Vintage cars ready for Relic Run

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This article was published 27/06/2023 (884 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Planning is underway for a road trip that a regular vehicle could make in one day — but because of the age of the antique vehicles and the proposed route, it will take three times as long, says a volunteer with the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Austin.

One week from today, five Ford Model Ts and As from the 1920s and 1930s will roll into the Wheat City during the second day of a three-day inaugural Pine to Prairie Relic Run that will take them across Manitoba from Ontario to Saskatchewan.

The cars will travel on the Trans-Canada Highway, but according to Gordon Goldsborough, it will be the original Trans-Canada as it existed in 1932 when those cars were new.

“We’re not going on the nice smooth highways — we’re going on the original route of the Trans-Canada, and parts of that are pretty rough and gravelly, so that’s going to slow the cars down as well.

“Normally, if you were driving a regular car, you could do it easily in one day, but it will most likely take us three days,” said Goldsborough, who is also secretary to the board of the Manitoba Agricultural Museum and head researcher for the Manitoba Historical Society.

The antique cars are all Fords: a 1923 Ford Model T four-door Touring, a 1928 Ford Model A two-door Sedan, 1928 Ford Model A two-door Depot Hack, 1930 Ford Model A four-door Sedan, and a 1931 Ford Model A two-door Victoria.

Setting the pace will be the 100-year-old 1923 Ford Model T with Goldsborough and its driver.

Riding in the 1931 Model A two-door Victoria will be a 92-year-old Manitoban, the same age as the car, said Goldsborough, who added they convoy is expected to maintain speeds of about 25 to 30 kilometres per hour.

Manitoba’s historic highways have always fascinated Goldsborough, he said, so one day, he requested original maps from Manitoba Transportation and Infrastructure. His curiosity led him to researching the roadways even further on satellite images from Google Earth.

“I could actually see the original highway route, and how it would make a graceful curve turn rather than just turning 90 degrees. A lot of those roads are long since abandoned, but I could still see them in the satellite image.”

“And so, on that basis, I was able to virtually map out all the highways as they existed in 1930,” Goldsborough said.

Once he had the drivers confirmed, Goldsborough decided to take the Relic Run one step further, he said, and has turned the journey into a fundraiser for the Manitoba Agricultural Museum at Austin. At the end of 2022, the museum received a donation of a Tree Planting Car from Manitoba Forestry that was built in the 1920s.

For more than 50 years, it was a travelling classroom on rails to encourage people to plant trees, said Tricia Dyck, collections, and programming manager of the museum.

The rail car has a theatre as well as an area for someone to live full-time. During its heyday, it moved around the province providing school kids with films about trees, and in the evening, had the same sort of programming for adults.

And now, Dyck added, the next step in preserving the 84-foot-long, 16.5-foot-high rail car is to put a roof over its head, and funding is needed for materials and construction.

“It will be not enclosed all the way, but we do want a permanent roof over the rail car,” said Dyck. “We also want to create it in such a way that it doesn’t take away from the car itself. We want enough light to be coming in there so people can enjoy the space.”

With the historic-themed Relic Run, said Goldsborough, the group will make stops at more than 10 museums across the province, hoping to collect funds along the way.

On July 3, day one of the run, the vehicles will start at the Ontario/Manitoba border, and will end their six-hour drive in Winnipeg.

Next Tuesday, July 4, there are scheduled stops at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Austin, the Carberry Plains Museum, and by 4:45 p.m., the group is expected to arrive at the Brandon General Museum and Archives (BGMA).

It’s important to preserve these vehicles, but it’s also vital that people see them in person, which is much better than an image on a phone, said BGMA museum administrator Keith Waterfield.

“More than likely if someone looks up the image, it will be on a phone, and it will be small, so this is much better than that,” said Waterfield.

“This is actually a chance to see these vehicles in person, to see how big they are, how impressive they are, and it really does connect you to how people used to live.”

The vehicles in the Relic Run will begin day three of their journey on July 5 at the Daly House Museum at 9 a.m.

They’ll continue west with stops at the Oak Lake and District Museum, Virden Pioneer Home Museum and finally the Manitoba Antique Automobile Museum at Elkhorn before ending the Relic Run at the Saskatchewan border around 4 p.m.

For more information, visit mbagmuseum.ca.

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