When Thomas Wilby published A Motor Tour Through Canada in 1914, he presented the extraordinary 1912 journey across Canada largely as his own adventure. Yet the man who actually drove and maintained the REO for those 53 difficult days—23-year-old mechanic Jack Haney—was barely allowed into Wilby’s story.
Wilby never identifies Haney by name. Early in the book he simply introduces him as “the chauffeur,” describing him as a “young expert driver” and one of those “sturdy, independent, self-contained fellows” whose sense of social relationships was, in Wilby’s view, “hopelessly confused by their own free interpretation of democracy and equality.” (A Motor Tour Through Canada, pp. 3–4.)
“According to automotive journalist and author Mark Richardson, who compared the original photograph with the version published in Wilby’s book, Wilby had Haney ‘airbrushed out of the photograph’ and also removed the REO name from the car’s grille.” See his commentary in the YouTube video below.
Mark Richardson emphasizes this remarkable omission in The Drive Across Canada. REO had supplied Wilby not only with the automobile but also with Fonce Val “Jack” Haney, its experienced mechanic. Yet Richardson notes that when Wilby’s book appeared, he “mentioned ‘the chauffeur’ only rarely and never once referred to him by name.” The two men had nevertheless spent 53 days together crossing the country before finally reaching Victoria.
But according to Richardson’s research, Wilby went considerably further than simply leaving Haney’s name out of the text.
Richardson describes an original professional photograph taken on Vancouver Island. Wilby can be seen standing on the left wearing his hat, while Haney is clearly visible on the far right, leaning against one of British Columbia’s enormous trees behind the automobile. Richardson then compares that original with the photograph that appeared in Wilby’s book:
“Wilby had Haney airbrushed out of the photograph, and he even removed the REO name from the grill on the front of the car.” Richardson adds: “It was the same for all the pictures in the book.”
"The Canadian Highway". T.W. Wilby and Parly en route for Victoria. Source: City of Vancouver Archives. This is the professional photo with Haney standing to the right of the tree.
The alteration is extraordinary because Haney was hardly a disposable member of the expedition. He drove the REO through mud, primitive trails and steep grades, repaired the automobile when it failed and struggled repeatedly to keep the expedition moving.
His own diary reveals just how different his experience was from Wilby’s polished travel narrative. After another exhausting mechanical failure in Ontario, Haney wrote simply: “The trip is a farce anyway.”
The photo from the book. Haney and the REO name have disappeared. Source: (A Motor Tour Through Canada, 1914.)
The photograph therefore becomes more than an interesting historical curiosity. It visually represents what happened throughout Wilby’s book. Haney was first denied his name in the narrative and then, quite literally, erased from the picture.
For the story of the 1912 crossing, few images better capture the troubled relationship between these two men. Wilby wrote the book and became the public face of the expedition. Haney drove the car. And when Wilby took control of the final picture, Haney disappeared.