Old cars lovingly restored to their showroom finishes are made to be seen.
For 45 years, the Prince George Cruisin’ Classics car club has made the Father’s Day Show and Shine one of the city’s most popular outdoor events - a chance for hundreds of vehicle owners to show off their pride-and-joy rides and provide the public a mechanical feast for the eyes.
But this year, with COVID-19 public health restrictions still in place, crowd gatherings of more than 50 people are not allowed and the Show and Shine had to be canceled. Rather than let all that Turtle wax got to waste, the city’s vintage and antique car clubs came up with an alternate plan to stage a couple of parades.
The first of those processions was Friday’s seniors tour and on a warm and partly-sunny afternoon a spectacular line of shiny classic cars and trucks made drive-by visits to seven long-term care homes in the city.
Bill and Kurt Vanderlans started the seniors tour about a decade ago and normally, if there was no pandemic, car owners would have stopped and parked in the lots at each senior home, allowing residents enough time to give those classic vehicles a close inspection. COVID protocols prevented that from happening this year and residents could only watch from windows or outdoor verandas as the parade of cars passed by.
“The seniors tour was designed to bring the show to the seniors who couldn’t get to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park too see our Show and Shine,” said Cruisin’ Classics president Christopher Knight. “The seniors in the past have come out and observed the cars up close and this year, unfortunately, they can’t do that and we can’t do that so we decided to run a slow-speed parade through as many seniors homes parking lots as we could.”
About 60 vehicles (double the number in previous years), representing three clubs – Prince George Cruisin’ Class, Vintage Car Club of Prince George and Overdrives – took part in Friday’s parade. The three-hour tour out of downtown started at Parkside Lodge at 12:30 p.m., then went to Rainbow Lodge, UHNBC and Simon Fraser Lodge, followed by visits to Laurier Manor, Gateway Lodge and Riverbend Manor.
It’s a blast down memory lane for some of the residents, who perhaps owned vehicles similar to the ones being driven in the city this weekend.
“They’ve always appreciated the quality of the automobile we bring them and there’s a lot of automobile knowledge in the seniors that are here and the conversations that have been had in the past have been extremely informative to us and to them,” said Knight, who brought his charcoal-over-red ’33 Ford five-window coupe.
“There are a lot of smart automobile people in town, regardless of age. We love to show them off and this is a great way to do that.”
The seniors tour is a precursor to Sunday’s Father’s Day COVID Cruise for a Cause, a 51-kilometre parade through the city streets to help raise funds for the Salvation Army Food Bank.
Starting at 1 p.m., from the CN Centre parking lot, the procession of collector cars, oldies, muscle cars, street rods, rat rods, orphans, trucks and bikes will follow a route north along Foothills Boulevard then into the Hart Highway residential area back into downtown, visiting Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, the traditional site of the Show and Shine, and Connaught Hill Park, before it winds through College Heights, then up University Way past UNBC returning to Exhibition Park.
Spectators will not be allowed to gather at the rally point at the CN Centre parking lot but will have plenty of opportunity to see the parade along the route. The link to the route map is here: https://bit.ly/315TFKy
"If the weather is nice on Sunday, I expect to see a lot of people, it’s gotten a lot of traction over the last month,” said Knight. “Club members that have been in town for a lot of years are spreading the word to other clubs and we’ve had thousands of hits on our website in the last couple weeks.
“We’re going to try and stay under the speed limit wherever we can so people can have a good look at the cars and we’ll try and in the right-hand lane on the four-lane roads. The idea is to bring the show to the public so they can have a look at these quality automobiles.”
The full route for Sunday’s parade is available on the Cruisin’ Classics website, cruisinclassics.ca.
