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THE KEITH
BEEDIE STORY
He didnʼt know
what type of job
he wanted, but
he thought
tinkering with
engines would
be fun.
PART 1: LAYING THE FOUNDATION
CHAPTER 4: SETTING UP SHOP
MAKING DO
When Keith returned to Vancouver his future was wide open. “I wasn’t sure
what I wanted to do,” says Keith. One of the benefi ts offered to servicemen
was the Canadian version of the American G.I. Bill, which provided
educational opportunities to help men re-establish themselves after the
war. Keith took advantage of the chance to get some training, enrolling in an
automotive mechanics course at Vancouver Technical High School. “I knew I
liked taking things apart,” says Keith. “I fi gured I may as well do something
useful and learn how to put them back together, too.” He didn’t know what
type of job he wanted, but he thought tinkering with engines would be fun.
Spending his days in the school shop surrounded by cars, the old
Durkopp bike that had served Keith so well as a teenager no longer
seemed like a fi tting mode of transportation for an ambitious young
man. He wanted a car of his own. Th ere was one hitch. He had
considerable driving experience from cruising around in his dad’s car,
but he had never taken the test to get a driver’s licence. He approached
a friend of his, Ted Th orpe, who had an Auburn convertible, and
asked to borrow it for the test. “It wasn’t even a real
convertible,” Keith says. “It didn’t have a top at all.”
His friend loaned him the car and Keith headed to
the Department of Motor Vehicles, downtown on
Georgia Street. He arrived at the offi ce at 4:30 p.m.
“Th e place closed at fi ve,” Keith remembers. “Th e
guy behind the desk didn’t seem too happy to see me.
Must have been anxious to get home, or something.”
Th e examiner gave Keith the test, which he started
fi lling out. Aft er watching Keith read over a couple
of questions carefully before making his choice, the
examiner lost patience and grabbed the sheet out of
Keith’s hands. “He put the piece of celluloid with holes
in it that they use for marking on top of my test and
just ticked all the answers. He got to the end and said, ‘I
guess I should mark one or two wrong to make it look
good.’ ” Keith looked on, shocked. With the written test
out of the way, the two went outside to complete the
driving portion of the exam. While Keith was inside, it
had started to rain. Th e examiner took one look at the
Auburn with no top, turned around and headed back
inside. “You think I’m going out in the rain in that?”
he asked Keith. Th ey returned to the offi ce where the
examiner fi lled out Keith’s licence and handed it over.
“And that was it,” says Keith with a laugh.
Now he had a licence but no car. Keith’s friend Fred Banbury
introduced him to a woman he knew who was trying to sell her 1925
Willys Overland. She’d had it up on blocks through the war and now
she wanted it gone. “I didn’t have any money,” says Keith, “so I off ered
her a trade. My portable gramophone for her car. I’d purchased the
gramophone in 1941 for around 15 bucks. She took the deal, so I had
myself a car.” Th e Willys Overland wasn’t a typical automobile. It had
no fuel pump – it used gravity to propel gas into the engine – and
the oil moved via a “splash feed” system. Most unusual of all, the car
had an oil clutch. “A normal clutch can’t get a spot of oil on it or it
malfunctions. Th is one ran in oil. But you couldn’t shift gears unless
you were running at exactly the right speed,” remembers Keith. Th e
clutch proved diffi cult to use, so Keith sought help from his mechanics
instructor, hoping an expert might be able to shed some light on the
inner workings of the temperamental car. Th e instructor told Keith to
bring the car to class and they would investigate. A week or two later
the instructor had tried everything but the clutch was still a problem.
“He gave up,” says Keith. “I just fi gured out how to use it as it was by
shift ing at the right speed. No wonder the gramophone had been an
appealing trade for the previous owner.”
A Vancouver Sun article
(2002) looks at Keith’s
love of cars. He’s owned
a lot, but has a soft spot
for his fi rst, a 1925 Willys
Overland that he bought
in 1945.
I dropped the oil pan and saw that the con rod bearings were practically worn
out, so my buddies and I cut the tongues off our shoes, wrapped them around
the bearings and were able to get ourselves home that way.
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