Station Wagon family

I've been sorting through  automobiliana sent in my classmate and brother-in-law, Aidan O'Neill.  I knew Aidan's father, Thomas Bland Lionel O'Neill, pretty well. He was a schoolteacher and a great Canadian outdoorsman who introduced many of us to cross-country skiing and canoe-tripping. Most of his cars were station wagns because they were the vehicle of the day for hauling around stuff like camping gear and canoes. These days he probably would have had an SUV. On the other hand, later in life he became convinced that Volvos (before they got fancy) were the best and most practical car.
           Before he went all Swedish, TBLO'Neill owned a great series of station wagons.
           The first example isn't even a station wagon, but it is the closest thing to, with that extended cabin. I wish I could say what it was, but I can't. The photograph above was taken somewhere along the North Shore of the St Lawrence River in Quèbec, where the O'Neills have a summer cottage, at Tadoussac. The road along the north shore from Quebec City goes through stunning Laurentian country; the last mile is by car ferry, across the Saguenay River, which plunges in to the St Lawrence just before Tadoussac, the oldest European settlement in Canada.  The St Lawrence is broad and estuarial here, on its way to becoming the St Lawrence Gulf. At certain times of the year you can spot white whales (beluga) from the Baie-Ste-Catherine-Tadoussac ferry.
I'm doing these in sequence, going by the vintage of the cars. Next up is TBLO'N's 1950 Plymouth wagon parked by a stream, on a trip to Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York.

Next up is TBLO'N's 1952 Ford Ranch Wagon with a kayak strapped on the roof. Photo taken in front of Francois Hovington's barn on the Concession Road near Moulin a Baude, Quebec. Only TBLO'N and a few Inuit were kayaking in those days. He built this one: the Sea Flea. He always was an adventurer, and he loved expeditions into the bush, as we say in Canada, eh?

I love this photograph because it nails an era, in terms of teenage style, anyway. These are the Dewarts,  O'Neill cousins who lived north of Boston and summered in Tadoussac. North Shore of Massachusetts to North Shore of the St Lawrence: that's a mighty long drive for eight people, even in a 1956 Ford Country Squire. Here they are waiting for the ferry across the Saguenay.

Next up: a 1960 Pontiac Laurentian wagon, belongs to O'Neill cousins in Sillery, Quebec.

one: Upstate New York, October, and that is a 1963 Pontiac Laurentian wagon.