Vince Howlett

Supporter -Sports Car and Road Racing - Inducted 2008

By Kathy McLean and Audrey Surman edited by Murray Chambers and Tom Johnston, 2008

Westwood Control Tower (Tom Johnston photo)

Vince: 1975 (SCCBC archives)

Vince Howlett was born in Toronto.

In 1947 Laurie and Hazel Howlett and their flock of sons migrated from the Toronto area to beautiful White Rock, BC in a 1933 Essex Terraplane.

As the boys grew up, father Laurie, a motor sport fan, took the family to watch racing at Abbotsford and Bellingham airports and most other tracks on the west coast.

In the late 1950s, all of the Howlett family were involved with the construction of the Westwood Racing Circuit in Coquitlam east of Vancouver. After Westwood opened in 1959 and until it closed in 1990, there were Howletts manning the track in some capacity. Vince's father helped build the grandstands and the clubhouse at turn two. After the track opened, Vince's brothers were corner marshals at turn one (the Carousel) and turn three, his parents were at Deer's Leap, and Vince flagged at various corners and did lap charts at the start-finish line for announcer Roy

Shadbolt. When Roy passed away, Vince was asked by Ron Curties to try announcing. Vince announced the races at Westwood starting in 1970 right up to 1990. With Westwood closed, he continues to help with announcing at the Mission Historic races.

In the 90s, Vince went to a number of vintage events, and at one, met Dave Tatom and the late Lew Florence (50s and 60s era racers from the Seattle area) Lew had lost all of his memorabilia in a fire, so Vince gathered up as many pictures as he could find, made copies and sent them to Lew. After that, with the Internet, things got busy! He has gathered up pictures of the Rattenbury/Calvert D-type Jaguar for the present owner, done chassis logs and pictures on local Lotus 15s for Lotus 15 registrar Bill Colson and on the HWM-Corvette “Stovebolt Special” for present owner well known British motor sport columnist Simon Taylor. He has collected many programs from the US west coast races, from the late 50s through the 60s, plus albums of clippings from races of the same era, including Westwood. He has also kept lists of drivers and cars from that time, plus many magazines. He enjoys finding out more about the cars we used to see racing, and meeting the people that were involved with them. For example, a few years ago at the Seattle Historic races, he talked to ten guys that were originally involved with the HWM-Corvette.

Vince retired from teaching in June 2004, so now can spend more time with this new hobby.

Vince is described by his nominators as a “living encyclopedia of motor sport past and present, and a stellar human being.”

Vince has participated in the publication of several books on motorsport history with Martin Rudow and Tom Johnston. Vince and Tom organized the Abbotsford Retrospective in 2005 and are working together again to the Westwood 50th Reunion in 2009. As well Vince is an active participant in several Internet motorsport history forums such as the Canadian Motor Sport History Group (CMSHG)

Below: 1933 Essex Terraplane

and the Atlas F1 Nostalgia Forum.

Vince and his wife Marion live in Victoria.

In recent years Vince has become a quite proficient slot-car racer.