First Driver Into Shawnigan

...Bert Todd Led Tourist Parade

At two minutes before six a.m., May 29, 1903, the Vancouver Island tourist industry was born.

At that moment, Albert E. Todd, 25, son of salmon-canning Albert E. Todd, climbed into his two-seater White steam car at the Douglas-Hillside corner then known as “the Fountain”.

He adjusted his goggles, glanced at the water gauge, and released the brake. With one hand on the throttle and the other wringing the tiller, he huff-chuffed down the dusty Gorge Road into history.

For 12 months past there had been only Dr. E. C. Hart’s one-cylinder Oldsmobile in town, a machine ordered direct from the factory. Now he had company.

Of course, if you are one of those who think that the sons of the pioneers just sat around singing “Cool Water,” a glimpse at Mr. Todd’s deeds will disillusion you. Not that he considered it venturesome to drive without insurance, or a driver’s licence, in a car devoid of radiator, spring shackles, plates, windshield or fenders.

The venturesome part was that he had only owned it one day, and one innocent spare part was in Cleveland, Ohio, in the shipping crate of the White Sewing Machine Company.

Nevertheless Bert was going touring, to Shawnigan Lake, and beside him sat H. D. Rynus, with notebook and stopwatch. He was the same Mr. Rynus who, two days before, had brought the car by steamer from San Francisco for delivery to Victoria’s first car dealer, Baggster Seabrook of Wharf Street, who would turn it over (for $1,800) to his first customer, Bert Todd.

That first showroom, by the way, is still intact.

Rynus and Seabrook had given the car a run to Wright’s Hotel in Saanich the day before (in 48 minutes). Now owner Todd would be the first man to drive to Shawnigan.

We have the record of how they made it to the Gorge Bridge in six minutes, and 3½ minutes later were crossing Parson’s Bridge. It took them 18½ minutes from the Fountain to Colwood Hotel, and a flat 30 minutes from town to Goldstream Hotel.

There they took the upward climb through the bush to pass in turn Sooke’s Railway Crossing, Cabin Pond, the Summit and Haley’s Crossing at Sooke Lake.

Then they chuffed along past Echo Point, Teddy Holmes’s cabin, Whiskey Swamp bridge, Findlay’s Swamp, Welch’s trail at Shawnigan Lake and finally pulled up in front of the Strathcona Hotel at exactly nine minutes to nine. The trip had taken them two hours and 53 minutes.

It was at Whiskey Swamp, Rynus noted, that they had to stop on account of a bear on the trail. “We tried to run over him,” he reported, “but he got out of the way too quickly. We didn’t have the gun ready so didn’t get a shot.”

Whether it was a gain in experience, we don’t know, but they made the return trip to Victoria in one hour and 34 minutes.

According to Rynus, the White could start from cold (to a working pressure of 500 pounds) in 2½ minutes. Fuel was gasoline, fed from an eight gallon tank, good for 75 to 100 miles. The water tank had to be filled every 25 or 30 miles. However the company supplied a bucket and there were belts of hose thrown in. A feature was shaft drive instead of chain drive, and the compound engine had a top speed of 30 miles an hour. In fact White then claimed the world’s record for 10 miles in 19 minutes, 53 and one-fifth seconds.

From that Shawnigan trip came Bert Todd’s zeal for better roads. That’s how he came to form the first Auto Club here in 1905 and was its first president. When he married Baggster Seabrook’s daughter (in Los Angeles in 1910) his honeymoon trip took in the entire U.S. west coast road from Los Angeles to Vancouver.

It was only the other day that his sister, Mrs. Alex Gillespie, told how the newlyweds repeatedly dug the car out of mud, and cut windfallen timber with axes. The bride of 1910, now Mrs. Guy Tilton, is still living, in Seattle.

So close to Bert Todd’s heart was the coast highway that it was that he organized the Pacific Highway Association in Seattle, and became its first president. Later he spurred not only the Malahat, but also the Engineer Circuit, the scenic motor tour from Port Angeles, via Victoria and Seattle, to Vancouver. It was this sort of activity that led to paved roads.

Here, in civic minutes, although he was alderman, police commissioner and mayor, fundamentally he was “Good Roads” Todd.

Even though he has been dead these 40 years, he deserves to be remembered as the man who helped make tourists, the wheels that roll toward his birthplace—Victoria.