Village Squire, 1979-05, Page 10Rking it with, you
For some people a vacation is no time to leave comfort behind
Travel trailers outside the Bendix plant in Hensen await delivery
across the country.
Once upon a time, long, long ago North Americans decided to
get away from it all. Today they've decided they'd rather take it
all with them.
When the new mobility first came to North Americans, when
people first began to realize that travel didn't have to be
expensive, people took up camping. They'd pack a tent and some
sleeping bags and a camp stove and the kids (if there was any
room left for them) and off they'd go into the wild blue yonder to
see the country.
Camping then was looked on as a change of pace, as a chance
to get away from all the luxury and gadgets of modern day life. It
didn't take many years of putting up tents every night, of
cooking on a camp stove and having the rain pour in under the
tent flaps before a lot of people decided they weren't so sure they
wanted to leave all the conveniences and modern gadgets
behind. Some people just gave up camping. Others moved on to
the next stage.
That next stage was the tent trailer. It was more expensive
than the tent, and could be more inconvenient in some ways in
that it had to be towed along behind the car. But it set up easily
and was high and dry and the rain didn't flow through the tent
flaps. Some did have running water, but the kind on tap that you
wanted, not the kind you didn't want.
But that too was too much inconvenience for many people.
With more time for vacations both winter and summer and more
disposable income, people began looking for something better.
8 Village Squire, May 1979
After all, your trip to Florida in January or to the Laurentians for
skiing in March isn't too comfortable if you have to sleep in a tent
overnight with the frost gathering on your nose.
So along came the travel trailer, a miniaturized version of the
mobile homes, which were the successor to house trailers which
had gotten a tarnished reputation that the industry was trying to
clean up. The recreational travel trailers didn't exactly have all
the comforts of home but they certainly were an improvement.
Most people started off with a small trailer but before long the
length of the trailers had grown so that it took a pick up truck to
pull many of them.
For some people the problems of pulling a long trailer were too
bothersome. The solution came along when someone came up
with the idea of putting a motor right on the same chassis as the
trailer and the motor home was born. Now that was class. At first
seeing a large motor home like a Winnabago on the highway was
akin to seeing a Rolls Royce. Heads swivelled. Eyes popped out.
Today they're not quite as common as Volkswagons. but there
are enough of the big homes around that one doesn't tend to
nearly drive off the road for staring on meeting one.
One of the places that has helped polularize both travel trailers
and motor homes is the large Bendix Home Systems Ltd. plant at
Hensall. They have trailers that range from 17 feet in length to
35 feet. Motor homes start with the miniliners at 17.5 feet and
range all the way up to the largest motor homes at 29 feet. In
between there are 12 models at various lengths of trailers, five
models of mini -liners and five models of Targe motor homes.
Other places catering to the new boom in recreational vehicles
include one in Strathroy. Prices for this kind of travelling luxury
can range from about 56000 to 540,000 a major expenditure yet
factories making the units have been kept busy filling orders.
The market for the largest units, the big motor homes about
the size of a small bus, seems to be in western Canada an
industry spokesman said, while in the east the smaller motor
homes, built on van chassis are more popular. Similarly in a city
like Toronto the big park -model trailers are much higher in sales
than the small trailers. In smaller towns the small trailers still
find a ready market.
People in cities like Toronto especially look on the park model
trailers as an alternative to expensive and scarce cottages. A
park model trailer set up in a place specializing in trailers such as
Pine Lake near Bayfield may cost less than the land for a cottage.
In Toronto a large proportion of park model trailers are sold
without hitches. They're delivered to a park in the vacation area
north and east of Metro and are unlikely to be moved.
The expense of the large motor homes is such that it would
seem that someone would have to live in the units year round to