113-119 Leith St., 234 Park St., Destroying Vintage Cars? and The Powder Puff Girls in our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur

I am off to a great start in the last few days doing posts for my own facebook page and the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Memories facebook page, but MOST importantly my premier site HR&J desperately needed this post that I have been working on for quite awhile....it is fairly lengthy but interesting with 25 photos.

The first photo here is extremely interesting.  The photo actually came from Richard Mark's FB page and as soon as I saw it I instantly knew what it was.  Sellers and Jones was an automotive dealership back in the late 1910's and into the 1920's.  I vaguely remember my father telling me a bit about the history of the original Kam Motors Limited building on Leith St., and the words Sellers and Jones had come to mind.  Incredibly the tall part of this building still exists to this very day, and through the years it was doubled in size by getting rid of the Sellers and Jones old wood tire store structure and adding an identical structure to the west of the original, making the address 113-119 Leith St.  That address is the same today.  The cars you see in the photos are likely 1918 Studebakers, or maybe Essex, or maybe Willys-Knight....it is truly very difficult to tell as many looked so much the same near the end of the Brass era.

However, before this became Kam Motors Limited, it went through another era from which there are no photographs or at least none found as yet.  I do have a few old invoices that tell their own stories as you will see.

Caption: 113-119 Leith Street, Fort William Ontario.  At the very end was a large Elevator and where the street lights are is Simpson St.

This is how the modern building looks recently and you can still count 6 large windows across the structure, and 3 across the old photo above, because as I mentioned, the building was doubled in size.  The only difference in the new photo to an actual today photo would be that the old Palace confectionery building still stands down at the corner of Leith and Simpson St.  That spot is a Used Truck dealer now.

OK...here we go...If you click on this 1927 Grain Port Motors Limited "Ford" Dealership invoice it oddly reads 113-119 Leith St. as a Fort William address with a phone number of S.1000.  Therefore Grain Port Motors occupied this space for awhile in and around 1927.

Grain Port Motors claim to fame was that it was likely a sponsor of sorts in the day for the famed local race car "The King's Special" a story about this car was written on these pages some time ago.

Below is a close-up of whats called a Moto Meter and sometimes called a Motor Meter, vividly displaying Grain Port Motors, Fort William and Port Arthur.
The photo next to it is none other than Frank Colosimo driving the "King's Special" here in the 1920's, sporting the Moto Meter shown below from the restored Kings Special.

So here is a pretty fuzzy photo of what Kam Motors looked like after Grain Port Motors short lived time there.  The building of course, as mentioned above is the Sellers and Jones building when it was doubled in size, but taken from a different angle.  It lived to be Kam Motors Limited owned by the Hubert Badanai family for well over half a century until the family decided to close the Kam Motors and Port Arthur Motors and open a new establishment on Memorial Ave. called Badanai Motors.  The very rear portion of the building today houses the Badanai Motors Auto Body Shop.
The Kam Motors Building still stands today even with part of the original signage and original wall on the east side of the building still showing as seen in the photo to the right.  It's still 113-119 Leith Street, and owned by Diamond Taxi.

My father gave Kam Motors Limited 33 years of his life as the Body Shop Manager.  The body shop was originally upstairs and there used to be a huge automobile elevator to bring the cars to the top level.  You can imagine dragging a total wreck onto the elevator and having to drag it back off once upstairs.  Kam also sold thousands of Chevrolet's Oldsmobile's and Cadillac's, but actually once sold Fords in the beginning and Hudson and Essex cars before General Motors cars were sold.  Kam also sponsored and built a Jalopy, or stock car which was driven by a few different guys in the day such as Canary Trevisan and Bill Chepil.  My father even raced it a couple of times.  In the photo to the right note the large doors that were for repairing large trucks, which you can see in the photo with the #34 Chevrolet 6 cylinder powered Jalopy below.

