Old Cars, A Great Find, Go Karts, and Some Surprises in Our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur

   We'll start off this post in Kam Motors used car lot in about 1939.  Here is my father Jonnie Cano in the front trying to look cool sitting on the fender of a who knows what, with a couple of co-workers taking a break from filling oil bottles or replacing a windshield on an old Chevy or Oldsmobile.  It looks to be a mild winter day.
   The "Kam Motors" proof is the portion of the sign in red and shown close up after.  Obviously the houses are no longer there as that whole area to the lane way ended up being a car lot in the day.
I always say it, but it is a reminder to click on every photo once or twice to enlarge.

 

Here's an old circa 1950 Kam Motors brochure showing where the lettering was at the top of the building front, and a fairly current photo of the same building on Leith St. today.

We've talked about Dinty's many times in the past on this blog site and of course you know by now if you are a reader of this blog how Gordie Crompton came to use the word Dinty's.
Below we have more to add to the story beginning with Dinty's Sea View Motel....The Sea View still exists as shown in the following photo but not called Dinty's.

We talked about how Gordie was offered a neon sign from a sign company left over from an unpaid customer.  It didn't have Gordie's name on it but had the word "Dinty's" on it and he ended up taking it, then obviously making some of his future business ventures called Dinty's.
Below is a photo of #57 Jalopy Stock Car built by the Provincial Paper Mill who actually hired a guy named Barry Kettering to drive it.....pay attention now because many of HR&J's stories are inter-twined.  The race car is parked on Cumberland St., right in front of the first Dinty's (red square around the sign).....and you know later that Gordie ran a few KFC's (Kentucky Fried Chicken) places after the Dinty's ones finally closed.
Today's KFC is two properties just to the left of the original one.  When you do research you have to look hard at old photos....the backgrounds tell many other stories.
There are two different photos here to see the original neon Dinty's sign.  The person standing and the kid in the car are unknown.  If anyone recognizes them, please let me know.

 

Here you can read Dinty's very well....

 In this photo...car U2 with well known American driver Dean Harrington in the foreground, Dinty's is the building on the left with the upright facade, and the building on the right was a McEwen Husky Fuel depot then.  That building still exists today and the original Dinty's is now an empty lot.

This is how the property looks today...the empty lot was Dinty's and as previosly noted, the KFC is two properties to the north of the original.

.....the building on the right was Ron Wilson's Lakehead Speed and Custom shop in the 1960s.

Here's a truly historic then and now.  The then photo of course are those great jalopy stock cars that we write about from the 1950's kicking up dirt along the backstretch of the old CLE racetrack.(I can name them all.)  Behind the race cars is a tall fence to keep out freebee onlookers.  Behind that is the old bus turn around between Fort William and Port Arthur remembering at one time one would have to change buses to go to Port Arthur or back to Fort William.....
At that same time the Electric brill buses existed which powered themselves from the overhead trolley lines.
The bottom photo is taken basically in the same location as the one above it.....that corner of the CLE grounds of course is paved now and is to the east of the now damaged golf dome....all at the corner of Northern Ave and Fort William Road.

Here is some 1950's memorabilia from the Lakehead Stock Car Club days(human and other..LOL)...The handsome guy on the left is Merv Dove and if you remember, he ran the famous white #31 Maple Leaf Service car in the 1950's, was more than once or twice voted The Most Gentlemanly Driver at the CLE and later became one of the top flagmen at Riverview Raceways....A guy that could jump higher than a car while waving the checkered flag.  Merv is wearing his original jacket from the day...and to the right is a closeup of the Lakehead Stock Car Club logo and a closeup of Merv's crest.

Below are samples of the club cards from the actual Lakehead Stock Car Racing Association from 1957...the white card being the driver's card and the red being the pit crew's card.  The first card is circa 1953 and actually called the event a Jalopy Race.  The light blue one is from 1963 and was likely one of the last racing cards from the CLE days.

GO KARTS....those little 4 wheel powerhouses that started something which was considered a fad in the late 1950s and has continued over time to be an important tool in race car driver training.
Well, yes we did have go karts in those days and yours truly had one too...already written about in this blog, but most people don't remember guys racing them in the Sears parking lot in the day.  Parking lot racing ended with businesses having to kick everyone off their property because of insurance issues....they didn't want the liability of someone getting seriously hurt and making a claim against the businesses or company's that had large paved parking areas.  After that, specific Go Kart tracks had to be built designed for their type of racing and had to carry some serious liability insurance.  The last parking lot organized racing was in the late 1970's at K-Mart on Arthur St.

I don't know the source of these following photos, but they are truly incredible.  In the Go Kart below is none other than Ross "Pappy" Fowler well known in the 1950's for his #10 Jalopy Stock Car and racing at the old CLE grounds.  These photos were all taken at the Intercity Plaza parking lot in the early 1960's.  Most of the faces I don't recognize, so if you know anyone else in the photos please let me know.

Ross "Pappy" Fowler #10 CLE

I don't know for sure but it looks like it could be Barry Kettering on the far left....he used to wear that type of hat.  Here the photo faces north and you can see the northern end of the Intercity Plaza property showing the bank and the life insurance company....to the left would have been Loblaws Grocery Store where I worked in high school.

