British auto racing club celebrates 50 years

VICSR.COM FOR THE TORONTO STAR

All the presidents of BARC were in attendance at the 50th-anniversary celebration. From left in main photo, Alistair Taylor, Mary Lobban, Bill Robb, John Bowles (the first president), Greg Adamkowski, Doug Purdon, Bill Lobban, Scott Ellesworth and Mike McDiarmid.

Norris McDonald

MOTORSPORT WRITER

Sometimes, believe it or not, it's better for me to keep my mouth shut and let other people do the talking.

I went to the 50th-anniversary dinner of the British Automobile Racing Club – Ontario Centre earlier this month. The club came into being on Oct. 27, 1959, and organizes and participates in motorsport activities in the province. It was a delightful evening.

But instead of taking out my pen and notebook and interviewing some of those attending about their love of motorsport as well as the club, and then sitting down and writing my impressions of the night, I just turned on the tape recorder.

Here's what some who were there had to say:

Ken Graham

Pace Car Driver

"I joined BARC in 1964. I raced sprint cars on oval tracks at the CNE – places like that. I never went road racing; I couldn't afford it.

"I joined BARC to get my competition licence so I could race the sprint car in hill climbs at Mosport when cars would be timed in solo runs anticlockwise from Moss Corner to the start/finish line.

"As a volunteer, my first job was as assistant starter at Mosport. That's when you stood out on the track at `pit out.'

"I did the first Indy-car race (in 1967) and the cars were flying past and they're throwing up gravel and I'm thinking, `I don't need this,' so I volunteered to drive the pace car at races that BARC organizes. I'm still doing that job."

The photo on the front cover of the 50th-anniversary calendar has Graham in his sprint car at the CNE Speedway in 1962.

"I bought the car for $400 the previous year. That night, I finished fourth in the feature and I got paid $210. You could do okay in those days."

Paul Einarson

Race director

"I joined BARC in 1968 and I unjoined in 1972.

"I got involved in a very serious incident – a fatality (in which racer Wayne Kelly was killed and marshal John Sullivan, a BARC member, was injured) – and I stopped my involvement for 30 years.

"I just sat and watched it on TV," he recalls.

"Six years ago, I was in Jamaica for my daughter's wedding. Who shows up but `Crusher' (BARC member Dave Hilton)?

"He tells me he's a member of BARC and before I knew it, he'd gotten me involved again.

"Here I am several years later and I'm the club's race director.

"Why did I join BARC in '68? Easy. It was a fun club back then, very active and there were a lot of young people.

"Why did I join BARC again a few years ago? Easy. For me, it's home."

CLIVE RAYMAN

Formula Ford racer

"I was drag racing on the streets of Toronto in the late 1960s. My father and me, we went to the Montreal car show and Gary Magwood (a racer and educator of note who went on to co-found the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame) had a display of Formula Fords there. My father bought me one.

"Now, I thought I was a pretty hot driver when I was drag racing on the streets of Toronto. I got to Mosport and I got my butt kicked. My first five races, I was at the back of the pack! I nearly walked away from it.

"But then things turned around and I won BARC rookie of the year in 1970. Then I went to England and raced Formula 3 against Jody Scheckter and Tony Brise. As Magwood said, the top Formula Ford guys from Canada at that time could hold their own against the best, anywhere in the world."

John Bowles

Founding BARC-Ontario president

"In 1958, the Canadian Racing Drivers Association was created and they had a policy of, shall we say, very selective membership. I decided, along with a few other people, that another club would be a good idea – one that would be completely inclusive.

"I had been a member of the British Automobile Racing Club in the U.K. before I came to Canada in 1957. I was familiar with the club and I thought, `Why not have an Ontario Centre here in Canada?' So the correspondence went back and forth between BARC in the U.K. and myself over a period of five or six months.

"The big issue for them was that they had `centres' all over the U.K. but they'd never had an overseas centre. Finally they agreed, but they required a minimum membership of 25 and the officers had to be chosen from the membership.

"I served as president for two years. It was hard work but it was fun. Stirling Moss agreed to be our patron; he even donated a trophy (given annually to the highest-placed BARC member in the Ontario Region Championship and won by, among others, Ron Fellows and Scott Goodyear).

"I'm not actively involved these days. Now I belong to a classic car club in Fredericton, N.B., where I live. My first car was a pre-war MG. My present car is a restored 1974 MGB. It's the 49th classic car I've owned. Whether I'll go for 50, I don't know."

Pat McDiarmid

Grid Chief

"I was involved in stock car racing when I was younger. I was on a crew when women weren't allowed in the pits – I'd tuck my hair up under a baseball cap. Eugene Morgan was the driver. We called him Yogi.

"My most memorable moment was when I got to drive a truck in the Molson Indy drivers' parade. I was absolutely terrified because I had a driver standing in the back. We dropped them off in the pits and I nearly ran over Mario Andretti.

"They told us that after we dropped off the drivers, we could go back out on the track and drive very slowly around to where we had to return the trucks. I'm sorry. You're on the Molson Indy track. One does not drive slowly on a race track. I got my hand slapped for that. The next year they said, `We remember you.' They put me between two `old lady drivers.' I couldn't do anything."

nmcdonald@thestar.ca Read Norrris McDonald's Auto Racing blog at Wheels.ca.

More videos from Wheels.ca and our partners