Here's a photo of my father taken in the brand new body shop which was built behind the main Kam building with none other than and Oldsmobile Tornado in the background.  My dad always wore a hat and a tie while at work managing the shop.











OK...here we go again...what was at 234 Park Street in Port Arthur.  From the following invoice it says Campbell Motor Company of Port Arthur, Limited....Central Garage.  The Invoice was made out to Pigeon Timber or in long terms it should say Pigeon River Timber, as in Pigeon River Minnesota.....or at least named after that.  Campbell Motor Company did reside at 234 Park Street as mentioned which is now the North parking lot for our Casino.  You can click on all these items to enlarge and see them better.

This is the logo for Pigeon River Timber...the client shown on the invoices.

Here is another invoice for Campbell Motor Company on 234 Park Street and shows that they sell Dodge Brothers Motor Cars and Graham Brothers Trucks.

Here are two advertising pieces that would have been in Campbell Motors Showroom in the day, as of course they sold these vehicles.  Check on the above invoice for this data.

.....and this is what 234 Park Street looks like today

Stock Cars:  In the early days of racing here especially the 1950's, so many possible hot rod projects got destroyed on the race track such as '32 Fords, '40 Fords and many old Chevrolet's, Chrysler products etc, but in the day that was only considered junk in someone's back yard.  When I started racing at Riverview raceways, the junk in the back yards were '55 to '57 Chevrolet's, Pontiac's early '50's Fords etc., and we destroyed those vehicles then just as they did in the '50's.  I destroyed 3 '55/'56 Pontiac 2-door sedans, one of which was so nice, I drove it home before we proceeded to tear it down for a race car and weld in roll bars.  I also did that to a '66 Dodge Charger in the early 1970's to race at Riverview.......here are the examples.  Now everyone wants these cars....the cycle will never end....BUT, what cars from today will people want in 20 or 25 years.  They all look the same just as they did in the 1910's....funny how history repeats itself.

Finally:  A subject in this post that I always wanted to bring up...that is, The Powder Puff Gals from the 1950's.  The promoters from our Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track always wanted to please the fans....they never wanted fans to get bored just watching the same old thing, so they promoted events such as stock car drivers staging fights in front of the old grandstand that sometimes turned into the real thing or grudge racing between two rivals...and it kept the fans coming in and proof in the pudding was that there were many race days with five to six thousand fans in the 1950's.
One of my favorite promoted events was Powder Puff Racing.  Some brave young women, some being wives or even mothers of the drivers there at the CLE would take to the track in their sons or husbands cars in all out daredevil competition.  I was great to see but in the mind site of the car owners and drivers they were sitting on tacks hoping that their cars wouldn't be destroyed before the race was over, as they had to continue racing the same day.  Eventually they would race last on race days so that if there was ever an accident, the car could at least be repaired for the next race day.
The first photo series is actually a page out of the 1953 racing program at the CLE showing those brave gals putting the pedal to the metal in those Jalopies...click to enlarge.

The second one here is a newspaper cut out showing a nice photo of the winner of the day Leona Baarup.  Another newspaper group photo is shown below.
How I miss those simpler times and days and many times wishing they could still be around....but thank goodness many photographers took pictures and many writers for the newspaper wrote incredible re-caps of the racing days back in the times of Hotrods and Jalopies.

The writers of these articles were fabulous.....you can see in the top corner here July 9/1953

Hope you enjoyed this post......let us know if you did, and join blogger so you don't miss any posts.  Thanks, Dave

Ken Coghlan's Cadillac....the Body Shop.....and Kam Motors #34, all from our home towns of Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario.

No...this isn't a misprint. The brochure page below says the 1960 Cadillac Sixty Two Sedan...who knows why...who cares! This is what Ken Coghlan's Cadillac would have looked like in 1960 or at least before the damage that you will see in the following photos.
In Ken's own words: "In 1967, I was driving the Caddy on Phyllis St., crossing Empress Ave., and was hit by a dump truck.  The truck pushed me into a telephone pole on the corner in front of the store that used to be there and actually broke the telephone pole.  You can see where the pole went behind the driver's side tire.  I went out the door and two ladies in the store helped me, but I don't remember too much from that moment.  I do remember however, looking at the car and thinking that it had some damage."

