SCRUFFY THE CAR
There’s a Nash 450 sedan sitting in Heritage Park’s Gasoline Alley,
and her name is Scruffy.
She first rolled off the assembly line in 1930 with a shiny coat of
paint. Only a few years later she was covered in dents, repairs and
rust due to the travels of a Saskatchewan family searching for a
better life on the open road.
Like many prairie families in Canada during the Great Depression,
they were forced to pack up their belongings, load up the car and
leave their devastated farm behind to find work.
Scruffy has room for five people. With no trunk, any extra luggage
would be strapped on the roof. The family headed north to Peace
River Country, but somewhere in Alberta the worn-out car kicked
the bucket.
Sylvia Harnden, the curator at Heritage Park, says the family
would have had no choice but to set out on foot while Scruffy was
left to fend for herself. Scruffy eventually settled in a barn in Balzac.
About 50 years later, in 1985, a man named Brian McKay showed
up looking for Scruffy. The Calgary-born car enthusiast was living
in Victoria, restoring antique Nash roasters, and looking for parts,
when he heard about the old girl.
“He picked it up for parts, but once he had it in his
possession, he started to look at it and fell in love with
what it represented — all those thousands of thousands
of people who struggled during the depression,” Harnden
says. “The Dust Bowl, drought, hail, grasshoppers — it was
a terrible time for a lot of people — and to him it represented
those hardships.”
In 2004, McKay mechanically restored the car and drove
2,000 miles down Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles,
recreating the journey of many Dust Bowl refugees who
headed west hoping to find work. He shipped Scruffy by
flatbed truck to Chicago and travelled by train to meet
up with her for the epic, 2000-mile, seven-week
journey. After McKay’s death, Scruffy was donated
to Heritage Park in 2010 with the stipulation they
could not restore her.
“I think the story of this car is one thing
— the indomitable human spirit,” Harnden
says. “Brian McKay had it, people who
survived the Great Depression had it — they just
had to keep on, keepin’ on — and somehow they did.”
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where.ca
MAY/JUNE 2018
Rick Choppe never imagined that a few napkins and a pack of
matches from his wedding would likely be the last remaining
artifacts of Calgary’s Beachcomber Restaurant.
Choppe, a retired Calgary Fire Department fire captain, married
his wife Trudy at the Beachcomber Restaurant on July 17, 1971.
“Being young people, our wedding plans weren’t big or
extravagant, so we booked a table at the Beachcomber for close
family friends and relatives,” Choppe says.
His sister Donna saved some napkins and Trudy saved a pack
of matches for keepsakes. Only eight months later, in April 1972,
the restaurant burned to the ground, trapping 24-year-old Calgary
firefighter Jerald (Jerry) Walter — who sadly became the sixth
Calgary firefighter to die in the line of duty.
Six months later in October 1972, Choppe was accepted to the
Calgary fire department and the napkins and matches took on a
whole new significance.
“I thought, is that a coincidence or some kind of an omen?”
Choppe says he’s had some close calls over the years, including a
time when his heavy-duty helmet saved his head from being crushed
by a smoke ejector in a steel cage.
“You gotta be a half wit to do this job because everyone’s running
out, and you’re running in, happier than hell,” Choppe says with a
grin, reflecting on his time with the fire department.
After more than 30 years with the fire department, Choppe retired
in 2006, much to Trudy’s relief. When the Firefighters Museum of
Calgary opened in its own dedicated space in 2017, Choppe thought
they might want the Beachcomber items.
“They’re probably the only Beachcomber artifacts around because
that place burnt to nothing. There will
never be anymore. There was
nothing left.”
THE LAST ARTIFACTS
OF THE BEACHCOMBER
RESTAURANT