The thrill of Mosport's first `lap'
PHOTO COURTESY CHRISTOPHER ENNIS
Christopher Ennis, driving his first car, a 1960 pale blue Sprite, and a friend found the new Mosport track in a bulldozed field north of Orono.
It's quite possible that my friend Don and I held the first lap record at Mosport by simply being the first to drive around the 4 km track in anything sportier than a bulldozer – in this case it was my first car, a little pale blue bug-eyed Sprite.
If that were the case, the lap record in 1960 would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 minutes!It was a miserable Sunday afternoon in November with a low sky, sleet in the air and a rim of frost along the ditches beside the concession roads.
We had heard that a world-class racing circuit was being built near the village of Orono, east of Toronto, in time for the 1961 season. We'd probably learned this in the pages of Canada Track & Traffic magazine, although the exact location was not made clear. So finding Mosport would be something of an expedition.
Most sports cars in those days were devoid of creature comforts: soft-tops were about as effective as a cheap umbrella in a windstorm. And the more modest cars, such as the Sprite, were without roll-up windows, relying instead on what were called side screens: cheap plastic affairs – invariably scratched and almost opaque from wear and tear – which fitted into two slots on the top of the doors and were secured by hand-tightened nuts that were usually lost.
It was not uncommon for sports cars in those days to be without radios (let alone CD players!) so we buzzed along the 401 toward Bowmanville, where we were instructed to turn north and hope for the best – accompanied only by the drone of the cheap and cheerful BMC "A" series engine revving its little heart out, and the metronomic sound of the windshield wipers flapping back and forth ineffectually.
Upon reaching Bowmanville, we headed north into the country like Knights Templar in search of the Holy Grail.
Until that time, road racing in Ontario had taken place on converted airfields courtesy of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, which during World War II had built airfields all over Ontario to train Allied air crews from around the world: places such as Greenacres, St. Eugene, Edenvale and Harewood Acres near Hamilton.
Harewood Acres was the premier road racing circuit until Mosport was built, and it remained active until 1970. It is now the site of an oil refinery.
Ironically, most of the drivers and organizers were immigrants from countries that were so recently at war with each other and whose emigration was, to a large extent, prompted by the upheaval brought about by the war: Englishmen, Germans, Italians – all of whom had a strong tradition of road racing at home.
After touring the back roads for some time we finally managed to zero in on a promising landscape with evidence of earth having been moved and rearranged.
We turned right onto a concession road that seemed to form the eastern boundary of the site.
The road was a quagmire, no doubt caused by the construction traffic, and it soon became apparent that if we slowed the little Sprite at all it would probably come to a stop and settle into the ooze like a contented pig.
So it was imperative to continue at a brisk pace, even to the extent of doing a "wall-of-death" act on the roadside banks whenever we came to the more pond-like sections.
At one point we felt an almighty thump as the Sprite hit a large bump hidden beneath the mud and, amazingly, the two sidescreens shot upward about 6 metres into the air, did synchronized somersaults and ended up jutting out of the mud about a car's width apart.
We didn't dare stop, of course, but carried on, intending to worry about that when the time came.
Shortly after, we came to what looked like a makeshift gate, confirmed as such by a large "Private Property" sign.
Fortunately, there was a grassy space in front of it that looked firm enough to support the car while we dismantled this impediment, and with no little excitement, drove the Sprite onto the graded but unpaved track at what, in retrospect, seems to have been the bottom of Corner Two. (The top of which was to scare me silly in later years. But that's another story.)
We set off up towards Corner Three, the gravel crunching under our wheels, somewhat amazed that we were actually driving around the track that had not been much more than a rumour.
We felt a mixture of wonder and guilt as we negotiated the sinuous course, up and down hill between the trees until, about halfway up the long, climbing back straight, we noticed something ahead that, mirage-like, didn't seem quite right.
As we came closer, we realized that it was quite a deep gully running across the road. So we jumped on the binders without delay and only just managed to bring the car to a sliding halt with one of the front wheels almost over the edge. Otherwise we would have nosed into it, tail in the air – like a duck eating lunch.
Fortunately, we found enough reasonably solid ground on one side of the gully to allow us to continue on our way and complete the lap, thus claiming the track record before making our exit the same way that we had come in.
On the way home, our first task was to collect the side screens that had left us so aerobatically on the way in.
We drove the poor little Sprite back into the quagmire in the darkening afternoon, and there they were just where they had landed. As we drove between them, we were able to reach out and retrieve them from each side.
And so, back to the city where, it being the Sabbath, nearly everything was closed in those days. One of the few exceptions was Fran's Restaurant, so we ended our day there with a German sausage sandwich and a cup of coffee.
That was 48 years ago and marked the beginning of so many fine summer weekends at Mosport.
You look back on those days as you do your childhood – when it was always sunny and the world was full of promise.
Of course, it did rain sometimes: the first Canadian Grand Prix, in 1967, for example, when the rain came down in buckets all day long, and crafty Jack Brabham outfoxed them all by taking the outside line on the corners, where there is always more grip in the wet, and won the race.
My fondest memories are of the big, brutal, 1,200-horsepower Can-Am cars, the pit bulls of the racing world: McLarens, Porsches, Shadows, Lolas, Ferraris, BRMs and so on, that were driven by redoubtable men from all disciplines of the sport, including Formula 1, Indy and sports cars.
The series seemed to attract real racers from all over the world. My most indelible images would be from this glorious free-for-all, now sadly consigned to history.
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