“We call it Third Thursday Talks, because they’re on the third Thursday of each month,” Gates said. “It was going to be a 2021 lecture series, but we started it last December.”
A DeLorean on display at the Canadian Automotive Museum
Canadian Automotive Museum
Then, starting in January, the lectures focused on home-grown information. Canada once had a large number of independent auto companies, ranging from those that turned out only a few cars before they went under, to far more successful brands with names like McKay, Tudhope, Regal, and Gray-Dort.
The McLaughlin Carriage Company, located in Oshawa, would go from horse-drawn to horseless carriages, and eventually become General Motors of Canada. Ford of Canada started when Gordon McGregor, president of the Walkerville Wagon Company near Windsor, Ontario, approached Henry Ford in 1904 to build his cars under license. Walter Chrysler had taken over an automaker called Maxwell, which had a factory in Windsor. After he started making cars under his own name in 1924, that Ontario factory would become the Chrysler Corporation of Canada.