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The man who drove GM Canada
Pioneering "Colonel Sam" put the country on wheels
By Bob English
Thursday, December 25, 2003
Canada's only really successful automobile pioneer, R.S. McLaughlin, almost didn't make it out of short pants. Sam, as he was called, was hit on the head by a falling wheel in his father's carriage works at age five. As it turned out, it wasn't such a bad thing. The damage wasn't severe and from then on the family always claimed Sam had "wheels in his head."
At the turn of the last century those wheels were turning, as were those of a number of Canadians, to thoughts concerning the potential of a newfangled device called the automobile.
Sam, however, as a partner in the McLaughlin Carriage Company in Oshawa, had the enthusiasm, means and drive to turn such dreams into reality. His efforts eventually resulted in the formation of General Motors of Canada Limited, but the story really begins with an axe handle in the mid-1800s.
McLaughlin's Irish grandfather, John, came to Canada in the early 1830s and cleared a farm north of Bowmanville. He had help from his son, Robert, who, when he wasn't swinging an axe, carved axe handles for sale to local merchants.
Robert moved up from axe handles to producing horse drawn sleighs in the 1860s. He then progressed to carriages, for which the company gained a solid reputation.
Robert sired three sons: Sam, George and Jack. Jack went on to found the Canada Dry beverage company in the U.S., while George and Sam stuck close to home. Sam began working as an apprentice for $3 a week, of which $2.50 was kept back as room and board. He was repaid the money in 1892 when he reached the age of 21, and he and George were made partners in the company.
The carriage works, after recovering from a destructive fire in 1899, was producing 25,000 carriages annually by 1901. Oshawa had lent Robert $50,000, to be paid back 'when convenient' to locate there - probably the best investment ever made by a Canadian municipality. But the horse-drawn vehicle's days were numbered.
Sam's first involvement with automobiles came about through the company's bookkeeper, Oliver Hezzelwood, who owned a single-cylinder machine. McLaughlin and his plant foreman devised what was likely the first Canadian auto accessory for its owner - a weatherproof top that consisted of a rubberized canvas sheet that draped over the vehicle, with four holes cut in it for the passengers' heads to poke through.
It was used in conjunction with sou'wester style hats. A pleased Hezzlewood allowed Sam to drive the car, and as Sam later recalled, "from then on I had a new kind of wheels in my head: motor-driven wheels."
By 1905 Sam was busy trying to convince brother George and "the Governor," his father, that the company's future lay with the automobile. The latter never did buy the idea, forcing Sam to engage in some clandestine research during holidays to the U.S.
Sam was a businessman, not a pioneering mechanic, and looked for existing designs that could be built in the Oshawa plant. A visit with Richard Pierce, producer of the high-priced Pierce-Arrow, convinced him that a lower priced, mass-produced machine making use of the company's carriage production capabilities was the way to succeed.
He also visited Thomas (of Thomas Flyer fame) who was already talking to the Canada Cycle and Motor Company in Toronto, as well as Peerless and Reo. Back in Oshawa Sam related what he'd learned to the Governor, who dismissed it all as a youthful enthusiasm.
Sam's first step towards actual vehicle production tripped over some bad technology, which he was on the verge of acquiring from a Michigan company. Fortunately he purchased two of the Lewis Company's cars first for testing.
"As automobiles they were a poor job of plumbing," was Sam's succinct analysis after numerous breakdowns. "If the Governor had been along we'd have been out of the automobile business before we entered it."
On his U.S. trip Sam had met an old acquaintance, William Crapo Durant, a carriage-maker-turned-carmaker, who had just purchased Buick. Durant offered his help if things didn't work out with Lewis.
After presumably unloading the Lewis' on some unsuspecting used car buyers, Sam purchased a Buick from the Dominion Automobile and Supply Company in Toronto, and decided on the drive back to Oshawa that it had what he needed to launch McLaughlin into the car business. A deal was almost worked out, but fell apart over financial issues. Returning to Oshawa, Sam and brother George plotted to develop their own car. An engineer was hired, machine and production tools purchased, and a body designed. An initial batch of 100 cars was planned, and then the engineer became seriously ill. Sam asked Durant to lend them an engineer, but instead Durant himself turned up on their Oshawa doorstep, a new deal in hand. What was subsequently signed was a 15-year agreement to purchase Buick engines and running gear that would carry McLaughlin bodies.
In 1908, the first year of production, 193 automobiles were turned out by the new McLaughlin Motor Car Company. The cars were then sold under the Buick name for a while and then became McLaughlin-Buicks.
Durant, meanwhile, was busy creating General Motors. Ousted by its shareholders he then founded Chevrolet, soon doing a deal with the McLaughlins to create the Canadian Chevrolet Company to build the cars in Canada. Chevrolet was soon snapped up by General Motors.
In 1918, the carriage company now gone, the McLaughlins decided to sell their automotive operations to the expanding U.S. giant General Motors. Sam stayed on as the first president of General Motors of Canada Limited, with George as vice-president. Robert McLaughlin died in 1921 and George retired in 1924. Soon Oldsmobiles, Cadillacs, Pontiacs and Chevy and GMC trucks were being built in Oshawa.
Sam continued as president until after the Second World War, and for many more years served as the chairman of the board. His ties to the company finally ended with his death, at the age of 100, in 1972.
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