the Races: The Career of Alice Fergusson

Kalea Pottle, Oil Museum of Canada

Lambton County has a rich oil history, and now we heavily associate oil with cars. Oil lubricates and keeps parts running, while gasoline is made from crude oil and used as fuel. When oil was first struck in Oil Springs in 1858, the idea of automobiles was unfathomable. Early oil pioneers like James Miller Williams and the Tripp brothers did not realize the impact that their product would have on the future of transportation. The petroleum craze that spread out from Oil Springs also sparked sportscar racing as a new sport.

The “amateur age” of American/Canadian sportscar racing, which took place during the postwar period from approximately 1950-1970, saw an influx of female participants who became trailblazers for women in the sport. One of these women was Toronto native, Alice Fergusson. She was one of Canada’s first female race and rally drivers, one of Canada’s top female drivers in her active years, and was Toronto’s first female car dealership operator. She often worked alongside her husband, Jim, and they became one of the top husband-wife duos in Canadian racing history.

In 1937, Alice met Jim Fergusson, a professional motorcycle racer, at a party in their hometown of Toronto. Jim was engulfed in the sport and he eventually became a sports car and sedan racer, serving as a team manager, crew chief, mechanic, race and rally organizer, official, racing car designer, and constructor throughout his life. Jim loved the world of automotive and shared his passion with Alice, who recalled “most of our dates consisted of me helping him grind valves for his bikes.”

After Jim and Alice married, Jim inherited his father’s car dealership in Scarborough, where the couple settled. Alice became enveloped in the automotive world and helped in the shops at night after working as a stenographer during the day. Gradually she dropped her stenographer career and became a part time saleswoman at the dealership. While Jim served in World War II, Alice took over full operations of the business. She took a mechanic’s course where she learned how to operate all types of heavy machinery, from farm tractors to bulldozers. This training proved helpful as one winter (when help was limited due to the war) she voluntarily drove a tow-truck around Toronto and pulled drivers out of ditches and snowbanks.

Jim returned from the war in 1945 and resumed full time operations of the dealership, while Alice took over the parts department full time in addition to her own speed shop. In the speed shop, she imported parts internationally and built engines for sports car competitions across Ontario. She became a highly skilled mechanic, as seen in 1952 when she built a stock car engine that set a track record at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) raceway. In the local newspaper, she was called “housewife and motor mechanic extraordinary” when introduced, a title very few women carried in the 1950s.

Then in 1950, she entered her first race as a driver. She drove the smallest car in the race near Barrie, a Fiat 500, and was given a 30-minute head start before anyone else because of this. She remembers it being “terribly embarrassing”, but she finished fifth out of 42 drivers all of which were male. Alice noted “racing isn’t just a matter of how much power your car’s got, but how much of it you’re game to use… especially in the turns.” 1955 saw the British Empire Motor Club’s first all-female winter rally team. The British Empire Motor Club is an organization that promotes safe driving and facilitates speed races, skill races, and skill tests. It is a high skill club, and members are suspended if they violate traffic laws. One of their most notorious races is the Winter Rally, a 3-day 2400km trek through highways and backroads in Ontario and Quebec filled with blizzards, ice, and snow. Alice and fellow female Toronto racer, Vivian Petura were the first all-female team to enter the winter rally, and got quite the pushback. They were told not to be upset if they did not finish as many men did not finish this high skill race. Vivian said, “we were bound we would get through, even if we had to come back on the rims.” They did finish the race, braving a blizzard that took out 32 drivers, and finished 13th out of 60.

By 1956, the Fergusson’s had acquired a second car dealership, and Alice ran it full time day to day. She was Toronto’s first female garage owner/operator. She had won dozens of speed and skill trophies by this time making her one of the top female drivers in the country. Along with being one of the top female racers in Canada, Alice became the editor for Small Torque, the British Empire Motor Club’s magazine which is seen today as one of the most valuable sources on the history of Canadian racing.

In their last hurrah together as a racing team, the Fergusson’s competed in the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash of 1972. Jim and Alice were the first, and only Canadian competitors of this unsanctioned street race. The cross-country race started in New York, NY and ended near Los Angeles in Redondo Beach, CA. The rules of the race were simple; “all competitors will drive any vehicle of their choosing, over any route, at any speed they judge practical, between the starting point and destination. The competitor finishing with the lowest elapsed time is the winner.” Jim and Alice came 15th in a Citroën DS 19, one of Alice’s choice racing cars, with a time of 42 hours, 8 minutes. The Cannonball Baker only ran 4 official races in the 1970s and sparked a successful film in the 1980s starring Burt Reynolds, Jackie Chan, and Farrah Fawcett called The Cannonball Run. The Dash would be Alice and Jim’s last major race together as Jim Fergusson passed away in 1976.

Alice Fergusson passed away in 1997. Alice and Jim Fergusson were inducted into the Canadian Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2004 together for their “purely voluntary remarkable contribution to the development of Canadian motorsport.” Today motorsport is still highly male dominated. Formula One, the highest racing class internationally, has only ever seen five female drivers. Alice Fergusson’s contributions to Canadian automotive in the 1940s-1970s was truly phenomenal as she, along with other women of her time, “established the principle that women could compete alongside men in the ‘major leagues’ of auto sport” in Canada. Alice believed the problem with female drivers, and their negative stereotype, is men themselves. She said at the time, “most husbands only let their wives have the car when there are groceries to be picked up. Then they blow up because the poor gal gets flustered in heavy traffic and dents a fender.”

Jim Fergusson in an Austin Healy at the Edendale Race, 1955. He was the winner as seen with the checkered flag, and this was the same race Alice entered for her first as a driver in 1950.

Image from RacingSportsCars.com

Alice Fergusson at the 1958 race at Harewood Acres where she placed third. She is in a Citroën DS 19, the same one raced in the 1972 Cannon Ball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Trophy Dash.

Image from vintageracecar.com