The Car That Crossed a Country Without a Road
Thomas Wilby, Jack Haney, and the 1912 REO across Canada
• • •
When Thomas W. Wilby and F. V. 'Jack' Haney left Halifax on August 27, 1912, their automobile was much more than transportation. It was an experiment. Canada did not yet possess a continuous highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific; gasoline could be difficult to find; garages were scarce outside the larger towns; bridges might simply disappear; and many so-called roads were little more than wagon tracks, sand, mud, corduroy logs, or trails across open prairie.
The Florida Times Union, 1909.
Into this landscape, Wilby and Haney took a new REO touring car and attempted something that had never been done: to travel across Canada by automobile and, in the process, demonstrate both what the motorcar could accomplish and how badly the country needed a national highway.[1]
The automobile would become the third principal character of the journey. Wilby was the writer and promoter. Haney was the driver, mechanic and problem solver. The REO was the machine that absorbed the punishment.
Modern accounts sometimes attach more specific model names to the automobile, but the contemporary sources used here are more cautious. Wilby generally calls it simply 'the car' or 'the machine,' while Haney refers to it in his diary as the 'Red Route Reo.' Mark Richardson describes it as a new REO touring car supplied to Wilby by the REO company through its Canadian operation in St. Catharines, Ontario. It was the same REO model to complete the first round trip across North America in 1905 and that set a speed record in 1910 by driving from New York City to San Francisco in 10 days.[2]
NYT August 21, 1910, Section T, Page 8.
What is not in doubt is what the automobile looked like and how it was prepared. Wilby gives an unusually detailed description at the beginning of A Motor Tour Through Canada. On the Halifax waterfront, he watched the automobile stand with its wheels in the Atlantic before the departure ceremony. It was, he wrote, 'glittering in her shiny coat of black paint,' with lines 'as fine as those of a yacht.' He considered it 'an ideal tourist car,' seemingly unaware of what Canada was about to do to it.[3]
It was an open five-passenger touring automobile with high ground clearance, an essential feature on roads deeply rutted by horses and wagons. Anti-skid tires were fitted to all four wheels. Spare tires were carried at the rear. According to Wilby, there was a polished metal trunk for luggage in the tonneau, a central gear lever, foot-operated brakes, two speedometers and a horn operated by foot. Long boxes fitted to the running boards carried tools and miscellaneous equipment. Reserve gasoline tanks and an oil can travelled outside the passenger compartment. Haney’s diary independently mentions a speedometer, but only in the singular. On September 3 he wrote: “The speedometer now shows 958 miles from Halifax.”
The expedition carried no elaborate camping outfit. Instead, the available space and weight were devoted to what might keep the car moving: spare parts, an axe, a shovel and block and tackle for recovering the automobile when it became trapped. That last item would prove essential.
Fully loaded, Wilby said, the REO weighed 4,000 pounds. 'She was a touring car per se,' he wrote, 'with open body, high clearance, and seating capacity for five.' Two tons was a formidable weight to drag through soft earth, particularly with the narrow tires and modest engine power available in 1912.[4]
Lewistown Daily News, 1913.
The difference between Wilby's account and Haney's diary is revealing. Wilby saw romance in the machine. Haney saw bolts, spark plugs, grease cups, gasoline pressure, transmission shafts and work.
On their first day, Haney was already studying a problem. After arriving in Truro he wrote simply: 'Bum roads most of the way. Mud got in carburetor, will fix protection for it in the morning.'[5]
That sentence tells us much about early automobile travel. There was no sealed engine compartment protecting the mechanical systems from the environment. The road itself could enter the automobile and stop it.
The next day brought poor gasoline and ignition problems. 'Had much trouble with poor gas and spark plugs, motor missed all day,' Haney recorded. He worked on the REO in Moncton until 11:30 that night and installed Rajah spark plugs. His verdict the following day was concise: 'Car going fine.'[6]
This became the rhythm of the expedition. Haney drove during the day and maintained or repaired the automobile whenever they stopped. Tires were pumped. Bolts were tightened. Spring clips were inspected. Axles and transmissions were greased. The clutch was dismantled. Valves were ground. Broken components were repaired in local machine shops or replaced with parts sent ahead from REO.
The early automobile was not a sealed consumer product. It was machinery that demanded a mechanic.
