TRUCK MUSEUM NEEDS NEW HOME
Volunteer-run facility hosting last open house before loss of half its display space
“It seems that we take one step forward and then two steps back,” says a very frustrated B.C. Truck Vintage Museum president Chenn Bergen.
The enthusiast, who spent 35 years as the Ford dealer in Prince Rupert and now is in commercial sales at Dam’s Ford in Surrey, is referring to the impending loss of half the display space in the museum building at the southwest corner of the Cloverdale Fairgrounds. They are about to lose 4,000 square feet of their museum space. The City of Surrey has provided a home for the 27 historic trucks and related memorabilia for the past six years. Each one of these trucks contributed to growth in the Metro Vancouver area and the opening up of British Columbia.
One of the trucks was never put in service. That would be the three-ton 1946 Maple Leaf, which was part of the Aubrey (Bob) King Collection donated to the province following the death of the eccentric millionaire whose six companies once controlled trucking in and out of Vancouver. The truck has been driven only 123 kilometres. Museum volunteer Denis Corrin, a retired school teacher, sat in this truck when it was brand new when, as a 17-year-old, he rode his bicycle around Vancouver collecting bills for King ’s trucking company.
The Teamsters Union took over stewardship of the 14 historic trucks following the closure of the B.C. Transportation Museum by the provincial government in 1991. The Teamsters maintained the collection for 12 years before announcing they could no longer afford to do so.
But it was a fight over pay and time off with the Teamsters that caused Bob King to shut down his companies in 1958 and lock up his downtown Vancouver warehouses. His trucks gathered dust until buildings on Pender Street and Main Street and Terminal Avenue were opened in 1974 after his death.
The City of Surrey made space available for the truck collection and the volunteers who run the B.C. Truck Museum under the Surrey Heritage Society banner. The museum has become an economic, cultural and heritage benefit to the community. It hosted 36 community events in 2017 and took part in an additional 15 events including the Surrey Santa Parade, Cloverdale Rodeo Parade and numerous community fundraising events.
But the City of Surrey now has other plans for the building where two dozen volunteers work several days a week maintaining and restoring the trucks from a bygone era.
When the building was constructed in 1958, a portion housed Surrey’s original town hall from 1881 when the then remote area a day’s horse ride from Vancouver had only a handful of residents farming the surrounding land.
The city is spending $15.7 million to upgrade the Surrey Museum and create a new heritage site on Highway 10 east of downtown Cloverdale. They will remove the 137-year-old town hall from inside the museum building and move it one kilometre to the new heritage site. It will join the historic Anniedale School and a settler’s cabin on the new property.
In moving the town hall, half the old museum building will be taken down and at least 10 of the trucks will have to be put in storage. The dismantling of the building is scheduled to begin April 30.
“We’ve just completed the repatriation of the trucks which are now on display in one building,” Bergen said at a meeting of volunteers to discuss the issue. “Now we have to find a new place for them. It just won’t be as interesting for people to come here without all the trucks.”
To date, the museum has welcomed more than 14,000 visitors from 19 countries, eight U.S. states, seven provinces and 56 cities and towns in B.C. Ironically, the museum has just received a federal government grant to do monthly tours for seniors in care homes. They need the space to provide better accessibility for those visitors who are mobility challenged.
All the directors and the 16 to 18 volunteers, five of which are retired mechanics, who have spent a combined 36,000 hours restoring the trucks operating the museum, share the frustration of losing what they have worked so hard to create.
The B.C. Truck Museum society needs a building with a minimum of 25,000 square feet of space to properly house the collection and hundreds of related pieces of memorabilia and photos. They have started a building fund and are looking for donations. There are four trucks in the outside compound that have been donated for restoration and display. They should be kept inside. Every year, there is up to half a dozen historic trucks that people want to donate.
Among the trucks on display is the rarest of the rare — a 1935 Dodge Airflow, one of only four left in the world and the only one shipped to Canada. Before Bob King bought it and stored it, it was a tanker truck for Standard Oil. It’s in the process of receiving a full restoration.
There is a 1955 GMC fire truck that served the town of Hope until 2004, a 1951 Chevrolet repair truck that was restored by retired B.C. Telephone employees to commemorate a century of service and a 1914 FWD truck that once carried troops to the front lines during the First World War and later plowed snow on Vancouver’s B.C. Electric rail lines.
This is a one-of-a-kind exhibit of our transportation history overseen by dedicated and highly skilled volunteers that is once again in jeopardy of being broken up and lost forever. It is worth saving.
The open house will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday as part of B.C. Heritage Week at 6022 176th St. — the building at the corner of 176th and 60th Avenue in Surrey on the Cloverdale Fairgrounds.
For more information visit bcvintagetruckmuseum.org