The Way We Drove: Toronto's Love Affair with the Automobile in Stories and Pictures Paperback - 2003

From the publisher

The Way We Drove begins in 1983, when Toronto patent attorney Frederick Barnard Fetherstonhaugh took some nervous dignitaries for a ride in his new electric automobile, on a small circular track in front of the grandstand in the Toronto Industrial Exhibition. Five years later, John Moodie of Hamilton drove his new Winton automobile over forty miles through mud and dirt to Toronto and created one of the Queen City's first auto-related traffic jams, around Yonge and Melinda, as eager spectators pressed forward to view the strange contraption. Toronto's love affair with the automobile had begun.

The story of this love affair, told here through photographs, commentary, and anecdotes, spans over half a century--from that day at the 'Ex' in 1893 to the space-age tailfins of the 1950s. Nearly all the cars that chugged, rattled, and roared through the streets of Toronto during those first sixty-odd years are now gone. Only a few have managed to survive, and these are now in museums or lovingly pampered by private collectors. Fortunately, thousands of Toronto's old cars happened to be in front of cameras when their shutters were open.

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