Fuel presented a particularly interesting problem. Near Grand Falls, New Brunswick, the REO was nearly out of gasoline while climbing hills. The fuel would not feed properly to the carburetor. Haney improvised one of the most memorable mechanical solutions of the journey.
REO's Fuel Delivery System
On at least two documented occasions in Quebec, Jack Haney had to drive the REO uphill backward. In Quebec City, the heavily loaded car stalled on the steep cobblestone climb from the St. Lawrence to the Upper Town, prompting Wilby to tell Haney to turn around and back up the hill.
About twenty miles outside Quebec, Haney faced an even steeper grade where gasoline would no longer feed properly from the tank. He reversed the car uphill, but when the wheels lost traction near the top, he placed four local men in the rear seat to add weight over the driving wheels. The extra traction worked, and the REO backed successfully over the summit.
This second account is particularly valuable because it explains why backing uphill was useful. The problem was not simply insufficient horsepower. The REO's fuel delivery was struggling on a steep grade. By turning the car around, Haney changed the relative elevation of the fuel tank and carburetor and restored the ability to feed gasoline. He subsequently planned to pressurize the fuel tank, which would make this improvised procedure less necessary.
The reverse gear ratio was lower, making it easier to climb steep hills (Nicol, 1997-p.72).
'The hills were bad,' he wrote, 'so in order to feed the gas I blew into the tank and then plugged the vent hole with a piece of match.'[7]
He literally pressurized the gasoline tank with his lungs.
A few days later, outside Quebec City, gravity again defeated the fuel system. The hill was so steep that gasoline would not feed properly even with a full tank. Haney tried climbing backward, hoping the reversed angle would permit the fuel to reach the engine. When the rear wheels lost traction about a hundred feet from the top, he enlisted four local men.
'I got them in the rear seat to hold her down,' he wrote, 'and was able to back up and over it.'[8]
The episode captures both the limitations and ingenuity of early motoring. Four human beings became temporary ballast.
Haney soon devised a better solution. He installed a valve so that the fuel tank could be pressurized. On September 9 he recorded with satisfaction: 'The pressure works fine.'[9]
The REO was effectively being modified while crossing Canada.
Tires, surprisingly, were initially among the more dependable components. After 958 miles, Haney noted, 'No tire trouble yet.' At Quebec he inspected a badly cut left rear tire that had narrowly escaped being punctured by a large nail. Wilby later recorded their first burst tire in northern Ontario, but even that interruption was relatively brief because they carried a powered tire pump.[10]
The drivetrain was another matter.
Northern Ontario subjected the REO to conditions for which even a rugged touring car had never been designed. Near Scotia Junction, the automobile became stuck on a sand hill and had to be pulled out. Haney discovered that the transmission shaft had twisted.
His diagnosis contained none of Wilby's literary flourish: 'Shaft is too soft.'[11]
Potrait of Jack Haney. Source: St. Catharines Museum
A replacement was ordered. Haney spent the enforced delay thinking about another problem: how a single man could recover a two-ton automobile without depending upon a team of horses or a crowd of local helpers. The block and tackle was not sufficient. He began designing a windlass.
The following day brought an even more extraordinary test. Haney described a hill with what he estimated as a 40-percent grade and a slippery, deeply rutted surface. The REO could not climb it. They attempted another route and found themselves on what amounted to 'corduroy stairs' - a primitive road constructed from logs. The car hung up on rocks because even its generous ground clearance was insufficient. A bridge had collapsed and had to be rebuilt. The transmission was damaged again, leaving the automobile able to travel only in low gear.
They covered 64 miles that day but gained only about 30 miles toward North Bay.
Haney wrote: 'Wilby is pretty sore about the delay, is almost ready to give up. The trip is a farce anyway.'[12]
Wilby remembered the same struggle rather differently. His account describes 'two tons of steel and equipment' being dragged forward with a makeshift windlass. They jacked up individual wheels, filled holes between rotten logs with stones and repeatedly tried to obtain traction. Finally the REO pulled itself over the obstruction.
Then Haney lifted the floorboard and examined the controls.
'We had twisted the new driving shaft,' Wilby wrote, 'and could only advance, crawlingly, on low gear.'[13]
By the time the REO reached the West, weight had become one of its greatest enemies. In British Columbia, Wilby finally admitted that the automobile was poorly matched to the mountains.
