Old Cars, A Great Find, Go Karts, and Some Surprises in Our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur

   We'll start off this post in Kam Motors used car lot in about 1939.  Here is my father Jonnie Cano in the front trying to look cool sitting on the fender of a who knows what, with a couple of co-workers taking a break from filling oil bottles or replacing a windshield on an old Chevy or Oldsmobile.  It looks to be a mild winter day.
   The "Kam Motors" proof is the portion of the sign in red and shown close up after.  Obviously the houses are no longer there as that whole area to the lane way ended up being a car lot in the day.
I always say it, but it is a reminder to click on every photo once or twice to enlarge.

 

Here's an old circa 1950 Kam Motors brochure showing where the lettering was at the top of the building front, and a fairly current photo of the same building on Leith St. today.

We've talked about Dinty's many times in the past on this blog site and of course you know by now if you are a reader of this blog how Gordie Crompton came to use the word Dinty's.
Below we have more to add to the story beginning with Dinty's Sea View Motel....The Sea View still exists as shown in the following photo but not called Dinty's.

We talked about how Gordie was offered a neon sign from a sign company left over from an unpaid customer.  It didn't have Gordie's name on it but had the word "Dinty's" on it and he ended up taking it, then obviously making some of his future business ventures called Dinty's.
Below is a photo of #57 Jalopy Stock Car built by the Provincial Paper Mill who actually hired a guy named Barry Kettering to drive it.....pay attention now because many of HR&J's stories are inter-twined.  The race car is parked on Cumberland St., right in front of the first Dinty's (red square around the sign).....and you know later that Gordie ran a few KFC's (Kentucky Fried Chicken) places after the Dinty's ones finally closed.
Today's KFC is two properties just to the left of the original one.  When you do research you have to look hard at old photos....the backgrounds tell many other stories.
There are two different photos here to see the original neon Dinty's sign.  The person standing and the kid in the car are unknown.  If anyone recognizes them, please let me know.

 

Here you can read Dinty's very well....

 In this photo...car U2 with well known American driver Dean Harrington in the foreground, Dinty's is the building on the left with the upright facade, and the building on the right was a McEwen Husky Fuel depot then.  That building still exists today and the original Dinty's is now an empty lot.

This is how the property looks today...the empty lot was Dinty's and as previosly noted, the KFC is two properties to the north of the original.

.....the building on the right was Ron Wilson's Lakehead Speed and Custom shop in the 1960s.

Here's a truly historic then and now.  The then photo of course are those great jalopy stock cars that we write about from the 1950's kicking up dirt along the backstretch of the old CLE racetrack.(I can name them all.)  Behind the race cars is a tall fence to keep out freebee onlookers.  Behind that is the old bus turn around between Fort William and Port Arthur remembering at one time one would have to change buses to go to Port Arthur or back to Fort William.....
At that same time the Electric brill buses existed which powered themselves from the overhead trolley lines.
The bottom photo is taken basically in the same location as the one above it.....that corner of the CLE grounds of course is paved now and is to the east of the now damaged golf dome....all at the corner of Northern Ave and Fort William Road.

Here is some 1950's memorabilia from the Lakehead Stock Car Club days(human and other..LOL)...The handsome guy on the left is Merv Dove and if you remember, he ran the famous white #31 Maple Leaf Service car in the 1950's, was more than once or twice voted The Most Gentlemanly Driver at the CLE and later became one of the top flagmen at Riverview Raceways....A guy that could jump higher than a car while waving the checkered flag.  Merv is wearing his original jacket from the day...and to the right is a closeup of the Lakehead Stock Car Club logo and a closeup of Merv's crest.

Below are samples of the club cards from the actual Lakehead Stock Car Racing Association from 1957...the white card being the driver's card and the red being the pit crew's card.  The first card is circa 1953 and actually called the event a Jalopy Race.  The light blue one is from 1963 and was likely one of the last racing cards from the CLE days.

GO KARTS....those little 4 wheel powerhouses that started something which was considered a fad in the late 1950s and has continued over time to be an important tool in race car driver training.
Well, yes we did have go karts in those days and yours truly had one too...already written about in this blog, but most people don't remember guys racing them in the Sears parking lot in the day.  Parking lot racing ended with businesses having to kick everyone off their property because of insurance issues....they didn't want the liability of someone getting seriously hurt and making a claim against the businesses or company's that had large paved parking areas.  After that, specific Go Kart tracks had to be built designed for their type of racing and had to carry some serious liability insurance.  The last parking lot organized racing was in the late 1970's at K-Mart on Arthur St.