Click on all the photos once or twice for enlargements.

Seeing these photos that Ken sent me, I could hardly believe that he walked away from the accident.  Thanks to Ken for sending these for us to post......Don't go away....There is MORE!  The next picture is a now shot of where Ken's accident occurred on the corner of Empress Ave. and Phyllis St.  Ken is a former resident of Port Arthur.

The next step with accidents such as this, is where to have it repaired.  Ken didn't tell me if and where the Caddy was repaired, but if it was, it probably would have been one of the two next body shops.  The first black and white is Port Arthur Motors used car lot and Body Repair shop(this building still exists today), and the next one is my father, John Cano's alma mater Kam Motors which was on Leith Street in Fort William.  Let's consider that it was actually repaired at Kam Motors.......well, for a better storyline anyway....thanks for being patient. ☺

  Yes, now here is my dad managing the Kam Motors Body Shop in 1967 in his typical Homburg Hat...and look at that....There is a brand new 1967 Oldsmobile Tornado behind him with some damage somewhere.   The bumper sticker below was issued in 1965 commemorating Kam's 50th Anniversary.

On the right is about a 1950 ad on a brochure showing how Kam Motors looked at the time and advertising Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and of course Cadillac.  

Below is a post card Kam would mail out back in 1939 showing how they could make your car NEW again.

A now picture - "DIAMOND TAXI"

The following pictures were all taken when my father was managing the body shop at Kam Motors for Hubert Badanai Sr. back in the early 1950's.

John Cano and Joe Canzi

In this picture - all we know are John Cano, Mike Tront, Dan Ozero(with goggles), Peter Petrick, and Joe Canzi.  I remember hanging around Kam after school at 10 to 13 years old in the mid to late '50's and all these guys were so good to me....I still remember most of them....and all are now gone to the big body shop in the sky....                 ☺

Well...what do you think came next.....a body shop was supposed to repair cars, not wreck them...

 I remember when Kam Motors body and paint shop were working on their first stock car....I was 10 years old.  The 1938 Chevy Coupe almost looked as nice as the one in this picture when they started modifying it.  It was late summer 1954 and no one had any idea yet that there would be a Chevrolet with a V8 on the horizon in 1955.

..........and this is what they did to it!  My father did all the body work, Canary(Onorio) Trevisan painted it, Archie Fowler did the mechanical work, and Bill Chepil drove it on and off for about 4 summers total....and oh yes, they wrecked a few of these before it was all over.  Don't forget to click on each pic to enlarge them.

The Main Drivers of the #34, 1938 Chevrolet were Bill Chepil and Canary Trevisan.  The following picture was taken at Russ Wanzuks museum only a few years before these two icons of the paint and body world of the day Mr. Mascarin and Mr. Canary(Onorio) Trevisan passed on.

The final addition to this post is this great write-up(from Barry Kettering's personal scrap book) that was in the Fort William Times Journal in 1957.  It also mentions Sammy Myronuk filling in for Canary because he was in the hospital and Sam also ended up in the hospital after this race day.  Sammy went on to race more races with his own cars, but sadly the lack lustre 1938 Chevy Coupe's days came to an end...It seems there was more bad luck than good luck, and the V8 Fords and V8 Chevrolets were leaving the old 6 cylinder Chevrolets behind in the dust.

Many thanks to Ken Coghlan for the Caddy photos, also to Archie Fowler for some of the #34 photos, to Rene Kettering for allowing me to copy Barry's scrapbook a few years ago.

I dedicate this post to my father John Cano for the great car years together and for all he taught me....I miss him very much.  Please return for more HR&J photos and stories of our city during the Hot Rod and Jalopy generation.

