Week 20: Wheels

 WHEELS

Although most of my ancestors were farmers, the automobile industry had been important to my extended family for a couple of generations in the last century.

My maternal grandfather, George Schell, was the eldest of 10 children (6 boys, 4 girls).  In 1916, at the age of 21, he took on the responsibility of running the family farm in Simcoe County, Ontario and looking after his widowed mother and younger siblings.  Several of his brothers eventually left the family farm to work in the auto industry factories in Michigan and Ohio.  

One of the brothers, Will, eventually returned home, married a local girl and farmed near the Schell farm.  Another brother, Wes, also eventually returned to Ontario to marry a girl from a nearby community and eventually operated a gas station in Brooklin Ontario.  I can remember stopping in there when travelling with my grandparents in the 1960s.

Two brothers, Alf and Ed, stayed in the US working in the auto industry.  My mother remembers they would arrive "home" for summer vacation with rubber rafts from their factory for family to use at Wasaga Beach.  At that time they were working in Ohio.  They both eventually relocated to Detroit.  I'm not sure which plant Alf worked in, but Ed worked at Ford.  But he never gave up driving GM cars.

Alf never married and died in the early 1950s.  Ed had married a girl from "back home" but she joined him in Michigan where they raised their 2 girls. 

The auto industry also played an important part for another generation.  My mother's brother, Bud, left the family farm in his mid-teens to work in the the big city of Toronto.  He was hired as a mechanic at the Canadian Tire service centre owned by a family acquaintance and relocated to a Scarborough location.  He eventually married the boss's daughter and later took over the ownership of the service centre.  In later years, they wanted to give up life in the big city for a simplier life.  Bud sold his business in Scarborough and purchased a garage and gas station north of the city.  During that time he also established a tow truck service and dabbled in selling used cars.

At the age of 19, I bought my first car from this uncle: a Ford Mustang II.

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