1990 Inductee Dick Midgley is now officially a member of the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame, having received his induction in the Competitor category as one of the Class of 2022 at a ceremony on Saturday, Feb 25th in Toronto.  We extend our sincere congratulations to Dick for receiving this very well-deserved honour.

We are sorry to hear that 2014 Inductee Hank Neilson has passed and we send our condolences to his family and friends.

HANK NEILSON 2014 INDUCTEE

We are greatly saddened to learn of the passing of 2015 Pioneer award recipient Basil Wells and we extend our sincere condolences to his wife Carole and family.

Basil began his racing involvement at Western in 1968 when he first got behind the wheel in a white #18 1952 Ford Stockcar. Competing in that class the following year in a ’55 Pontiac as well as in a 1952 Buick in the Figure 8 class, he moved up to Late Model Stocks in 1970 with a 1956 Pontiac, recording a heat race win in only his second appearance in this faster division on May 2^nd. Basil drove a ’55 Chevy in the now-renamed Super Stock class in 1971 and retired from active competition at the end of that season. In 1982 he joined the Old Time Racers Association (OTRA) where he ran until hanging up his helmet in the mid 1990’s. As well as donating his #4 OTRA car to the Hall of Fame, he also sourced and donated all of the Museum’s black and white tile flooring.

Here is a video recorded by Sean Morris of the final lap at Western Speedway which was taken by Jim Steen at the track’s grand finale on Saturday, September 17th. 

As a resident of Langford since 1946, 2013 Pioneer award winner Jimmie Isacson could most certainly write a history book on the area. And that book would definitely include his memories of, and his participation in, local auto racing.

First attending Langford Speedway’s Saturday night “Big Car” races in the late 1940’s, Jimmie witnessed drivers including Gerry “the Jeep” Vantreight, Digger Caldwell and “the Little Man with the Big Cigar” Jack Spalding who drove races with a glowing cigar clenched tightly in his teeth! When racing later moved north to Shearing Speedway, Jimmie’s older brother Ed was one of the competitors in the Stockcar class, along with a 15 year-old rookie named Billy Foster. Andy Cottyn’s building of Western Speedway saw Jimmie spending time with Andy’s son George and also selling programs and watching brother Ed race with the likes of Dave Cooper, Phil Lambrick, Dick Willoughby, Dick Varley and many others. And due to the fact that the large neon sign advertising the track was later placed on property owned by Jimmie’s parents, the Isacson family regularly received free tickets, assuring their continued interest in racing.

In 1962, Jimmie started a shipwright’s apprenticeship at Victoria’s “Yarrows” shipyard. A lengthy worker’s strike there in 1963 turned out to have a silver lining as Jimmie got the opportunity to use his metal fabrication skills assisting his friend Grant King in the building of 4 offset/upright-style Sprintcars in a shop owned by Geoff Vantreight on Tyndall Avenue in Gordon Head. One of the cars was for Geoff and his driver, Al Smith and Jimmie subsequently became the towcar driver for the new yellow “Vantreight Daffodil Special”, transporting it to races throughout the Pacific Northwest on the CAMRA circuit where Al set new track records and scored both wins and good finishes during the 1964 season.

With the formation of the “Victoria Auto Racing Association” (VARA) in 1966, Jimmie served as the club’s Awards Coordinator and also as a Safety Man. The following season he built a 1953 Chevy to compete in the Stockcar class with his younger brother Fred as driver. Along with many good placings, Fred won the Stockcar Championship race and finished 14^th in the season-end points standings. Starting out the following season with the same car and finding only limited success, Jimmy put together a newer ’55 Chevy with Fred setting a new track record on the car’s first appearance on July 5^th. Good results kept coming for the rest of that year and Jimmie and Fred finished 8^th in points. Selling the car at the end of the season, Jimmie stepped away from racing for a time but did construct a replica Sprintcar for his stepson Lorne to drive in Soapbox Derby competition with which they won the championship. In 1988, he fielded a Firebird Super Stock with his nephew Gary at the wheel which they also ran the following season.

Today, in addition to attending certain races at Western, Jimmie also makes regular trips to the North Island which include taking in the Sprintcar races at Saratoga Speedway.

As the old saying goes, “Everyone loves a winner”. This is usually the case until he or she wins too often which was the exact situation that 1995 Inductee Jack “Digger” Caldwell found himself in during Langford Speedway’s 1946 season. Having racked up an impressive number of Big Car race wins which at one point included eight main events in a row, Digger had noticed an increasing number of boos and cat calls from a growing number of unhappy fans who had become tired of his constant wins. Wanting to remedy the situation, he suggested to track officials that they give him a degree of difficulty by putting him at the tail end of the starting lineup of each race he was in. Up to this time, faster qualifiers were put at the front with the slower ones behind according to time trial results. Quick to act, officials put fast time qualifier Digger dead last in the very next main event by reversing the entire starting field which was the first time a “reverse start” was used in local racing. However, as it turned out, this possible solution was only a minor setback for Caldwell as he quickly charged to the front of the pack to handily win his ninth main in a row. He would go on to record a total of fourteen out of the seventeen features that were run that year, coming second twice and third once in the remaining three. In addition, he scored seven clean sweeps (helmet dash, heat race and main event) and also equalled that season’s track record of eighteen seconds, rock solidly assuring his being crowned as the 1946 season’s Big Car Champion.