Barry Robinson (April 11, 2022)

It is with regrets that I am announcing the recent passing of a good friend, former member and past President of the Thornhill Cruisers Car Club.  Barry Robinson passed away on April 11, 2022 and he will be missed by many. He was an avid participant in the car club affairs and events and served as our President following Nate Salter.

I remember when Barry created our club website which I believe he did himself. It was done very professionally and we received lots of compliments on it. We asked his wife Marie to jot down a little bit about Barry which I edited and included below:

Barry was born in Wellesden(part of London), England and at a very young age developed an interest in the used cars his dad would bring home. His favourite was a Morris Minor(he pointed them out every time he saw one on TV or at a car show). Barry finished school at 14 and started working as a trainee auto mechanic. Because he was smaller than the other mechanics, he was often selected to crawl under the cars and do all the oil changes. He wasn’t comfortable doing this and sometimes crawled out covered in oil.

He came to Canada in 1970 with his parents with the intent of just visiting and then returning back home but this didn’t work out as planned and he ended up applying for a job here. That’s when he started at a commercial photography studio as a gofer and eventually moved into working in the darkroom.  This was his career for the rest of his working life.

He still had a passion for cars though and was a big fan of NASCAR racing, F1 and Drag racing.

Later on, he bought a 1972 VW Beetle which he restored in his tiny garage at home in East York. He then moved to Don Mills about 12 years later and purchased a 1968 Dodge Dart GTS convertible from Nate Salter. All the service work for this car was done in his garage at home. This car he really loved, and it received a lot of attention and compliments. Afterwards he bought a 1956 Nash Metropolitan which he did some work on, but it never really took off with him.

Barry got very ill during pandemic with lung and kidney cancer and was no longer able to work on his cars but he did spend time watching his favourite car shows on T.V.  One of his favourite shows was Iron Resurrection (Discovery Velocity).