park in the middle of the intersection. Judging by the awnings and clothing, the photo was taken in mild weather.
Just ten years earlier, the horse had greatly outnumbered cars in Canada. In the year 1900, cars were so rare that people had not yet decided what to call the new contraptions. Horseless carriage, gas buggy, and motorcycle were some of the early attempts to label this new invention.
Two-car Garage, Leamington, 1912
THE TWO-CAR FAMILY BECAME widely popular in the 1950s, thanks to the rising tide of prosperity that followed the end of the Second World War. Back in 1911, William T. Gregory built a two-car garage that still stands at 43 Mill Street West in Leamington, Ontario. The building to the right was his office, used until recently by his nephew, the late Herbert T. Gregory.
In an interview shortly before his death, Herb Gregory recalled his family owning an Autocar (not the car in the photo), which was garaged in this building. It was tan in colour and built by the Autocar Company of Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Inside the garage was a large green container of bulk oil with a crank to pump it out. “I used to love turning that crank as a boy,” he said.
Another make of car Herb recalled was the Hupmobile. His dad and uncle prospered as agents of the Imperial Tobacco Company, with an office in Leamington. The company purchased a fleet of four or five Hupmobile roadsters around 1911 for their tobacco agents to visit farmers. Herb said, “They were little two-seater cars with chain drive and a canvas top. I remember them well.”
The large touring car parked in front of William T. Gregory’s garage is difficult to identify because of the angle of the photo. Glenn Baechler, co-author of Cars of Canada, reports, “ I really exhausted all the candles on this one as it really is a great picture. [The car] has all the features of a Buick but from this view it appears like a longer wheel base. I think it is either a Westcott or a Kissel.”
Although the car carries a 1912 Ontario plate, it can’t be a 1912 Cadillac. That’s the year Cadillac introduced its legendary electric starter, along with electric headlights and cowl lights. The car in the photo has the more primitive acetylene lights.
The car has right-hand-drive, as did most early cars, so the driver could keep a close eye on the ditch while struggling to keep the vehicle on the road. The absence of a rear bumper was the norm in 1912, although many makes offered them as an option. The tool box on the running board was a vital necessity. The spare tire (sometimes two) is presumably mounted on the far side of this car. The identity of the two men is unknown.
The front wheels have ten wooden spokes, while the rear wheels have twelve, no doubt a reflection of the muddy roads and rear-wheel-drive. The extra strain of ploughing through the mud is better spread across twelve spokes than ten.
As a car aged, the wooden spokes would dry out and shrink, causing the wheels to wobble. You then parked your car up to the hubs in a nearby river. The dry spokes would swell up and tighten the wheels, making them as good as new.
Motorcycles and Sidecars, Toronto, circa 1912
BEFORE THE ADVENT OF HENRY Ford’s assembly line in 1913 and the start of high-volume mass production, cars for most people were expensive and unaffordable. Hence the early popularity of motorcycles (Harley-Davidson dates back to 1903). Cheaper to buy, cheaper to operate, easy to store — and if you wanted passengers, you could add a wicker sidecar like the two shown here in front of a Tamblyn’s Drug Store, circa 1912.
