RESURRECTING THE FOSSMOBILE

In honour of the imaginative, resourceful bicycle mechanic who conceived, designed and built Canada’s first successful gas-powered automobile by Ronald M. Foss, Burlington, Ont.

- Ronald M. Foss

As a young boy, growing up in Fort Chambly, Que., from time to time, I would hear stories of my grandfather George Foote Foss and his invention. I would overhear these stories as my father shared the details with friends and neighbors who were visiting our home. However, the stories that I most often heard came directly from my grandfather, as we visited him frequently. I recall fondly sitting on a footstool near his feet as he sat in his large, comfortable chair, recounting the steps he took in tinkering, planning, and, ultimately, building a gasoline-engine automobile, which was to be the first in Canada—later dubbed “the Fossmobile.”

In the early 1960s, when I was about seven years old, I recall that everyone around me was talking with a flurry of renewed interest about his accomplishment. It was then that he was presented with two honorary memberships: one from the Vintage Automobile Club of Montreal (VACM) and the second from the prestigious Antique Automobile Club of America (AACA). Only two Canadians have ever received this latter honor. The other Canadian to receive it was Colonel Robert Samuel McLaughlin, who started the McLaughlin Motor Car Company in 1907, one of the first major automobile manufacturers in Canada.

With these two initiatives, there came a swarm of media attention, and I can recall being shown newspaper clippings, many of which I still have in my possession today. Not only were there photos and articles written about his honorary memberships, but many of the local papers also reprinted his earlier writing of “The True Story of a Small Town Boy,” originally published in 1954 by The Sherbrooke Daily Record.