Triumph Stag Club of the Americas

Bronte Stag Weekend 2014

Bronte Park British Car Day 2014

A fabulous weekend, with touring weather on Friday and Saturday which couldn't have been better, sunny and clear, ideal for top down motoring. A stubborn forecast kept telling us all week of a thunder storm looming on Sunday. Well, it wasn't as bad as expected as the rain stopped early Sunday morning and the sun came out strong around 10 am which was a huge relief. From then on it was a warm, sunny day, but did spoil our boast that 'it never rains on British Car Day'! For our Stag owners, a full weekend went off successfully:

Friday saw 7 cars on the tour visiting a couple of waterfalls in the Hamilton area; Tews and Webster Falls which form quite a scenic part of the Niagara escarpment. Hamilton proclaims itself to be the 'Waterfall Capital of the World' with a claimed 120 of them. A scenic tour around some nice winding country roads of the area followed before arriving at the Dutch Mill Restaurant and Gift Shop for lunch (and some shopping!). Evening saw 24 of us gather at Jake's Oyster House for dinner, always a favorite spot. We were delighted to meet John and Sherry Stovall from Texas who visited us this year, a little cooler for them here than Texas I'm thinking.

Saturday dawned warm and sunny and the tour of the day included a visit to a WW2 warship at Pier 9 of Hamilton Harbor, HMCS Haida, renowned for its successful encounters in both WW2 and Korea. It is a Tribal class destroyer built in Newcastle on Tyne in Britain. It entered the conflict bringing supplies to Murmansk in Russia and then later to help in the D Day landings keeping the enemy occupied in the Bay of Biscay. Following that, it also served in the Korean conflict. Known as the most decorated warship in the Canadian Royal Navy. On the return journey from the marina we stopped off for a visit at Paletta Mansion in Burlington, a beautiful old house sitting on the shore of Lake Ontario. We had a lovely stroll of the gardens that lead down to lake and skipped a few stones in the water, with Jim Allan proving the master skipper!

Purely by chance, a wedding party adopted us for some of their wedding pictures at Paletta Mansion, they were so excited to pose in front of our Stags. For pictures of the weekend and next year's activities (updates on next year coming shortly) go to my web site at http://bsccoc.ca/stagbronteweekend/.

That evening, the Admiral Inn did a great job again arranging our Saturday evening banquet and the food was excellent and plentiful. Awards were handed out to the winners of our traditional Saturday tour quiz, this brought some quite innovative answers.

Sunday dawned very wet which deterred some Stag Owners and others from attending but for those of us who soldiered on it was a great day. The Toronto Triumph Club just gets better each year organizing this event, the logistics are awesome when you consider preparations have to be made to enter over 1,000 vehicles in a matter of a few hours, get them registered, parked correctly etc. Entrance has been vastly improved over the last few years by having attendees pre register which not only saves you $5 but gets you into the 'fast track lane' at the entrance, very efficient. Unfortunately this year, the threat of thunderstorms had an impact on the attendees, with just over 600 vehicles entered when previous years have had over 1,000.

A new feature this year was the honoring of four cars from different eras of car production: the XK120 Jaguar (60 years) Austin Westminster (60 years) Sunbeam Tiger (50 years) and the TR7 (40 years). These four cars were on a special display with a plaque for each one and up front at the show. (My recently restored A95 Westminster Countryman was chosen as a feature car for this group).

We had in attendance 14 Stags this year, again down due to threatening weather. Even so, I believe this is still a respectable turnout for our marque in North America. Other than Ontario, we had Stags from Ohio, Michigan and New York. The winners of this year's show in the Stag category, which is a participant's choice award, were: 1st place: Chris Tank, Waterloo ON, 2nd place: Richard Truett Detroit MI, 3rd place: Phil & Judy Keith Romulus, NY. Richard Truett's Stag, black on black was of interest, freshly minted, this was its first major outing. Of particular interest, it has a TR6 engine transplanted into it. Looks quite at home in there too. (My Austin Westminster was awarded 1st place in it class)

So, once again we had a wonderful weekend meeting old friends and making some new ones. We are already thinking about plans for next year. Our own registration process for the Stag weekend activities (separate from park registration) helped us organize tours and meals more efficiently so we will be doing that again for 2015.

The Admiral Inn has proved to be a popular choice to stay so we will be reserving rooms again in 2015.

I will keep you up to date on the web site as things progress for 2015, the date of the show will be September 20th, we hope many of you will join us.