My son Darren at K-Mart 1980

Pappy Fowler here again....and also the south end of the plaza...

The last part of this post is a memory of Red Top Cabs.  I've had a large door decal around my house for years and here it is along side one of their business cards

Here is where Red Top Cabs was in the day on Simpson Street......Hope you enjoyed this post and always remember you can make comments....it's easier than you think.  Thanks for watching....Dave

Our 2012 Christmas Card to You

Many thanks to our son Jay for his great work producing and editing this Christmas Card.....also a huge thank you to all those who have donated photos and ideas throughout the past year, including my proof reader Al. 

Click on the ARROW to play, "X" out any ads that appear at the bottom

Click on the icon on the bottom right side to view full screen, then

Click escape button to return to blog when done.

More Fort William and Port Arthur Then's and Now's.......

Here we have 'The Home of Burney's Taxi".  Does anyone remember where it was?  It was at 111 N. Brodie Street and now there is no such address.  The two pictures following this one are almost self explanatory.  Wow, talk about "urban renewal", and how fast it all happens.  I hate that statement, because in our case here at the Lakehead it meant intercity improvements and downtown deterioration.  Let's hope things will get better in the future with all the goings on downtown Fort William.

Be sure to click on these pictures to compare from the 1950's one to 2009 where you can still see the YMCA building and the Twin City Gas building and most of the Victoriaville parking area, and finally to the present day.

This picture was taken yesterday from the same spot as the two others above and shows the progress at the new Court House.

NEXT is a series of West Fort William photos, some of which have been on this blog before.  It is the Dowswell Sheet Metal Co. building on the corner of Brock and Ford Streets in Westfort William.  The building still exists to this day as the "MASH Sewing Centre"

This became a famous corner in the mid 1940's as the place where a city rail trolly actually rolled over onto its side to the chagrin of passengers and the fellow standing on the balcony there!

These are photos of original street car signs that adorned the panels above the windows inside our rail streetcars from the 1920's to the 1940's.  This type of advertising is still used to some extent today on city buses.  Click on them to see the detail.

The next item on this post is another Westfort William building.  The 1913 photo was in a local advertising brochure naming the two lakehead cities of Fort William and Port Arthur as THE destination for major business ventures in the centre of Canada.  This is the "Donald Block" on the corner of Frederica and Brown Sts. in Westfort William and was the hub of 1913 financial doings in that part of town for the Royal Bank of Canada.

 The NOW picture here is the same building and today almost 100 years later is still standing as the well known Schwartz Men's Wear store.

Finally in this post we jump to Port Arthur, to a 1948 photo of Nicholson's Tire and Battery Service which was on the corner of Bay and Machar Sts. The smaller photos show how the interior looked back then, and the old time ad(Nicholson's Tire Surgery) was copied from a 1933 local hockey sports book.  Check out the old short phone numbers.

Here's how the building looked two years ago, as Bay Motors.  It was also the Goodyear Tire Centre before that for a number of years.

Thanks again to all who donate or loan photos to us at Hot Rods and Jalopies.  All we ask here is that any photos used from here are given publication credit to this blog page.  We also welcome comments at any time and corrections if you feel they are needed. 

Always be sure to click on all the pictures once and sometimes twice to see them in a larger format!

Thanks for looking....Dave

A Trip West in 1934....Not local photos but a local family!

We complain about a few potholes in our paved roads and getting a little dust on our prides of joy, but we never had to encounter anything like this in our travels....well not in my memory anyway.
My friend Bob Gill loaned me these next 6 incredible photos from 1934 showing his aunt and uncle Doris and Alfred McFarlane as well as his grandmother on a road trip from Fort William and Port Arthur west to a little place in southern Saskatchewan called Arcola. The best photos and stories are from our own family photo albums and this was obviously quite the trip.

Starting on a dry road on the ever-so-flat Canadian prairies in 1934...looks like just west of Winnipeg, it got a little greasy.....

Then it got REAL GREASY......, as Bob's uncle is trying to get the cars past each other. I guess a mud road would be OK if you didn't have to encounter any on-coming traffic.

Finally driving on by and on their way to Arcola.... Here's what Arcola's Main Street looked like in 1934.

Here's how Arcola looks today with a 2006 census population of a whopping 504 people(probably not that many more were there in 1934). Arcola's claim to fame was that it served as the location for the Allan King film feature of W.O. Mitchell's "Who Has Seen The Wind", and the town also has the distinction as being the place where Canadian author James Sinclair Ross wrote his 1941 novel "As For Me And My House". You can read about the film stated above by clicking here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076919/
The following two photos are also from Arcola but taken about 20 years earlier that Bob's pictures(1914 and 1915). I found these following two photos on the Arcola museum web page.

This one is titled "A. R. Carefoot's Garage 1914" and the last one is titled "Main Street Arcola 1915"
Thanks to Bob for the great photos and story. There are literally millions of stories out there like this, but the family connection to Fort William, Port Arthur and old cars make it a great piece. Hope you enjoyed this.
Click on photos to enlarge!