It Was Alberni Or BUST Despite No Malahat Highway!

Last week Frank Boucher told us of his first trip by road over the Malahat in 1911 .

It had taken him, his wife and sister-in-law 18 hours to make the 20-kilometre trek, they having had to walk most of the way to relieve Frank’s just purchased, old and tired horse.

(Speaking of tired, so were they when they finally reached Duncan!)

Compare then, this dramatic account of a motor (i.e. automobile) cavalcade from Victoria to the Albernis just four years before the Bouchers’ adventure. Note that these daring pioneers didn’t tackle the ‘Hat but went the long way round, via the original wagon road through Sooke and the foot of Cowichan’s Shawnigan Lake…

The most excitement ever!
“Never before in the history of the country from the summit of Sooke Mountain to Alberni Canal was there such a panorama of excitement” as during that wild Dominion Day weekend when the infant Victoria Auto Club staged its first up-Island excursion.

And a wild weekend it was, one destined to be long and vividly remembered by club members and a stunned citizenry.

Actually, when the dust had finally cleared, everyone had to admit a good time was had by all. Well, almost all. One disappointment was that of the man who “predicted that someone would be brought home dead or injured”. Alas for this pessimist’s prognostication, the worst injury suffered by any of the club, aside from shattered nerves, was sunburn.

Not that organizers had taken any chances—one of the entries had been staffed by the Red Cross.

Reason for the happy convoy was to draw attention to the deplorable state of public roads for automobiles. To cover the historic event, the Colonist had its own car in the rally. Fortunately for posterity, its anonymous reporter was up to the occasion, recording every incident in sparkling prose:

“One or two cars had at times disturbed the rural tranquility, and when the first one had whirled by…without regard for hills or holes, the people felt that a periodic danger had passed, and that they could breathe freely again for a day or two, but their pulse had only commenced to a normal beat when a second car sped along and alarm reigned once more.

“Then on the hilltops and in the hollows clouds of dust began to appear until it looked as if a dozen or more cyclones had chosen the road for a free-for-all contest.

“When the press car, which was the 15th [last], came along at moderate speed in an effort to pick up all the news items that the repair crew had not had time to remove from the trail, the children had nearly all been gathered to shelter, but the beasts and birds were still making frantic efforts to save themselves from calamity.

Horses pranced and reared and cleared hurdles into the woods, sheep scrambled over logs and boulders, cows cleared fences or became entangled in the branches of trees. Once, or twice, a spirited bull, who before the autos invaded his territory, had mastered the roadway, showed fight for just a couple of seconds and then took a wild jump for the timber where he turned and snorted furiously at the fiendish looking thing that had caused him to weaken. Chickens, ducks and geese scattered feathers everywhere, and lazy pigs rooted and squealed as they tried to crawl under fences, where there was scarcely enough space to allow passage for a rabbit.”

Throughout the terrorized countryside only dogs “showed a disposition to make rear attacks on the flying machines, but they lacked the necessary speed”.

At one watering stop for the press’ gasping Oldsmobile, the reporter had to assure a terrified farmwife, whose 14 children gazed in awe from every window and doorway, that no calamity had befallen Victoria; it was just the auto club on an outing, not a frenzied evacuation.

Apparently the journalist felt it necessary to reassure his readers, too, that any “danger was all imaginary. The drivers of the motor cars were experienced men and capable of bringing their machines to a stop at any time, almost within their own length.”

Not even broken axles slowed them down…
Despite minor mishaps, like driving off the road and losing a wheel while allowing a horse and buggy to pass, and the odd broken axle, the motorcade advanced toward Duncan. Undoubtedly the star of the show was Plimley Garage’s flying red Beeston-Humber touring car, chauffered by a daredevil named Hal Holtom. Not that he took unnecessary chances, the Colonist hastily added; he could “bring up with the greatest ease and suddenness when occasion called for it”.

And so it went, every bone-jarring, dust-shrouded mile to Duncan, where the survivors paused for lunch. Suddenly someone noticed a car was missing. Like a shot, Holtom’s fiery Humber was speeding back down the road, finding the disabled car three miles from town.

The rescued driver was soon entertaining second thoughts as to his savior; for the three miles to town, at an exciting speed of 30 miles per hour, he was forced to swallow the dust from Holtom’s speeding machine. When he was finally dusted off and revived, he could only mutter it had been “the ride of my life”.

Refreshed, the motorcade pushed on.
Unknown to the Colonist reporter, some of Holtom’s backseat passengers were having the ride of their lives, too. One of them was secretly wishing he could enjoy it at a more leisurely pace. His misgivings had come early—from the moment Holtom had decided to race the E&N train to Goldstream. Goggles fixed, hat pulled down, he’d cringed on the spacious back seat as the soaring Humber beat the locomotive by five minutes.

After washing down the dust—literally—it was back to being the proverbial “cork in a rough sea”. Much to his relief, the windng, pitted mountain roads occupied all the driver’s skill in simply navigating.

Then it was back to racing like Toad in The Wind in the Willows, Holtom roaring into Duncan 30 minutes ahead of the others despite the fact he’d left Victoria two hours after them.