Where was GRAIN PORT MOTORS and what is it's claim to fame here in Fort William and Port Arthur Ontario....

This is a bit of a follow-up to the last post due to the fact we are using old invoices to find addresses and data, and yes, you did see this first picture in the last post.  This photograph is of a Motor(Moto) Meter which was on a very famous local race car, The King's Ford Special......however this post is mostly about what this is, what it's for and the fact that a Ford Service Garage in the 1920's was a very important sponsor of the above noted race car....called Grain Port Motors (as noted right on this MotoMeter.)
This is a Boyce MotoMeter and you can read an ad here from 1912 telling you pretty much what it was, and what it was used for.  It was located on top of the radiator and protruded through the grill shell. I have never before seen and specific business name on a motor meter.  Read on to find out more, and click on all the photos and documents for enlargements.

This MotoMeter sat on the radiator of Mr. Frank Colosimo's King's Ford Special race car built by Art and Arnold King in the 1920's.  Without going into too much detail about the car on this post, you can read more about it by clicking on this link then return to read the rest. http://hotrodsandjalopies.blogspot.com/2010/08/kings-ford-special-local-star-from.html 

The following is a poster from one of the meets here at the fairgrounds in Fort William, Ontario, showing Frank as one of the racers.  One of the first known races here at the Lakehead cities was in 1914.  Frank however was pretty much unbeatable from 1925 until 1932.

In this picture to the right, you can see the MotoMeter above on the nose of the car.

Below is a picture of Al and Sandra Cronk with his restored King's Special.  Two years ago it was on display at the Thunder Bay Airport...there is still hope that this race car will eventually make it's home back here in our home town....also note the original MotoMeter still sits on the nose of the car.

This first advertisement (on the left) from Grain Port Motors was used around 1925 and predominantly shows the Fort William address as on the corner of May and Leith Street and the Port Arthur address says opposite the rink, which meant the Port Arthur Arena.  The May and Leith corner address changed to 113-119 Leith Street in about 1927, which would later become Kam Motors Limited, the Chev-Olds-Cadillac dealer.  The invoice on the right shows the Leith Street address....and interestingly enough they would adjust your brakes for only $1.75.....which actually was not an easy task on the old cars.
The next photo/newspaper clipping is from a December 1939 newspaper showing a very early shot of Kam Motors Limited then "formerly" Grain Port Motors.  Also note the Imperial sign on the top right of the clipping.  That station would have been on the north/west corner of Leith and Simpson Street, a used car lot now and formerly the Palace Confectionery.  The next picture is a Kam Motors Limited Brochure from the early 1950's.  Kam Motors is of course where my father spent 30 years of his life between 1937 and 1967 and in the later years became the body shop manager before he taught at the Gron Morgan trade school here in Thunder Bay.

This is how the original Grain Port Motors/Kam Motors looked a couple of years ago.

 ......and here on the corner of Leith and Simpson Street is a Brill Trolly bus in front of the old Palace Confectionery where I used to buy all my hot rod magazines as a young man.  The smaller picture below is how that corner looked earlier this year and the final picture taken just a few weeks ago shows that corner completely empty now, (down go all those Simpson Street buildings) but there in the background on Leith St. is the old Grain Port Motors/Kam Motors building still in use today.

The invoice below is one from the Grain Port Motors Port Arthur Garage in 1934.  It was situated pretty much across the street from the old Port Arthur Arena.  The Port Arthur Arena property now houses the Safeway Store on Court Street.  The last photo to the right shows you exactly what is at 79 N. Court St. where the garage was located back in 1934.  Click once or twice to enlarge.

This photo is a nice addition to this post thanks to Dave Howarth...which brings together the Invoice above and the place of business.

It is very interesting to see the changes in our own home town after so many years.  There have been many more buildings and landmarks torn down (some historic) just in the last few years and without this documentation the history would be lost forever....HR&J hope you enjoyed this one!! ...and thanks to the Scalzo collection for the wonderful Brill Bus photo above.