I've always been interested in old cars and going to car shows. When I got my first 55 Chevy back in the mid eighties, a blue and white Belair 2-door hardtop with a classic six-banger, the Chevy Parts Business in general was just getting started. I used to walk around the shows checking out all the Chevys there were. Back then, there were a lot of restoration parts that were simply unavailable—not like today!
My day job was driving a truck for OK Express, and one of my duties was to take OK's restored stake truck to car shows. Needless to say, I went to a lot of car shows and i found that i was starting to get to know a lot of the old car crowd. One of the people i got to know was Ian Murray of Antique Chevrolet in Oakville. He was fairly new in the resto parts business at that time and it seemed to me he had a good thing going out in Oakville on the west side of Toronto. As I lived in Pickering, Bay Ridges to be exact, on Toronto's east side, I felt there might be an opportunity for me to create a sideline business in my basement selling Chevy Parts. I called Ian about it, and while he was not all that happy to have any new competition, he said he'd help me out – and he did!
I called Danchuck in California and arranged to be a distributor of their fine resto products. i scraped up some cash and bought a small inventory of parts and set up the business operation in my basement crawlspace! I bet there are still a few people around that remember bumping their heads in that four and a half foot high space! From then on, I was at every car show with my little table of Chevy Parts. That table kept getting bigger as my business grew and it wasn't long before I realized I was really in business and had better quit truck driving and get a decent shop. I soon found a place to share with an autoglass/upholstery guy in a strip mall down the road and this worked well for a year or two but I was building a bigger and bigger inventory all the time and needed more space.
I next found my own place in an industrial mall across the road. It had been a dance school and had big mirrors on the wall! This served me well as there was plenty of room (at first) and some complementary businesses right nearby. But as fate would have it, I soon filled that place up too.
These days, Bay Ridges is located in Little Britain, Ontario, near Lindsay. I have I nice big, self-contained shop adjacent to my house and views of farmland all around. As a high percentage of what we sell is by telephone order, it really doesn't matter where we are located—most customers don't actually come here, but if it's during business hours, they are more than welcome!
Ian Murray is still a good friend and our businesses are now associated as proven by this combined web site. We look forward to serving the Chevy enthusiast community for years to come. Thanks for reading.