Just after Canada’s 156th birthday, five vintage Ford cars from the 1920s and ‘30s and their drivers embarked upon the first ever Pine to Prairie Relic Run, a historic 338-mile cross-provincial journey from the Manitoba-Ontario border (Pine) to the Manitoba-Saskatchewan border (Prairie).
The lineup of vehicles included a 1923 Ford Model T 4-door Touring Sedan, a 1928 Ford Model A 2-door Sedan, a 1928 Ford Model A 2-door Depot Hack, a 1930 Ford Model A 4-door Sedan and a 1931 Ford Model T 2-door Victoria.
Using a 1926 road map, the drivers focused on traversing the original Trans-Canada Highway as much as possible, at a top speed of about 45 mph.
“Don Wadge of Winnipeg, owner and driver of the (1923) Model T, and I were on the board of the Manitoba Agricultural Museum,” said Dr. Gordon Goldsborough, head researcher for the Manitoba Historical Society and organizer of the Relic Run. “Between meetings, we chat about various things and I was telling him how I’ve been trying to map the location of the original highways in Manitoba. A lot of them have changed over the years. The Trans-Canada Highway has changed a lot. One of my fantasies was to drive the original Trans-Canada as it was when it was first established in the 1930s. Wadge agreed that it would be interesting to make the drive in an old car from that era and once word got out, the interest snowballed.
“At one time, we had seven (cars),” Goldsborough said. “There were a couple of guys that had mechanical things they just couldn’t deal with in time. Ironically, the engine of the 1928 Model A belonging to Charlie Boldock of Killarney had just been re-assembled the week prior to the tour after undergoing rebuilding.
“He jokes that he put it all together and there were no parts left over, so off he went.”
After navigating road construction barricades and detours, the Relic Run rolled into Virden’s Pioneer Home Museum on July 5, where a small crowd of locals was on hand to greet them and to spend a couple of hours stepping back in time, sharing stories. Goldsborough said the interest was so strong in the more than 10 communities they visited that the group had difficulty sticking to its travel schedule.
“It far surpassed my expectations,” he said. “I thought we’d get a few car enthusiasts out, but we’ve seen crowds pretty much everywhere we’ve stopped. I think what it says is that people find it interesting that we’re trying to go across the province and more importantly that we’re doing it with old cars that would have probably done this 100 years ago if somebody decided they wanted to do it. I think it speaks to the quality with which those cars were built in those days…. To have this number of hundred-year-old cars still driving…I’m impressed.”
Aside from a couple of mechanical setbacks, Goldsborough said the trip was quite uneventful.
“We ran into a bit of rain,” he said. “The brakes on some of them have needed a bit of adjustment. The brakes were never all that good on these old cars. You always had to allow a little bit of extra time for them to stop, but that’s really it. We actually at one point had them up to 60 kilometres per hour (about 37mph). By modern standards that’s pretty slow, but these old boys were just racing along. We’ve been maintaining a pace of about 50 kilometres per hour.”
Goldsborough explained that the objective of the Relic Run is to raise funds for the construction of a roof over the Tree Planting Car, an 84-foot railway car constructed in the 1920s, to protect it from the elements. The work will cost about $40,000.
“Last fall the (Manitoba Agricultural) Museum took possession of the Tree Planting Car,” he said. “It’s a modified railway car that for 50 years… crossed the prairies. Basically, it was a classroom and theatre on rails. They would pull into a town and tell people about the benefits of trees and encourage people to plant them. It’s estimated that millions of trees all over Western Canada owe their existence to this Tree Planting Car.”
Films about trees were shown to students and programming for adults was provided as well.
Goldsborough said that future plans call for the development of an exhibit on the history of tree planting on the prairies.
The Pine to Prairie Relic Run will be documented in Goldsborough’s upcoming third book about Manitoba history, to be released in October.
“The conclusion is not yet written, and it’s about the Relic Run,” he said. “I’ve been scribbling notes as I’ve been going along and when I get home I’m going to put all those notes into a chapter of my next book which is entitled “On the Road to Abandoned Manitoba.”
“The idea is that you can get out on the road, you can see Manitoba, you can enjoy what we have and you can perhaps do it in an old car.”