I don't know the source of these following photos, but they are truly incredible.  In the Go Kart below is none other than Ross "Pappy" Fowler well known in the 1950's for his #10 Jalopy Stock Car and racing at the old CLE grounds.  These photos were all taken at the Intercity Plaza parking lot in the early 1960's.  Most of the faces I don't recognize, so if you know anyone else in the photos please let me know.

Ross "Pappy" Fowler #10 CLE

I don't know for sure but it looks like it could be Barry Kettering on the far left....he used to wear that type of hat.  Here the photo faces north and you can see the northern end of the Intercity Plaza property showing the bank and the life insurance company....to the left would have been Loblaws Grocery Store where I worked in high school.

My son Darren at K-Mart 1980

Pappy Fowler here again....and also the south end of the plaza...

The last part of this post is a memory of Red Top Cabs.  I've had a large door decal around my house for years and here it is along side one of their business cards

Here is where Red Top Cabs was in the day on Simpson Street......Hope you enjoyed this post and always remember you can make comments....it's easier than you think.  Thanks for watching....Dave

DINTY'S, Gord Crompton and the Rest of the Story in Our Home Towns of Fort William and Port Arthur....

Icons of our past get lost in in our memories, but certain ones remain all our life.  We still have KFC because they are afraid to call it Kentucky "fried" Chicken anymore because saying that sounds like it's full of "fat"....Well folks, it still is!!!
Enough of that.....Kentucky Fried Chicken was always "DINTY'S" back in the day...and that's the name we will always remember.........BUT.......how did that come about??
Gordon "Gordy" Crompton was quite an entrepreneur (still is), but his claim to fame were a few interesting things as we will see....and many more I don't even know about......

Firstly it was DINTY'S Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In the phone book page from 1962 you can see quite a few Cafes and Restaurants....but one of the big two at the bottom was the well advertised "Dinty's".  Many ads were in school yearbooks, IODE recipe books, in the TV guide etc. etc.

"DINTY'S" as we see was a well known name....scroll down to see how it became Dinty's... ...be sure to click on all the ads in this post to enlarge them and read this right to then end...It's a good story.

OK.....Told by his daughter (yes his daughter) Sam.....Gordy always liked a good deal, and all his life he was well known for that.  Back when Gordy wanted to start the Kentucky Fried Chicken business, he went to purchase a Neon Sign that would have his name on it as well as the KFC logo.  He ventured to Deluxe Signs on Cumberland St., and found that it was a little expensive for Neon especially since his name was quite long and the price was likely by the letter.  Management of Deluxe signs offered Gordy a great deal.  It seams as though there was a sign made that was never picked up, but had something other than Gordy's name on it......You guessed it........ it said DINTY'S.  Gordy could not pass up the deal ......and now you know the rest of the story.  By the way, the TV above with the ad is thanks to my facebook friend Gary Spence.

LOCATIONS 

The Fort William location was where the "Burger Barn" is today on the corner of Walsh and Syndicate streets.  That is the intersection where you would travel up the Jacknife Bridge to cross over to Island #1 and #2 as we called them.

 The Port Arthur location was at 303 N. Cumberland Street.  The actual location is the next photo, but when Gordy gave up the business Kentucky Fried Chicken was moved a little further north down Cumberland St.

Now if you look back at the ad in the phone book page at the beginning, you will see that in 1962 it said there were 3 locations.  The last location is actually here at 380 John Street....John and Banning Street to be exact.  This is the location as it is directly across from Kangas Sauna and there address is 379 John Street.  This Dinty's location also had offices on the second floor.

Now for argument sake, many people think there was a Dinty's at the corner of Waterloo and Arthur St. in Fort William....the answer is no.  The property at 2013 Arthur Street in the day belonged to Percy Dacey, and was called Dacey's Drive Inn....later to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Gordy also ran a place called the 4D (The Fourth Dimension) which was a coffee house and the areas first folk club.  Gord Crompton opened the coffeehouse in 1962, which was formerly called "The Club Seaway" near the corner of George and McVicar St. (later the Simpson Street extension).  He couldn't call that Dinty's because it was part of a coffeehouse chain with locations in Regina and Winnipeg.  The building over time was demolished to make way to join Simpson Street to Arthur Street.

