Recently recovered photos from the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition Racing Days in our home towns of Fort William and Port Arthur, Ontario....

     With much thanks to Paula Orr and the owner of these photos, Gary Becotte and with permission we are able to add an all new HR&J post after many months.  Some of these photos are very rare to me as not many have been taken of these cars, particularly Tom Dow's car and his hauler.  A few other photos were taken from what was called the mezzanine.  The CLE added extra uncovered bleachers on the north side of the covered grandstand a few years after racing started at the CLE in the early 1950's.

The first photo here is of Tom Dow's race car hauler painted to match his car back in 1954.  The picture was taken in the lane-way behind what was the original Dow's Auto Electric which was located at 112 N. May St. later to become Chris' Billiard Hall.  The building still exists today in the same location.  

The building in the background here is the rear of the original St. Stanislaus (Stan's) school which also still exists today....the front of it faces Miles St.  

Tom and his brother built and tuned Tom's #2 car in that building on 112 N. May.  This is also where Tom met Barry Kettering who worked a few years before then for Thorne's Sargent Automotive which was located on the large parking lot on Violet St., before a spectacular fire had destroyed it.

The next photo here is the rear of the old St. Stan's school which can be seen behind the above photo and behind the following photo as well.

Here's is how Tom Dow's car looked in 1953/54.  It was a 1932 Ford 3-window coupe.  The holy grail of the Hot Rod world today.

The building below is the rear of 112 N. May St. as it looks today.  You can see where the centre of the garage area was once opened to a large door where the Dow brothers worked on #2.

The picture on the right is of a very young Tom Dow in racing whites.... well I guess they were white before the races started.

It's interesting to read the newspaper article below from July 29, 1954 to see what was happening at the old CLE 1/2 mile racetrack.  Tom did go on to win the 1954 Championship and carry the trophy home.

 Next:

The following scrap yard photo is the first race car that Walter (Wally) (Walt) Prokosh raced at the CLE grounds in the same era that Tom Dow raced.  The car was sponsored by D & J Stitt Menswear, and Mid City Machinery.  It stood the test of time in 1953 but succumbed to it's injuries and by the end of the year, Wally had a brand new Jalopy to race.

 

Here's Wally's next car...a very nice '37 Ford coupe with the same sponsors and number 55.  Wally did pretty well with this car but destiny would change his future as you will see in the next photo.

Wally was offered a driver's seat in the bright yellow #54 car owned and built by the Abitibi Power and Paper Company of Port Arthur.  This winning car gave Wally a big name in the racing community here in the early 1950's.  It was a 1933 Ford 3-window coupe.  The use here of the wide 5 wheels from Ford's 1936 vehicles helped hold them to the hub at a 10 1/2 bolt circle.  There were less wheel loss from a larger circle and the racing community continued to use the 10 1/2's for decades to come particularly on sprint cars.

Here's a great picture of Wally Prokosh, cig in hand and goggled helmet being very cool with his new jalopy to drive.  This car also had a Ford overhead valve engine which basically put most of the flathead engines back in the pack.

Next:

Smack dab in the middle of these great photos is this very early, circa 1953 photo of Don Marsh's #60 car which I believe was Don's very first stock car, sporting a Ford flathead engine and a yellow and black paint scheme.  Don also did very well in his early years of racing.

 

From the Mezzanine this photo was taken of #77 Clyde Ditmars from Kakabeka Falls leading an unknown driver here coming out of turn 4.  There was consistant great racing at the CLE track in the 1950's and as a kid I dreamed about someday racing a jalopy, but it had to wait until I was older and until Riverview Raceway was built, and by then they weren't called jalopies.

 

Here's another of Wally Prokosh coming out of turn 4 as well with what looks like someone on their lid halfway through the corner.  Not clear but who cares....these are great photos.

 

Here's another of Wally in #54 with #36 further down the track. 

Finally we have Albert Massaro in his Rea's Esso #88 car going the wrong way 👈😂 ....and I have no idea who's driving the blurred car. 

Lastly here is the actual Lakehead Stock Car Club logo which was put to use on literally hundreds of racing jackets from the good old Canadian Lakehead Exhibition days.

All the above photos were copied and edited to make them as clear as we could to bring out the detail. Thanks again to Gary Becotte for the photos and Paula Orr for bringing them to our attention at the Hotrods and Jalopies blog pages.  A couple of my archive photos and a news clip were also added.

......thanks for visiting us again at HR&J, with more new racing posts to come.

Winter 2020 Self Isolation 1:25 Scale Diorama Project with some Fort William and Port Arthur History

Finally after many months I've put together a completely different kind of post.  This is my COVID-19 isolation project....no I don't have it, just being careful and smart.  We all know we're in this together and are trying to occupy our time doing what we enjoy the most.

Before I show you the project photos, there is a little history I want to talk about here.

