A complete stranger approached Bill Drummond the day he was inducted into the Victoria Auto Racing Hall of Fame to hand the former top-ranked racer a signed photo of his very first No. 1 car. It was a grown man’s tribute to his boyhood hero.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Drummond says, pointing to a photo above the fireplace in the living room of his Ladysmith home. “He used to go to the races as a kid and he took that picture up there on the mantle.”
The photo dates from sometime around 1970 — the first year Drummond ran as points leader — and it was gifted to 74-year-old Drummond April 13 as he and fellow Nanaimo Speedway legend Harold Sjostrom were granted hall-of-fame status at Langford’s Eagle Ridge Community Centre.
Sjostrom and Drummond began their racing careers half a decade apart and raced in separate classes, rising separately to their respective No. 1 rankings early in their careers.
Youbou-born Sjostrom acquired his first car at the age of 12, he says, grinning across the table of a local diner as he and his wife Sandra finish their breakfasts.
“Before I had my driver’s licence,” Sjostrom adds, “I think I had eight cars.”
Sjostrom picked up his driver’s licence the day after he turned 16, he says, and he moved to Nanaimo from Crofton that same year to pursue a welding apprenticeship.
After performing repairs on a local racer’s car, he decided to build his own at the age of 17.
He spent his first three seasons racing “Jalopies” and stock cars before applying his mechanical ingenuity — Sjostrom would later design a third axle for logging-truck trailers that allowed them to carry heavier loads, Drummond tells me — to the construction of “B-modified” cars of his own design.
B-modified cars had an open-wheel design, ran the same engines as stock cars and weighed in at 1,700 pounds, Sjostrom says — half of what a stock car from the same era weighed.
“Weight to horsepower is how you get your speed,” he adds.
In order to complete one of his modifieds, Sjostrom was in need of tires and seat belts. He learned of a race in Portland and decided to haul the car down to Oregon where he could purchase the necessary supplies and install them in time for race day. Sjostrom started the car for the very first time as he was preparing for his qualifying run. He went on to score the second fastest qualifying time before winning the trophy dash.
Sjostrom built his winning cars from scavenged parts, piecing together several A- and B-modifieds and “CAMRA” cars — and Drummond’s first “beefed-up” wheel — during his 18-year tenure as a force to be reckoned with at local speedways. He retired in 1978 at the age of 35 to focus on fatherhood and his new logging company, but he still watches Nascar, Indy and F1 racing to this very day.
Drummond, meanwhile, shares his fellow hall-of-famer’s appreciation for Nascar and Indy, and he first sat behind the wheel of a car at a scandalously young age.
“How old were you the first time you drove a car?” I ask.
“Oh my God, should I really tell you?” Drummond replies, laughing as he admits to backing his father’s car out of the garage when he was seven years old.
A year later, at the age of eight, he drove the family car home to Chemainus from Nanaimo.
“You’ve got to remember these cars were small,” Drummond adds. “It was a ‘29 Chev car made into a pick-up.”
Drummond proved to be a quick study and an early starter in everything but racing.
He married his first wife, Donalda, at the age of 17, and their first of two daughters was born a year later.
Drummond started off as a mechanic’s apprentice at a Chemainus garage, but “60 cents an hour was really not anything I could get married on,” he adds. “A fella came in there one day wanting a truck driver, so I said I’d start. In those days, all you needed was a chauffeur’s licence, just a thing you put on your belt. You paid a dollar for it.”
After a brief stint hauling wood chips from the Chemainus sawmill to Nanaimo’s Harmac mill, his grandfather-in-law roped him into driving logging trucks at the age of 18. Drummond would go on to haul logs for the rest of his working life, working out of Copper Canyon and the Nanaimo Rivers camp during an era when it was not uncommon for a load to consist of no more than three massive old-growth logs.
Drummond’s racing career began when he was 28 after Donalda decided one day that she wanted to go to the races. After their second day at the track, she decided they needed a car of their own for Drummond to pilot.
Drummond’s first two Jalopies were ‘49 Fords that he raced in 1966 and 1967. In year two, he drove his way to a first-place tie in his division. In year three, Drummond shifted his allegiance from Ford to Chevrolet, and he would race behind the wheel of ‘50s and ‘60s era Chevys — sporting the coveted “No. 1” for five of his 10 years on the track — for the remainder of his stock car career.
Resiliency was part of his winning strategy and on more than one occasion, Drummond and his crafty pit crew would avert disaster with last-minute rebuilds of wrecked cars.
“I’ll leave this driver’s name out of it,” Drummond says, “But he lost control, came across the track and hit my left rear wheel. That broke the axle in my car, and over I went.”
Drummond rolled end-over-end, ejecting his gas tank before coming to a stop.
“We fixed her up and I won the main event,” Drummond adds matter-of-factly.
Drummond raced stock for 10 years, retiring at 38 to focus on family and logging.
A third Ladysmith-area driver, Wayne Townsend, was inducted to the Hall of Fame posthumously with a 2013 Pioneer Award.
