THIS Fort William & Port Arthur Ontario, now Thunder Bay's FIRST History Blog/Web Page Celebrates 10 Years of History and Over 1 Million Views

I am incredibly grateful for everyone's support over the past 10 years, as without the many readers of the Hotrods and Jalopies blog pages, I would have likely never continued with it.

HR&J is also posting history on the Dave Cano Facebook page as well as The Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Memories Facebook page.  In the beginning it was a little overwhelming and when I took on my personal Facebook page and the group page CLE memories, it has become almost a daily task to keep things up.

I also receive many photos, news clippings and ideas locally and from former residents of Fort William and Port Arthur/Thunder Bay, and I sometimes have difficulty keeping it all in some order.  I plan to carry on as long as I can, and my hopes are that by preserving our history this way, it will continue on long after I cannot.  I get letters from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Los Angeles California, and eastern and western Canada, saying how much they like the blog.  Some people think it's only about cars and racing but as most of you know, it is a mixture of local history and racing.  On the Internet the blog comes up as Hotrods and Jalopies, but on the home page I added a few words to remind people that it's also about local history, therefore reading "The Hotrods and Jalopies Generation" which covers it all.
Many thanks also to Gary Spence and Richard Mark for continuing with the local history on Facebook in their own special way.  We also exchange photos and information continually.
Many thanks to all the contributors of photos, stories and memories.  Also many thanks to my friend Al Yahn for being my proof reader for 10 years, and to my family for their patience.

Today I am posting 25 of my favourite then and now city history photos....no racing in this bunch.  Some of the "now" ones have become "then's" already...that's how fast our history progresses.  I am not adding any writing to them or hints as to what and where they are.  See if you can remember.
In addition I am adding one personal favourite of myself(sorry for that) which will start off the posts.
Finally...be sure to click on each and every one for a full screen enlargement, then come back.

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING FOR 10 YEARS......

THE BARBER CAR....It was right here in our home town back in 1975....

This is one of those "do it now before you forget" posts.  The Barber Car in this very first photo was taken by yours truly here in Thunder Bay at a car show in the Coliseum building in 1975.  I was compelled to do this post after reading a most incredible book by "Hot Rod" writer Pat Ganahl called "Lost Hot Rods".  It is a must read for all you gearheads out there....thanks for the loan Dennis.
THE BARBER CAR.

As it looked at the CLE Coliseum in 1975 here in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

While it might be hard to keep a razor steady at 150 miles-per-hour, this vehicular barber shop is fully functional and capable of such neck-nicking speeds. The bizarre Barber Car is one of many curious and wildly expensive cars in the vault below the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

The Vault, which stores around 150 vehicles that are in between exhibitions or just don't quite fit anywhere in the museum, was closed to the public since the museum opened in 1994 (although VIPs, along with someone who got in with an old Volvo key, got to see the subterranean auto treasure trove). It opened for the first time for tours in late 2012, and, due to high demand (people were lining up outside), the museum recently announced that these tours would be going on indefinitely. Along with the Barber Car is a Mercedes-Benz that belonged to Saddam Hussein, a bullet resistant car that was commissioned by the White House just a day after Pearl Harbor, President Clinton's golf cart, a 1925 Round Door Rolls-Royce recovered from a New Jersey junkyard, and a 1957 Jaguar owned by Steve McQueen.

The Barber Car was imagined in 1969 by car customizer Joe Bailon, who invented the popular Candy Apple Red paint and also designed the totally bizarre and fanciful Pink Panther Car.



This is how it looked in the Vault - I don't know what's with the one wheel in the rear!

 At the time, there was a custom car craze for wilder and wilder vehicles for car shows, and the Barber Car delivered with twin antique barber chairs positioned between two authentic barber poles that worked as turn signals, as well as a porcelain sink equipped with hot and cold water. The whole interior was upholstered in red velvet and even has a stereo, and installed up front is a 400 horsepower Corvette engine. Perhaps someone could use the Barber Car to stage a rollicking road trip version of Sweeney Todd?                                                                                                                                           

As shown in the Peterson Museum - California.



 

Did we build this kit?....Was one ever made?

 

Lovely in black and white ☺

 

This is how it looks in Pat Ganahl's book.

 Since I can't legally copy the whole story from Pat's book....be sure to pick it up and read it yourself...once more....It's called "Lost Hot Rods".....and I think even though it's pretty bizarre....it was pretty cool to see it right in our own home town back in the 1970's.  You've gotta love it!



Early Thunder Bay Theatres and Top 10 for Christmas 2012

While winding down the Christmas countdown for this year, it was interesting to check the Internet to get a few top 10 lists of viewers Christmas Films.  The favorite top 10 are below with a complete documented history of each film at the end of this post, and also showing the awards which they had won.

Here are some of the old local theatres in Fort William and Port Arthur Ontario where you may have seen some of the older films back in the day.  I had actually watched the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol to my total fright at about age 8, and had nightmares about it for years.

Be sure to click on all the photos for a larger view.

 
"It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story" were such a contrast in how we viewed Christmas in the 1940's and then again in the 1980's.  Both these top 2 films are my personal all time favourites.





 

INTERESTING TIDBIT:

The Bing Crosby song "White Christmas" which is still the most sold single recording of all time was actually introduced in the 1942 film "Holiday Inn" shown here.  It won an academy award that year and also 12 years later in 1954 won another academy award for the film named after the original single.

 

Here is the page 1 and page 2 lists of the above films, who starred in them and what awards they had won.  Click on these once or twice to read the data.