Local folk and entertainment groups played at all three locations of the 4D's such as The Rovers, Tom Kelly, and The Ramblers.  In April of 1965 Neil Young and the Squires opened for Stephen Stills group called "The Company",  Stills was impressed with Neil's band but the Squires broke up in the summer of 1965.

Many other groups and bands played there until it closed such as The Vendettas,...who returned in Sept 1966 with a new drummer from a local group call The Bluestone Five.  They left Fort William in October before the 4D closed for good.

The following maps show where "The Fourth Dimension" was.  Click on each.

Here is an excerpt from the Thunder Bay News Watch in 2012

Oh, and Yes there was a Dinty's Motor Inn on Cumberland Street called the Sea-View which still exists to this day without Gordy's DINTY'S name.

We couldn't end this story without a vintage car story....and this 1948 Buick Hearse is none other than Neil Young's Car he travelled in from gig to gig.  Gordy's daughter Sam tells one final story about the hearse being parked in front of the Crompton home particularly at Christmas, as Neil would enjoy had Christmas dinner with them.

Neil was and still is a car enthusiast, and one particular song he sung was about this hearse "Long May You Run".............Click to Play.... Many thanks to Gordon Crompton's daughter Sam for the memories, and Gary Spence for the Graphic work on the Television Set above.
We hope you enjoyed this long awaited story...thanks for checking back from time to time for new stuff.  Dave Cano at HR&J

What We Watched in February and March of 1965 - Lakehead TV Guide!

Nostalgia: The 1986 Webster's dictionary says, "home-sickness, sentimental longing for past times --adj. nostal'gic, feeling, showing or expressing home-sickness, or, more often regret for vanishing days...(greek - nostos....a return, algos....pain)."
Well, whatever the meaning is, Greek or not, it is a little sadness for vanishing good days, days that you remember that make you feel good, not regretful. My thought is that as we progress through our life...things of the past give us joy, not regret, as you will surely experience looking at the following items from the Fort William and Port Arthur TV Guides from 1965.

I had found these amongst my collection of vintage paper and found some great ads and memories regarding the tv shows we watched around the Lakehead area. On the two covers is The Pettycoat Junction family on the left and Bewitched on the right. A page or two into the first one is an ad for the Don Brown Duo appearing in the Marine Room which was in the Shoreline Hotel on 61 Cumberland Street.

Our typical great Brill bus photo from 1969 shows the Shoreline sign just above the bus. The next clipping is of Donna Douglas who played the roll of Elly May Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies".

A great photo of the cast of the Beverly Hillbillies with Elly, Granny, Jed and Jethro....and....did you remember that their dogs name was "Duke"? Next is The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Do you remember what the letters stood for? Guess before you scroll down.

"United Network Command for Law and Enforcement". The agents were Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo, David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, and Leo G. Carroll played Alexander Waverlly, the British head of the organization.
The photo on the right is an autographed one of the Bewitched Television Show, Elizabeth Montgomery, Agnes Moorehead, and Dick York.

Here are the CKPR Radio hit pages of the two TV Guides...be sure to click on them to see the top hits of February and March of 1965....plus a few ad's you will remember, even if you're younger than I am! ....Remember Dick Wilson on CKPR?

"I Love Lucy" with Lucile Ball and Desi Arnaz.....need I say more!

The most incredible commedian that many commedians still mimic today...Red Skelton, born Richard Bernard Skelton and nicknamed America's Clown Prince!

A few ads....Dinty's(the original KFC)...a 1974 Henderson Directory states that Gord Crompton was president of Dinty's at the time. Remember when cable was called "Videon"...that was not too long after having only Rabbit-ears on your TV. And lastly here is an artists rendition of John Murphy the morning man on CKPR radio in 1965.

Finally, click on this and the rest of the photos and ads to enlarge them(some twice to view extra large), to see what we watched on TV and how cheap our tires were in 1965.

......A Post Script, Don't miss Cruisin' the Dub....rod, custom and vintage car cruise night at the Memorial Ave. A & W, this coming Friday the 28th of May and every Friday all summer long!!!