A happy belated 60th birthday to the wonderful Mosport
It’s been a tough year to celebrate a birthday. Mosport, a.k.a. Canadian Tire Motorsport Park (CTMP), turned 60 this year, but wasn’t able to mark the occasion because COVID-19 restrictions were in the way.
There was no Victoria Day Speedfest in May, where the annual fireworks display would have gotten the racing season and the 60th anniversary celebration off with a bang; no IMSA weekend in July, with the headline Mobil 1 SportsCar Grand Prix; no Labour Day NASCAR Camping World Trucks weekend featuring the Chevy Silverado 250. They were all cancelled — primarily because many of the series and drivers are American and were unable to cross the border.
And before some wise guy says, “Hey, vaccinated Americans can come to Canada now, so how come there won’t be a trucks race?” I would say it’s because Goodyear would not have the time now to manufacture the tires needed for the trucks at CTMP.
The motorcycles were at the circuit last weekend and there will be a few more club-racing weekends (as there were earlier this season) but there hasn’t been a really good opportunity to mark the 60th — until …
The Ontario government changed the rules recently and gave entertainment venues like CTMP permission to open for business, with some restrictions. So, in two weeks, the first Labour Day Sprints Weekend will be held, featuring five of Canada’s finest racing series — the NASCAR Pinty’s Series, the Nissan Sentra Cup (which I wrote about last weekend), the FEL Sports Car Championship Canada presented by Michelin, the Emzone Radical Cup Canada presented by Michelin and the Toyo Tires F1600 Series.
A limited number of tickets are available, so if you want to go, you’d better go to the CTMP website and buy some. And except when you’re eating or drinking, face masks will be mandatory. I’ll let you know next week what they’ve got planned to mark the 60th.
Yes, that’s correct: next week. I am writing two columns about Mosport, a most wonderful place I have been going to since the year it opened: 1961. I could say I was one or two years old at the time, and that my parents took me, but that would not be true. I drove myself to the first professional event there, the Players 200, and I have been driving myself
there ever since.
Now, we all know that Sterling Moss won that first Player’s sportscar race (we do, don’t we) and that over the years there were Formula One races held there, and Can-Am, Indy-car, stock car and Formula 5000 races and every other kind of race series possible. But my job here this week and next is to tell you stories about the Mosport you maybe don’t know that much about. Like this one.
In the early days of Mosport, the place was — shall we say — somewhat primitive. The property had originally been a dairy and beef cattle farm, and evidence of that was still around. When you were wandering around the circuit, you had to keep an eye out to avoid putting your foot in it.
There was no plumbing. Outhouses were the order of the day and, in 1961, they were not the sophisticated privies we have today, some of which have running water. Nope, in 1961, the outhouses were made of wood and were of the one-hole variety. If you had to do anything more than No. 1, you could be in trouble.
Now, there were proper toilets in the Esso Tower at the entrance to the pits at Corner 10. There was a unisex washroom on the ground floor and separate men’s and women’s upstairs. As you can imagine, they were very popular. Drivers, team owners and special pass holders, including media, were allowed in.
One race weekend, a reporter who will not be identified (not me), decided to walk out to Corner 5 on Sunday morning to watch some of the racing (no TV in those days) and, while out there, felt the call of nature. He realized he didn’t have time to walk back to the tower, so sought out an outhouse. As people had been using the privy since Friday, it was pretty rank inside, but he had no choice: he took a deep breath and went in.
He did not dawdle. He did his business quickly but then was horrified to discover there was no toilet paper. He had to use his socks.
When he returned to the tower, he told Mosport accountant Harvey Hudes what had happened. That year at Christmas, there was a special delivery made to the reporter’s home. The package said “Do Not Open Till Dec. 25,” but he couldn’t wait and tore into it.
Inside, he found a new pair of socks. Norris McDonald is a retired Star editor who