Automaker’s heir reclaims piece of family history
Rare Gray-dort finds its way home through the generations
Gasoline may run in the veins of North Vancouver pharmaceutical sales executive Robyn MacKenzie. Robyn is a direct descendent of Chatham, Ont., carriage builder William Gray, a Scottish immigrant blacksmith who started a company in 1853 that would go on to build one of Canada’s bestloved early cars — the GrayDort.
Four years ago, Robyn’s family took their summer vacation to the Gray-Dort owner’s reunion in the Chatham area, where 23,000 examples of the car were built between 1915 and 1924.
“I was there with my husband and three daughters and saw a sign saying: Happy Birthday Robyn,” she recalls. “I thought it was nice that they were recognizing someone named Robyn for having a birthday.” Then Robyn’s husband Cameron revealed her 50th-birthday gift — a restored 1922 Gray-Dort — and she realized the sign was meant for her.
“I was overwhelmed and couldn’t believe it,” she recalls of the moment. “Everyone there had known about this and had kept it a secret.”
Robyn had actually ridden in that very car with her father and three sisters when she was 11 years old.
“My father, Robert Gray, was the great-grandson of William Gray, who founded the Gray Carriage Company in Chatham,” she says. “His grandfather was Robert Gray, who took over the company when his father died.”
The elder Gray was killed in a railway accident, leaving to his son a company that had built nearly a quarter of a million horse-drawn carriages.
Robert Gray recognized the company’s future was in automobiles, so he decided to study the automotive industry in nearby Detroit for two years before striking an alliance with Flint, Mich., car builder Dallas Dort to build cars of his design in the three Chatham carriage factories.
One factory was for assembly and upholstery; the second was where the bodies were constructed and the third was for stamping body panels. The company labelled the cars Canadian, because 60 per cent of the parts used were produced in Ontario. GrayDort cars used four-cylinder Lycoming engines delivering 28 horsepower.
The sturdy, well-built touring, roadster and coupe models were very popular, outselling all other makes of cars in many parts of the country. So it was that a Mr. Jamison from Edmonton travelled to Chatham to pick up his new 1922 GrayDort Special. With a maroon body and black fenders, the Special was the first GrayDort to have front and rear bumpers, a parking light on the left front fender, five steel disc wheels and a combination tail, stop and backup light.
Decades later, Jamison left his precious Gray-Dort touring car to his nephew, Spence Jamison, who had the car restored in 1967. That same year, the car carried then-prime minister Lester Pearson and his wife in the city’s Klondike Days Parade. Two years later, Robyn MacKenzie’s father Robert Gray connected with Spence Jamison, who took the family for a ride in the car when they were on holidays in Edmonton. Robyn was 11 years old.
She never stops feeling amazement that she now owns that same car. Her husband Cameron still drives it once in a while and displays it at classic car shows.
“I nearly had it up to 40 miles per hour,” he grins.
“The car is called Gladys, after my grandmother. She was a grand old lady, just like the car,” Robyn says with pride.
Sadly, the Gray Manufacturing Company didn’t fare as well as Robyn MacKenzie’s venerable 1922 Gray-Dort.
By 1923, Dallas Dort was in ill health and informed the Gray family that he was shutting down production of the automobile that wore his name.
Robert Gray tried to forge an alliance with another car company, without success, and sales slowed to a halt. The Gray-Dort company went from having a half-million dollar surplus to being $1.5 million in debt, before closing its doors forever.
It is estimated that as few as 40 Gray-Dort automobiles remain in existence out of the 23,000 produced in Chatham. They are with enthusiastic owners as far away as England and Australia and, of course, Robyn MacKenzie of North Vancouver, whose greatgreat-grandfather founded the company.