BCHRA History through the decades by Bunny Jeboult

The early days . . .
In the late ’40s, the Hot Rod craze began showing up in BC as many ’30s and ’40s vehicles appeared in primer, fender-less, with dual exhausts, some speed equipment and a few with minor body mod’s and custom accessories. This era invented the modern term ‘Rat Rod’ as this was all most of us could afford! “HOT ROD” magazine came out in 1948 and was soon our ‘Bible’ dedicated to articles on the blossoming sport emanating from southern California. Eager to get involved, local lower mainland motor heads began travelling to Arlington, Wa. where drag racing was held sunny Sundays at this little used airstrip. Racing rods was not new to us but was restricted to an oval track, Digney Speedway where the BC Racing Assn. tried des-perately to field enough cars to put on a show. The costs were high, sponsors few and the payoffs were low. Midgets and Sprints dominated the track and it was the place to be on Friday nights. As a result, street racing and grudge matches evolved and most towns had their own straight stretch where illegal drags took place. Thus many of us ran afoul of the law, lost our licences and cars and had some crashes.

In 1950, a small group of rodder’s and customizer’s formed a club and called it the B C custom Car Assn. purposely avoiding the name ‘hot rod’ which was viewed by the public as a bunch of rag-tags. They got the club sanctioned,registered and sponsored by the Vancouver Police. The main thrust was to obtain a place to drag race legally and many locations were viewed from Vancouver to Chilliwack. In 2 years the membership exceeded 200 and permission was received to use a strip at the far side of Abbotsford Airport. Bi-monthly drags were run by the club and the new sport mushroomed spawning a car club or two in almost every town all over the province.

Enter the BCHRA . . .
Some of the car clubs were structured and took a page out of the national body, some had fresh ideas and were successful while many others started up and failed almost as soon. Since BCCCA was busy running and improving the strip, a group of natural born leaders recognized the need to amalgamate the various clubs and form a similar organization as the new National Hot Rod Assn. of California. All the clubs we knew of were contacted and asked to send a representative to a meeting for discussion of a BC body. We met in an old then, log cabin building on the Kingsway side of Central Park in Burnaby…it was free! The Assn. was born and Ron Latham was elected to head it. We patterned the name after the US group, the BC Hot Rod Assn., began setting up a constitution and arranging provincial registration. We recognized the need for a means of communication and the newsletter “The Headliner” was started the next month. Income was derived from a small per club fee but funding was hard to come by and I’m sure many Corp’s and Co’s never knew the contributions they made to our early endeavors. Gerry Normand, a typewriter repairman, procured an old Gestetner hand operated machine. We spent many hours typing the wax masters and transferring Jack Schmidt’s comic art on to them and cranking out copies for all the members. But the medium worked well allowing us to advise the clubs of the ways and means of raising money, running events and having fun.

Early BCHRA Activities . . . .
To promote legal use of our rides, we arranged:
Gypsy Tours – a pre-arranged group drive to a park, museum, eatery, a roller rink, a race track etc.
Reliability Runs – a mapped, timed and checked cruise from start to finish with prizes for those closest to the route time and obeying the limits. Safety Checks of members cars on reliability runs by accredited mechanics led to expanding this practice and then led to extending it to the public as a fund raiser and club awareness.
Go-Whoa’s were another test of the driver’s abilities and reflexes then later evolved into Gymkana’s with more intricate tests that could now be seen every weekend in un-used parking lots allover the lower mainland.
Cruising, every burg had a local hang-out at a garage, drive-in, parking lot or corner store. We’d fill-er-up with a couple of bucks and drive 5 to 50 miles to just ‘hob-nob’, chow down or have a drag with their best car.

Other get-to-gether’s included dances, bowling parties, parades, car washes, and cruises to the tracks. Some of the popular places to meet and eat were ‘the Crat’, Harvey’s, Kings, White Spots and Churches Chicken in Vancouver, ‘the Tomahawk’
and White Spot in North and West Van, ‘the Spinning Top’ and ‘Stan’s’ in Burnaby and New West’r, ‘Mom’s Apple Pie’ and ‘Whalley Drive-In’ in Surrey and the ‘Hi-Lite Burger Bar’ in Mission. For the more adventurous we also visited Herfy’s, the XXX and Tasty Freezes in Bellingham, Wa. to name a few.

Speed and accessory shops opened up, another place to meet and talk cars. Some of them were Western Accessories,Cal-Van, Payless Auto, Kerrisdale Speed, Jack Williams Shop, Blackie Green’s Shop, Bud Child’s Engine’s Unlimited’ and Walkers.

1st BCHRA Car Show . . .
In 1957, Del Towne of the PNE board invited us to prepare a show for that year’s exhibition using the basement of the old Manufacturer’s Bldg. It was a great opportunity to show off our new Assn. to thousands of people and spread the good work being done by hot rodder’s, so we grabbed at the chance. They gave us $250 to cover all our expenses. a new sign shop donated the Car Display Signs, Kelbert Trophies provided all the awards and lots of them and George Black Motors supplied a lot of display material. all the clubs were invited to enter and we crammed over 50 into the space, the last one being former Pres. Ed Bressler who filled the building with blue smoke as he backed in his old Buick sedan! Since the 1st Vancouver car show in
1951, the booths were getting fancier and sporting lights, picket fencing, mirrors, trees and trophies won. We were fortunate to host one of the 1st showings of Cliff Rich’s finished Lemon T and Milt Goodman’s ’55 Chevy but the Count’s Tom Parsons ’40 Merc coupe with its new Tiajuana upholstery stole the show! The BCHRA membership nearly doubled form this venture, now including clubs from all over the province.

The BCHRA ’60s . . .
By this time several clubs dominated the sport and were constantly showing what could be accomplished by a bunch of ‘gearheads’. to name a few, the Shifters, the Igniters, the West Point Kustoms, the Counts, the Westrods,and the Kingsmen.

Many of these had club garages, were building club dragsters, helping each other with projects, hosting their own shows, were involved in community events, charity drives and the term ‘Hot Rod’ was becoming an elite group of conscientious young men. The sport was now in ‘high gear’ and the Calif., Ore., and Wa. influence was encouraging more and more BC’ers to venture south and challenge them at their shows, their tracks and the salt flats. The hardware we brought home attested to the abilities of several of our ranks and the successes were many and often. the new BCCCA track opened at Mission with lots of BCHRA members represented. Street racing died right down as ‘Bracket Racing’ was introduced and sponsors were eager to get recognition in the various classes.