Years back there used to be an oil refinery on McKellar Island that some of us may remember as The Husky Oil Refinery, but before that, and one of the photos will explain, the refinery was called Riverlake Oil Refinery.  There is history about that on the Internet, but the name that I was drawn to was Riverlake Oil, or "RO".  In the 1950's there was a sign in the pit area at the old Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track that just read "RO".  Riverlake Oil was run by McEwen Fuels Petroleum Distributors in the 1950s until Riverlake was taken over by Husky.
This peaked my interest, and so I began a research project which culminated in building an old service station model in 1:25 scale of a Riverlake Oil station which actually never existed.
Interested yet?  Well, to add to the fictitious service station I also added a "What If" to the project.  "What if" the Lakehead Stock Car Club would have bought that old station and converted it into a LSCC Clubhouse.
So that's it.  Over the last 5 months I built the scale building and as many of the local race cars from the 1950s that would fit on the diorama.  There are quite a few photos and at the end there are pictures of the models by themselves with a corresponding photo of the real jalopy that raced here at the CLE in the 1950's.  I tried to create as much realism as possible.  A neighbor and good friend of mine Karl Schmidt supplied me with all the scale lumber that I needed, as he used to have a similar scale outside model railroad.

We start off with what I think are the most realistic two photos in the group, and the others photos are how the project was put together.  Also you can click on each picture in this entire post to enlarge screen size.

 All the posters and wall hangings are computer generated and miniaturized, and all the license plates are Ontario plates and all before 1956.

Here is a little write-up on the Riverlake - Husky thing that may be interesting to you, as well as all the appropriate logos.

 

This first photo shows the front of the RO service station with worn signage, including a nice old Ford V8 sign, some beat up old gas pumps, a coke machine and one guy carrying an old fuel container and another guy changing the tire on Tom Dow's car, as well as a local Bourke's Drug Store sign on the side of the building which looks painted and aged.  I tried to make everything look very busy.

Now back to basics - The initial construction was done using scale rough ceder lumber such as 2 x 4's,  2 x 6's, beams and ship lap lumber.  The building was finished first, then mounted on a base to do the scenery, using screened beach sand and other model railroad greenery, flowers weeds etc.

The first thing I totally completed right up to weathering was the outhouse.  It was a practice project that I started before I began the initial garage building.  To get the wood to instantly look old, I used a bottle of water with 1 tbsp of India ink.  after it dried it look just like barn board.

Here it's starting to look old.  The tiny hinges about 1/2 the size of my baby finger I found on Amazon and they actually came from Holland....free shipped and about $5. for more than I needed.
This is the rear of the building with a little hatch to access the attic, and scrap-booking corrugated paper painted silver and weathered to look like a tin roof overhang.

Here's how the front looked with the weathered RO signs and the "new" Lakehead Stock Car Club sign.  No gas pumps were done yet.

 

The weathering was almost completed here and the wooden flooring is computer generated from real old flooring then printed out on satin photo paper.

Many things can't be bought or are too costly...so making this little pepsi cooler was the best way.  3 sides computer generated printed on photo paper then glued to a wooden block...pretty convincing I think.  LOL


Here, a two inch long Go Kart on a working stand....many of the stock car jockeys from the 1950s also raced their Go Karts at the Intercity Parking lot
Also I'm making little shelving, workbenches etc out of light balsa wood and trying to be creative with old paint cans and oil cans.  Also, a junkyard for the rear of the building made up of many old model car parts, glued together, rusted out and weathered.  You will see more when everything is installed in the Clubhouse.                                       

Tiny Go Kart on a work stand with a full size pencil beside it.

Here's a model of Don Marsh's car with a compressor and the finished shelf at the broken window.

Bench Detail is shown in these two next photos.  Much of the detail is available in different model kits but adding your own finer detail such as signage, fan belts, oil cans extra engines adds more and more to the detail.








Everything in model kits are basically just white, so everything has to be painted.  I use a huge lighted magnifying glass to the detail.
The Oxy-Acetylene tanks come in kits but have to be painted and detailed.  Fine red and green wire make the hoses.  The wood stove is made from a wooden ball and a pop cap plus small wood pieces and the chimney is a bendy straw.





This is the more detailed back of the building with everything now installed including the outhouse, signs, pop crates, trees bushes and even some racoons in the garbage cans.

These next two photos show the detail local Coca Cola sign...computer generated and thinned out to tissue paper consistency.  Then glued to the shiplap.

This one shows some outside detail including a hydro meter and tap and garden hose.  The next few shows the interior in its final stages with everything in place.  Everything is glued in except the vehicles.  They can easily be changed around.

 There are a number of Ontario era perfect license plates on both of the doors that swing out like barn doors.








Here's a full overhead shot....

