Jim Fraser Legacy / Centurion / Learning lesson
 

I have never been a jeep guy as many will know.

However I was privileged to have met and been friends with the late Jim Fraser of Arnprior, ON.

I met Jim while living in Ottawa and moving with that crowd over 25 years ago.

Jim was always saving relics and passing them on to folks as project trucks or parts. I had a number of pivotal discussions with Jim and he taught me about saving rather than junking parts and vehicles if at all feasible.

As Jim was on the rebound from one of his bouts of cancer a number of years ago he asked me to go up to his shop and help him clear out a couple of his storage highway trailers behind the shop.

The tale had been told to me by him, that when a major museum moved across Ottawa, they left a lot of boxed parts in a dumpster outside. Jim saw it and over the course of a number of trips he salvaged a large number of boxed and wrapped parts of British military origin. Jim knew of my passion for Land Rovers and Ferrets.

We, through anecdotal discussions, and then later, labels on boxes, realised that the parts had come from the British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS) in Alberta.

That day, with a then friend, loaded up a large cargo trailer with as much material that we could identify or reasonably reassure ourselves as being worth saving.

Once I got all the material back to the farm, I rounded up crates and boxed it all up and put it under cover for safe keeping. Slowly over time I have been identifying the parts, with a lot of difficulty.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being able to donate one armoured grenade stowage box for the inside of the Centurion turret to the Ontario Regiment Museum (where I am a member).

The picture shows me handing over the box to Matt Ruttledge of the Museum.

Malcolm Towrie and his "crew" are slowly making progress on the vehicle along with Brian Butts and Ian and others.

While Jim's treasures yielded two of these boxes, the second one will likely go out to BC to another collector who is restoring another Centurion and he can use it as a pattern to make more for his vehicle, as Malcolm can for theirs. I know it isn't like donating an NOS Meteor engine or new tracks and sprockets, but it is something.

I just want to say that Jim Fraser had a big affect on how I view saving all this NOS or used parts and is responsible for me dragging around boxes of parts for years now and tormenting my partner by doing so.

Thanks Jim, wherever you are, thank you for setting me straight and god speed my friend :salute:

Sort of the same story here. I had talked with Jim for decades dating back to the early 90s on the phone. I didn't meet him in person until I was heading to Ottawa to retrieve a gun from the Hammond barn. I ended up getting a somewhat heavier Centurion gun part that he had rescued from the scrap of that same museum. Item is on the front right of the deck in the photo below, and was important to counterweight the negative pressure on the hitch from the necessary placement of the gun.



A recall of our meeting is located here: http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/sh...4&postcount=65


Glad I took the time to stop in and see him. Life is not infinite.



http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/at...7&d=1477660768

I had a similarly fond visit to Andre Gibeault's farm in southern Quebec. Row upon row of open-front machinery sheds with all sorts of well restored vehicles. Generous with his time, and proud of his collection. Every piece had an entertaining story.

He impishly asked me, 'what's on the trailer'?, pointing at a two-axle trailer with a heavier than ordinary looking ladder frame onboard. It certainly looked Canadian and wartime, but not being a CMP guy, I could not guess. He had a CT15A armoured truck chassis, and was going to restore it.