the Walnut Diary

In his early teens David Roberts chose a 1929 Ford Model-A as his personal vehicle while the rest of us bashed around in a Jeep, VW Beetles, and various family sedans.  The green coupe sat in pride of place next to his father’s Jaguar for as long as I lived in Westport, Ontario.

After Queen’s, David went on to a career at the University of Toronto where he was one of the editors of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.  Later in life he returned to his fascination with Ford automobiles in his book on the rise of the Ford Motor Company in Canada under the auspices of Gordon McGregor, a well-connected entrepreneur who managed to persuade Henry Ford to open a branch plant across the river in Windsor, Ontario.

Gordon McGregor’s family left him well set socially and politically, though he worked at a variety of sales jobs before he found himself saddled with the declining family wagon factory.  His pleasant disposition and good sense of humour eased his way socially, but it was his magnificent singing voice which gained him entry into a wider circle than most.  On one of these performances at a church in Detroit he met Henry Ford, a self-educated mechanic intent upon building automobiles, and the two hit it off.

McGregor had a factory, and financing, but no product.  Ford had great mechanical ingenuity, boundless ambition, and little money.  Ford may have been naïve in allowing McGregor access to his patents and parts in return for a share of Ford Canada, but the two developed a trust which lasted until McGregor’s premature death in 1922.  By this time inexpensive Model-Ts had revolutionized life in the vast tracts of rural Canada as well as contributing to the development of modern life in urban areas which had suddenly become less dependent upon horses for urban commerce.

The book is at its best in the early chapters where Roberts traces the many steps McGregor took to take his company from a few employees assembling a pile of Ford parts on a pair of sawhorses to the increases in production with new buildings and capital expenditures as sales increased.  McGregor’s father William had served two terms as an MP in Sir Wilfred Laurier’s government.  His father’s son, Gordon knew his way around the Laurentian elite, and proved an excellent fixer of problems, be they federal, provincial, or municipal.  One of his lifelong tasks was cleaning up the Detroit River by promoting municipal water and sewage services for Ford City, the area where the factory buildings developed on the shore of the river, and where the auto workers sought homes.  One example of Gordon’s touch was getting a new federal charter for Ford Canada after the company outgrew its provincial charter.  One month Ford was provincial; the next month it was federal.  Gordon McGregor had the knack of getting good results from bureaucracies and newspapers.

But I digress.  It is all too easy to get caught up in the many activities, causes, and vacations of the McGregor Family, but the reader’s true interest is no doubt in the evolution of the Ford automobiles.  While re-reading the book I found myself wandering to You-Tube for visual input to match the content I was absorbing.  Surely enough, the first and best review of a Model-T which I found was of a Canadian model which was a far cry from the bare bones Detroit fare of the early years.  McGregor’s goal was to build his T’s with locally sourced parts as much as possible, providing significant spin-off benefits to machine shops and foundries in Windsor and Toronto.  A fellow named Goodyear began turning up in the narrative, selling his tires where he could, particularly at the auto shows where Ford Canada participated enthusiastically, though was looked down upon by other manufacturers without the massive technological infusion which Ford Canada had received.

BTW:  Canadian Model-Ts had all wheels and tires of the same size to simplify repairs.  Detroit T’s were forced to carry twice as many spares on long journeys, to negligible benefit.

One of the most interesting videos on Ford motors which I have seen shows a skilled workman replacing babbit bearings in a disassembled Model-T engine.  These engines may have persevered for many years, but they certainly would have required maintenance.  As long as they received oil and didn’t get too hot, they would do a good job, but the main bearings were made of solder, basically.  They could be melted out in seconds with an acetylene torch, and renewed in not much more time with another application of molten babbit.  The success of Ford Canada is a testament to the skilled trades developing in Ontario at the time, making good use of the inventions and innovations of Henry Ford, but also making large strides in metallurgy and industrial machining processes such heat treatment and accurate cylinder boring.

The Model-T became an enduring success because the cars could be repaired easily.

A large proportion of the Model-Ts which were marketed around the world in McGregor’s era were built in Windsor.  In early years McGregor needed to keep up production during the winter months when local orders dried up.  Because Canada is a member of the British Commonwealth, trade benefits accrued to Ford Canada which were not available to Ford Detroit.  McGregor went on a world tour to sell cars.  He was particularly successful in Australia, New Zealand, India and Ceylon.  Australians preferred to buy the bare chassis model and build the coachwork locally, so apparently there were some unusual Model-Ts in the southern hemisphere.  Exports kept the Ford City factory busy through the winters until Canadians learned how to use their Model-Ts in all seasons. 

Over the course of the first decade of production, Ford Canada made its owners, shareholders and dealers considerable wealth.  Where McGregor most clearly differed from his mentor had to do with Henry Ford’s peace mission to Europe in an effort to stop the War.  McGregor muted his opinions about the war, dutifully supported the Commonwealth and Victory Bond campaign, and made an effort to buffer the anti-Semitic utterances of Henry Ford when he could.

Gordon McGregor in personality was a sort of de-caffeinated Henry Ford, lacking his ideological bitterness.  This odd couple gave birth to the automobile which built a society.