 These last three collage photographs show each of the models in 1:25 scale on either side of an actual photo of the real cars

I hope you enjoyed all the photographs.
Before ending this post, Rosemary and I would like to thank all our front line workers including both my daughters-in-law doing their best looking after all of us during these difficult times.  We must keep our social distancing to protect us and our loved ones during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Take good care of yourselves and anyone else that you can.  We WILL get through this together.  Dave

More Legendary CLE Racing Stories from our hometowns of Fort William and Port Arthur.....

This post starts with a Then and Now picture so as to imagine where the 1/2 mile dirt track named the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition race track (Lakehead Stock Car Club) was actually located.  The golf dome was built just inside of what we used to call turn 2 of the track, and Silver City movie theatre is located smack dab where the grandstand used to be.  Many of the perimeter out buildings still exist today, however the major change was the re-routing of the river to incorporate the newer floodway.  We lost the walking bridge to where the CLE midway used to be, as well as much of the property on the north side of the river which was eventually sold to the intercity mall area.  #1 - Dorothy Dove building.  #2 - CLE Auditorium building.  #3 - CLE Coliseum building.  #4 - Judges Stand.  #5 - Grandstand.  #6 - The Original CLE Midway area.  #7 - The Original Walking Bridge to the midway.  #8 - Fort William and Port Arthur Transit turn around terminal.

Top photo thanks to Richard Huston.  Click once or twice on all photos to enlarge.

Once you get the idea then we can proceed with a great story remembered by my friend and proof reader Alan Yahn...but first, a little more history thanks to Tom Dow.  If this superb picture below of a very young Tom Dow on the left and Barry Kettering on the right could speak...they would likely be discussing plans to race their "bug's" as Tom Dow would call them at the Murillo track back in the early 1950's, and maybe make some plans to make some cash as well.  Tom told the story about bringing their bugs to Murillo to race....and...they would pay participants cash money to come and race their cars...some actually driven daily on the street.  They would charge spectators one buck (which was high for the day) to watch.  Tom said they couldn't believe that at the end of a race day they would have collected many cardboard boxes full of dollar bills.  They did have their first meet at Murillo in the 50's but soon headed to a much larger and better track at the CLE.  It wasn't the first time that cars raced at the CLE.  The famed King's Special being one...

Barry and Tom became great friends, as Tom initially worked with his brother at Dow's Auto Electric on May St. before starting his own electroplating business on Vicker's street near the Fort William Gardens, and Barry initially worked for Thornes-Sargent (shown here on Violet Street), an Automotive Service Centre just across the laneway behind Dows.  The property is a present day parking lot since a fire in the 1950's destroyed Thornes-Sargent.  This recent extremely rare photo find (Thanks to Russ Wanzuk's photo album collection) although a double exposure, nicely shows where Thornes Sargent was on Violet Street.  The long building at the end of Violet Street was Northern Engineering.  It's now a parking lot too.  This is the first and only photo I have ever seen of Thornes-Sargent Motor Service.

This is how the Thornes Sargent property looks today.....from May St. you can now look all the way over to the old James Murphy Coal Company building on Simpson St.

The story continues and gets a little better.....Alan Yahn remembers that Bud Heidrick of Bud's One Stop Service, sponsor of the famed silver #47 car and future employer of Barry Kettering had stated to Barry that he had to stop rolling his '37 Ford over.  To assist Barry in accomplishing this, Bud had a pair of roller skates welded to the top of his race car and promised to remove them when Barry completed the feat to stay on all four tires...No more rollovers.  History has proven that he did that and much much more.

closeup of the photo above

Below is the front and back photo of the original Dow's Auto Electric (still there today at 112 N. May St.) which was across from the old Times Journal building.  Dow's Auto Electric moved to 785 Memorial Ave by the late 1950's, and Tom Dow had started his Chrome (Electroplating) business at 327 N. Vicker's St.

Barry and his brother Glen would work for Bud's then have their own Husky Service Station across from the CPR station on Syndicate Ave.  Sometimes it is extremely difficult to put certain people in certain service stations during the booming automotive service days of the 1950's and 1960's, as mechanics and service station owners moved around quite a bit.

Front at 112 N. May St.

Rear of 112 N' May St

If you look at the rear of 112 N. May St above, you can see a blocked in entrance where vehicles would enter and be attended to.  The two photos below are of Tom Dow and his brother working on their #2 car nicknamed "Nipper"...from the comic strip of the day in the shop shown above.

This last Then and Now was originally posted to my facebook page, and shows another photo of Barry Kettering's many race cars (thanks Al) parked at Bud's Service in the 1950's.  The actual service station building still exists today As Dave Knight Optical on the corner of McKellar St. and Victoria Ave.  McKellar St. was originally called John St. before amalgamation of the twin cities of Fort William and Port Arthur into Thunder Bay in 1970.  

We hope you enjoyed another episode from the Hot Rod and Jalopy days in our home town.

As you all know Barry Kettering passed away many years ago from an unfortunate racing accident, however Tom Dow is still with us to help us all remember those wonderful days at the old CLE race track....and Barry's legacy lives on......