'For mountain travel,' he wrote, 'the car was ill-prepared to meet all demands.'
The problem was not that the REO was inherently a weak automobile. It was that the expedition had turned it into a heavily laden transcontinental machine. Wilby calculated that they were carrying nearly 4,000 pounds while producing only about 30 horsepower, and he doubted that the tired engine was still developing even that much power. 'It needed more horsepower in proportion to weight,' he concluded.[14]
The braking system was equally tested. On October 8, after climbing roughly 3,000 feet toward Phoenix, British Columbia, the REO began a long mountain descent. Haney recorded that 'going down hill we near burned the brakes out.'[15]
There was no engine-management system, anti-lock braking, hydraulic assistance or modern cooling. Controlling two tons of machinery on a primitive switchback road was a physical and mechanical exercise.
Lighting could be even more frightening. The car relied on acetylene gas lighting, and on October 11 the supply failed as they approached Lytton. Haney's diary says they 'had to drive 15 miles in to Lytton without lights, over dangerous roads.'[16]
Wilby's more dramatic account of travelling through the Fraser country makes clear just what 'dangerous roads' could mean: narrow ledges, precipitous drops, loose surfaces and little margin for error. In 1912, the automobile was frequently traveling through a landscape built for horses, wagons or no wheeled vehicle at all.[17]
Haney's diary is filled with small acts of mechanical survival. He repaired a leaking radiator. He changed clutch components and added shock absorbers in Toronto. He repeatedly tightened fittings shaken loose by bad roads. He had a replacement spring seat fabricated at a small machine shop near Fort William. In Winnipeg he 'ground valves, took out clutch, oiled and cleaned it,' because the clutch was chattering badly.[18]
The car that reached British Columbia was therefore not mechanically identical to the one that had touched the Atlantic at Halifax. It had been repaired, adjusted and altered continuously as the country exposed its weaknesses.
That makes Haney's role inseparable from the automobile's achievement.
Richardson's later account emphasizes that REO did not merely provide Wilby with a car. It supplied Haney, a young company mechanic, to drive it. Wilby did not share the driving or the mechanical work. Haney drove, diagnosed, repaired and improvised his way west.[19]
Haney’s Diary
Wilby's published book scarcely acknowledges him by name, usually referring to him simply as 'the chauffeur.' Haney's diary restores the missing mechanical half of the story.
The diary also reveals the extent to which the automobile became a source of tension between the two men. In Winnipeg, Haney refused Wilby's demand to leave before he believed the car and roads were ready. 'He was going to leave at 1:30 today,' Haney wrote. 'I said NO, owing to condition of car and roads.'[20]
It was an important assertion. Wilby controlled the expedition's public story, but Haney controlled whether the REO was mechanically capable of continuing it.
The car also reveals something larger about Canada in 1912. Its breakdowns were not merely automobile failures. Again and again, the REO reached the limits of the infrastructure surrounding it. There was no road from North Bay to Sudbury that they could use, so the car went aboard a railway car. Lake Superior presented another roadless barrier and required water and rail transport. In British Columbia they again encountered sections where railway or ship transport became necessary.
The REO was demonstrating the very argument Wilby wanted the expedition to make. Canada possessed a railway joining east and west, but it did not yet possess a road joining the country.
That is why the automobile matters historically.
The journey was not simply a test of whether a REO could survive thousands of miles of punishment. It was a test of whether Canada itself was ready for the automobile age. The answer was mixed. The machine could go almost anywhere if Haney could keep it running and if enough people, horses, ferries, railway cars, tools and ingenuity were available to overcome the places where the road disappeared.
Wilby began the journey looking at the pristine black automobile and calling it 'a beauty.' Haney began by noting mud in the carburetor.
The REO that arrived on the Pacific coast had crossed rivers on ferries, crawled through mud, climbed backward up hills, bounced over logs, broken transmission shafts, overheated its brakes, travelled without lights and spent portions of the journey aboard ships and railway cars because no road existed. Its survival was remarkable, but it was not miraculous.
It survived because Jack Haney continually made it survive.
Source note
This article is grounded principally in Wilby's 1914 book A Motor Tour Through Canada, Jack Haney's surviving diary, Wilby's illustrated contemporary article Across Canada by Motor-Car, and Mark Richardson's later historical account in The Drive Across Canada.