Oliver Hezzelwood

I had a call from a researcher yesterday asking about Oliver Hezzelwood. Research calls are not unusual. We field about one enquiry regarding research each day, and they are usually automobile related, a person with a serial number asking about where and when a vintage car was manufactured. I cannot answer these questions for them, but hope that I can at least assist them in the right direction to find the answer.

The call yesterday was one that delighted me. A researcher, who had come across the name Oliver Hezzelwood during a WWI-era History class at Ryerson University last autumn called to verify the Hezzelwood relationship with the McLaughlin Family and see if I could enlighten him any further about his life and times. Through our discussions, we had the similar knowledge base on who Oliver Hezzelwood was. We knew that Oliver was an investor with the McLaughlin Motorcar Company, he lived in Toronto, at 192 Lowther Avenue. He was present at the deal the McLaughlin Brothers and Durant secured for the 15 year Buick engine negotiations in1907, he called himself a friend of Robert McLaughlin (Sam's dad). He ran for provincial politics, as one of the "prohibition" candidates (he lost); he gave up the motor car business in 1914 when the war broke out, becoming an army captain and he wrote poetry, along with publishing other books. I decided to browse the Parkwood Library book list, and what did I find, Poems and a Play by Oliver Hezzelwood, 1926, and as I browsed through  the red book cloth bound book of poems, many of them dedicated to his time in the trenches, the following poem on page 114 caught my eye, "The Building of the Motor Car"  dedicated to the McLaughlin Motor Car Company.