Fifteen antique cars will be in our area this week. They will be checking in at the Discovery Inn, in Campbell River, later today. That will be their base for day trips to Cortes Island, Quadra Island and the Comox Valley.

“There’ll be quite a number of Ford Model Ts, I’m not just sure how many. There’ll be at least two Buicks: mine is a 1912 and a friend of mine is going to be bringing his 1910 Buick. There’s going to be a Russell, which is a Canadian built car, and there’s going to be –  I think it’s  called a ‘Premier’ and it may be a Canadian built car as well,” explained Bruce Beecham, one of the organizers.  

“We’re all members of the Vintage Car Club of Canada and the Antique Chapter (which is basically cars that are 1915 and older). For this tour, we’ve softened that a little bit so people with 1927 and older could come. There will be a few people from Campbell River.  Myself and Darrell Wedman are from the Comox Valley. There might be  one or two people from  other parts of Vancouver Island and possibly even a few people from Washington, but I would  say the majority of the cars are going to be from the Lower Mainland.” 

CC: What’s special about your car, for example? Why have you got an antique car? 

BB: “I’m a Buick collector. I don’t have other makes in my car collection other than Buick’s. My particular Buick is what they call a Demi – Tonneau, which there were two versions of, and it’s a model 29. There were model 35s in 1912.  There was a model 34, I believe, in 1912. There was a model 28 and a model 29 in 1912. There were two versions of that. One is, like I said, a Demi – Tonneau, and then there was a model 43, which was the largest of the Buicks in 1912.” 

“The American made versions of those 1912 Buicks are all what we call ‘brass cars,’ so that all of the trimmings are brass, brass coloured, and in the McLaughlin Buick version of those cars in 1912,  all the trimmings were nickel plated.” 

“They were quite bright and nice looking. When I bought this car, I was looking for a brass car.  I already had a 1912 model: a 35 Buick which is  a nickel plated car and I really wanted a brass car. That’s why I bought it.”

CC: Tell me about your itinerary. The cars will arrive in Campbell River on Monday the 19th. Where are you going after that?  

BB: “The first day, Tuesday the 20th, we decided to go to the Comox Valley.”

“Originally we thought that we would be  coming to Cortes Island on that Tuesday, but then we realized it was a dangerous cargo day. It could interfere with timing for meals and different things. So we decided  to go on the 21st, which is a Wednesday.”  

Prior to the day he and Wedman arrived to take a preliminary trip around the island, Beecham does not think anyone from the club had visited Cortes Island.

“We did the circle tour from the ferry to Squirrel Cove, and then back around the southern route to Manson’s Landing. At the end of the day we said, ‘Oh, this is way too strenuous for all these old cars.’ We almost decided just to stay around in the Campbell River area. There were lots of discussion for a few days afterwards and then we decided to go to Manson’s Landing, have lunch, and head back to the ferry.” 

CC: The Cortes Island Museum has sent out invitations stating you will be stopping there for lunch and a break, at 11 AM

BB: “We’ll be at the museum and at the school for sure. We want to go to the school so the school kids can have a look at the old cars. We may go down to Smelt Bay, depending on how much time we have to make our ferry connections. We want to get the 3:50 ferry off the island so that we can return in time for dinner.”

Access: Antique Car Club: Lunch stop at the Cortes Island Museum

“It would be a little less strenuous to go to Quadra Island on the 22nd and then back to having a banquet dinner at the Discovery Inn that evening. I didn’t arrange that much of that part of the tour, but I think we are probably going to go to Rebecca Spit, the Cape Mudge Lighthouse, I know we were going to go to the museum in the village and we’ll probably be going to some of the artisans on the south end of the island. For instance, I think one’s called James Pottery, there is a winery, an art glass place, and I believe we’ll be going to April Point for lunch.” 

CC : How long will you be in the area? 

BB: Everybody will be going home on Friday, June 24th.

Two related Cortes Island photos:

Links of interest:

• Webpage of the Antique Chapter, Vintage Car Club of Canada
• Media page for the Antique Chapter
• Read about an already old Model T Ford’s drive around Cortes Island in 1947.

The podcast contains two short clips from Al Jolsen’s ‘That Haunting Melody,’ the #1 song for 1912.  

Top image credit: Model T Ford – circa 1915 – Photo courtesy Aussie Mobs via Flickr (CC BY SA, 2.0 License) 

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