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McLaughlin Touring, Charlottetown, circa 1914

IAN MARR OF BAYFIELD, ONTARIO, wrote:

Photo is of my mother, Grace Marr (nee Messervy) taken about 1914 at Charlottetown, P.E.I. at the wheel of my grandfather’s 1912 McLaughlin-Buick Touring car. Note the size of the spare tire, coal oil cowl lamps, windshield braces and right hand drive. Buick went to left hand drive in 1914. As an interesting aside, Walter Lorenzo Marr, David Buick’s first chief engineer and a co-inventor of the overhead-valve engine, is a distant relative of mine. Also in the car are my grandmother, Carrie Messervy, cousin Edna Gordon (both in back seat) and Uncle Robert Messervy (with cap in front seat). The others are family friends. Mother survived to age 91 and passed away in 1987 at Kitchener, Ontario. She always thought P.E.I. to be the most beautiful place in Canada with its red soil, green trees, and blue-green ocean and she always referred to it as “The Island!” Her father, J.A. Messervy, the owner of the car, was an M.P. for Charlottetown and her great uncle, George Coles, was a Premier of P.E.I. in the 1850’s and a Father of Confederation.⁴

The first gasoline-powered automobile appeared on the Island in 1904 (although Father G.A. Belcourt had driven his steam vehicle there thirty-eight years earlier). But farmers and other rural folk disliked these new contraptions, and Prince Edward Island banned automobiles beginning in 1909, even though there were only nine automobiles on the Island at that time. Finally, in 1913, the ban was lifted.

The McLaughlin Touring owned by Ian Marr’s grandfather would have been built at the McLaughlin factory in Oshawa. Sam McLaughlin began building cars bearing his name in 1908 with components purchased from Buick in the United States. In 1918, General Motors of Canada was formed with Sam McLaughlin as president. He led an active life and passed away at age one hundred in 1972.