Pity the backseat driver!
Unfortunately for our friend in the back seat, the joys of open-air travel hadn’t improved: “Whenever we came to a fine stretch of road where we could see ahead of us and upon which there was no [traffic] we, on the back seat, instinctively fixed our goggles more firmly, pressed our hats over our eyes, braced ourselves in our seats against possible bad holes and resigned ourselves to the will of the wizard in front.

“Ocasionally there would come from the front a remark about the beautiful scenery or something about the beautiful lake we were passing and of the excellent fishing that there must be in several very seductive looking spots, but I never saw it. At another time he would endeavour to draw attention to the fine expanse of highly cultivated land or the charming little homes on either side of us, but I never saw them. Or to the magnificent timber through which we were running and which would be a credit to any premeval forest, but I never saw it.

“My eyes were glued in front of me, which seemed to be about 20 feet wide, narrowing down at the farthest point to about two feet, and continually opening up ahead of me.

Terrified passenger told to hang on.
“My eyes seemed to refuse to leave it; the objects on each side of us passed with kaleidoscopic rapidity unnoticed, and the only time that I could be induced to look any other way was when it was incumbent upon me to take a survey of my own particular personal surroundings after one of those continually occurring jolts up into the blue sky, to see whether I had alighted in my own car or the one that was an hour behind us!”

As if this ordeal weren’t “exciting enough for an ordinary individual,” it wasn’t worth mentioning “compared with the experience around Cameron Lake and over the summit into Alberni.

“In vain we assured the wizard that we had not taken on any new insurance policies before the start. We were assured we were going slow, really slow. Occasionally we would mildly protest against the effect of the pace on our liver and kidneys; we were told that it was the best thing in the world for them and that any discomfort was not due to the pace but the d—-d roads.

“And when we were going down some hill at an angle of about 45 per cent, with nothing at the bottom but the prospect of driving 500 feet into the lake, and suggested that ‘For the sake of the little ones at home,’ the speed might be cut down, we were mildly assured that ‘The main thing in life was to not get excited,’ that the little ones were not so safe as we were…’”

Madman Hal Holtom to the rescue
The final outrage came between Duncan and Ladysmith when the Humber encountered a wagon, tall with bottled beer. At the teamster’s kindly invitation, Holtom pulled over and all prepared to enjoy the libation. As Holtom raised the cool bottle to his lips, the teamster inopportunely remarked that the Humber was the second machine he’d seen that day.

“What!” cried Holtom, almost dropping his untouched beer. “There’s someone ahead of us?”

When the startled host nodded, Holtom bawled, “Me for that other car!” Leaping behind the wheel, with “the wild tooting of his horn,” he was off in pursuit. Almost without his dismayed passengers who’d had to tumble into the back as the hurtling Humber roared off in a cloud of dust.

Ruefully recalled our informant: “We certainly caught that car, and my impression at that time was that if the Flying Dutchman had been ahead of us, with the Devil as driver, our wizard would have caught it just the same.”

One elderly man, who likely hadn’t witnessed such a phenomenon before, highlighted the return trip from Alberni. When the rumbling monster bore down on him, he leaped from the buggy seat and firmy braced himself against his two-wheeler. Whether he thought it would be more frightened than his horse, those in the Humber couldn’t tell.

As they roared on out of sight, their last view was of the old man chasing his bolting horse into the trees and shouting at them what could only be taken as something nasty. Considering the 10 minutes they’d waited for him to clear a bridge, the Humber’s passengers thought his attitude “unkind and undeserved”.

Needless to say, when, late on July 1st, the first auto chugged back to Victoria in a cloud of flying gravel, dust and exhaust fumes, it was Holtom’s red Humber. Second best overall showing was that of Theodore Fisher’s Winton. Two Oldsmobiles also acquitted themselves admirably. A white Stanley Steamer made it only as far as Duncan where its disgusted owned shipped it home with the E&N. “Similar misfortunes” dashed the hopes of a Thomas Flyer, the most expensive car in the club, but Capt. J.W. Troup’s Ford didn’t disappoint him.

All considered, the racing Humber had made good time
When official times were tabulated, it was found the flying Humber had accomplished the 70-mile run from Nanaimo to Alberni in a breathtaking two hours and 28 minutes. Holtom quickly pointed out he hadn’t really been trying, he could easily shave the time by 43 minutes.

Considering the state of the goat-tracks that passed for roads in those days, two and a-half hours wasn’t bad at all.

The Colonist concluded—prophetically—with an appeal for government interest in the state of the roads: “The desired improvements would create a paradise for automobiles which would no doubt be sought by tourists from many parts.

“The result would also undoubtedly be a more active demand for motor cars than now exists in Victoria. Everybody who could afford to purchase a machine, and probably some who could not, would possess one. Should the motor club not be successful in its present endeavours to have the route made fitter for automobiles, the main work of which consists of building a new road around Sooke Mountain, there is one other possibility that might be considered:

“Send that man with the red Humber over that summit once a day for the rest of the summer. He ought to be able to wear it down!”

The next time you wing your way over the Malahat and on to Alberni over smoothly paved highway, spare a thought for those courageous members of the Victoria Auto Club who helped make it all possible. See also: