Driving Force: The Mclaughlin Family and the Age of the Car

More than any other businessmen of their generations, the McLaughlin family transformed the face of Canada, first with the horse-drawn carriage and cutter, and then with the machine that has defined the 20th century - the motor car. Robert McLaughlin, the grandson of Irish Protestant settlers in Ontario, began the family's fortunes by manufacturing carriages and cutters for Canada's farmers and prairie settlers. He moved his family and business to Oshawa and began exporting his buggies all over the world, becoming the largest carriage manufacturer in the British empire by the close of the 19th century. Robert McLaughlin's younger sons, Sam and George, apprenticed in the carriage works. Sam, in particular, became enamoured of the motor car, and with his brother convinced his father in 1907 to create the McLaughlin Motor Car Company by making a deal with the flamboyant financier, Billy Durant, owner of the fledgling General Motors, to import the newly-designed Buick chassis and motors from Michigan and fit them into McLaughlin bodies. Such was the beginning of the McLaughlin-Buick, favoured by royalty and rum-runners alike - and the closest thing to a Canadian car. By 1918, Billy Durant was eyeing the McLaughlins' protected access to the markets of the British Empire, and late that year the McLaughlins sold to General Motors for a princely sum. The deal gave Sam a seat on GM's board of directors and the presidency of General Motors of Canada. Sam McLaughlin continued to view the company as his personal property until he died at age 100 in 1972. This account of Sam's life and the car he built is more than a business story. It ranges over a wide range of social history: the fever of invention in the West at the turn of the century; rum-running; the invention of Canada Dry ginger ale by the eldest McLaughlin brother, J.J.; the early, unstable history of GM in the USA; an account of early motoring by L.M. Montgomery; the 1937 strike at GM of Canada, and the attempt by Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn to drive the early labour unions out of Oshawa and Canada with a private army; and the hastily negotiated Autopact of 1965. Heather Robertson is the author of "Reservations are for Indians", "A Terrible Beauty", "On the Hill" and "More than a Rose".

Review :
"A vital piece of Canadiana." -"Report on Business Magazine "A vivid portrait of the flamboyant clan that built the first car plants north of the border." -"Vancouver Province "The research is remarkable." -"Ottawa Citizen "A well-written, fast-paced narrative." -"Toronto Star