More History Revealed

This past year or so, I had wondered about the history of the Land Rover from 1960 to 1972, the latter being the year the previous owner bought the vehicle. The gov't licencing office wouldn't give any info. Well, today I was stripping the gold paint from the galvanized rain gutter that runs around the roof, and had a light positioned right above the roof, perpendicular to the roof sides. At that angle, all of a sudden it was possible to see very faint hand painted letters beneath the gold paint. In a year and a half of ownership and some pretty close attention, I had never seen these before.

(Seen here after some further sanding)

And so, some careful lighting and pencil work later, the results were revealed, illustrated here in correct size and placement with the aid of Photoshop:

Killaloe, Ontario, is a village just 30 km south of Pembroke, Ontario. Pembroke is where I purchased the Land Rover.

I've also added the losenge-shape of the decal on the door. The underlying photo is from when the Land Rover arrived here, before restoration work began.

A search of the web revealed this surprisingly complete history, along with photos of the owners, including why the Land Rover was sold on in 1972:

(found here: http://www.pembrokelibrary.ca/kpl010602/history_project/vmmainframe.htm )

What is even more surprising, is that the Keetch family, from whom Hayward and Littlejohn originally bought the business from in 1953, became the second owners of the Land Rover when Hayward and Littlejohn sold the business in 1972!

By virtue of having Mr. Keetch's residential address when he was still alive (Mr. Keetch passed away in 2007), plus the above information, it has also now been possible (thanks to Google Maps) to track down the service garage where the Land Rover was based during its first 12 years, and the short distance away it resided in the following years as well. It so happens that Mr. Keetch lived right next door to the business - and so, the Land Rover was based in this spot, and a few feet down the road, from the time of its initial purchase in 1960, through to 1989. From 1972 to 1983 the Land Rover was used for snow plowing on the Keetch property in the winter, and to go to the Keetch hunting camp in the Fall (which may explain the bullets and fish hooks found during the restoration), and so did not accumulate many road miles. From 1983 to 1989, the Land Rover sat abandoned on the Keetch property. In 1989, the son in law acquired it for his own snowplow use on his own property, his home being some 40 km kilometres away in the direction of Pembroke, but without putting the vehicle in his name or having the vehicle licenced for the road again (which is why I had to purchase the vehicle from the Keetch estate), and it was also at this time that the Land Rover acquired its gold paint.

That the Land Rover was owned by a service station, and after that by someone who may have been the service station owner previously, may be an idication of why this half-century-old Land Rover was in fairly reasonable shape, all things considered, when it was acquired here.

That there is a truck with the exact type of snowplow as came with the Land Rover, was just one more interesting surprise.

Nice to have discovered! Knowing who owned the Land Rover and where the vehicle was for most of its life in Canada is a nice addition to the project.