Jonny: Here we are in St. Thomas, Ontario!
[cheering & applauding]
Before it became known as a major hub
of the Canadian auto industry,
St. Thomas was known as the Railway City.
100 years ago, you'd see 100 trains
pass through this town every day.
Located halfway between Toronto and Detroit,
central to industrial Ontario,
over the years, 30 different railways
used St. Thomas as a connection point.
Railway City.
So that's what St. Thomas is known for.
Trains, plainly, and automobiles.
[laughing]
When you grow up in a small town in Newfoundland,
you see that people have a sense of humour
about hard times.
Check, check.
I turned that into a career and hit the road.
Announcer: Mr. Jonny Harris!
Now I'm on a mission to find the funny in the places
you least expect it,
Canada's struggling, small towns.
Towns that are against the ropes,
but hanging in there.
Still laughing in the face of adversity.
This is St. Thomas, Ontario.
♪
Being a railway hub and centrally located,
Ford Motor Company chose St. Thomas
to build a huge assembly plant,
and from 1967 to 2011, Ford produced
over 8 million vehicles right here.
♪
Such classics as the Ford Fairmont,
the Ford Falcon, the Escort.
The Ford Escort is my favourite car of all time.
And the one Ford built for European markets,
I love that one.
But you can't find them here.
And you don't want your girlfriend to find
your search history when it says,
"How to find a European Escort in Canada."
[laughing]
I got the low down from a local who was around
to build the crown of Ford's fleet,
David Matisko.
[cheering & applauding]
David: A lot of history here that we're in right now.
A lot of history.
And sitting in here now...
kind of gives me shivers.
Jonny: Well, you, you helped build this thing.
David: Yes, I did.
Jonny: The plant here built, and this is perhaps the
feather in your cap, the jewel in your crown,
the Crown Victoria.
[cheering & applauding]
One of the best-selling vehicles of all time.
80% of all the police cars
in North America were Crown Vics.
And he said not all Crown Vics are built equally.
David: They would actually take an extra
200 people to build a police car.
Jonny: The police ones get the beefed up suspension,
the biggest engine option,
indestructible hoses and belts.
David: I remember, I had to install the carpet
into the trunk. I said to the supervisor,
"How come there's a great big piece
of conduit here? What's that for?"
Great big pipe about this big.
Jonny: And he said, "Oh yeah,
that's for air conditioning.
These police vehicles are going to the southern U.S."
David: And in the South,
they're responsible for picking up roadkill.
They wanted to keep the trunk cold,
just like a little morgue, I guess, in the back.
Jonny: Air conditioned trunk for roadkill.
David: Yeah! [laughing]
♪
David: Right there, it used to be the plant
where we used to be. It was massive.
Day shift, afternoon shift, 10 hour shifts.
Production would be running 20 hours a day.
Jonny: At its peak, he said the plant had
over 3,000 workers there,
working around the clock.
David: One of the most efficient plants
Ford has ever had.
Jonny: The St. Thomas assembly plant was
known for making quality cars, fast.
David: It took us 56 seconds to build one car.
Jonny: No way.
David: I can't even change the oil in my car.
It takes you two hours to change the oil,
but they could build a car, one a minute.
Jonny: That's four seconds faster than it took
Nicholas Cage to steal one.
[laughing]
♪
Jonny: Now you'd think working on an assembly line
would get repetitive, but there were
some wild surprises from time to time.
I guess the parts come in from other parts of
the country or the world.
David: All over the world!
Jonny: He was unpackaging these parts that
had been shipped up from Mexico.
David: And all of a sudden, this great, big spider
comes jumpin' out.
Jonny: Oh. [laughing]
David: Tarantula, about that big.
Jonny: And he said that wasn't entirely uncommon.
David: There'd be rattlesnakes in them as well.
Jonny: No way.
David: Yes, as soon as someone yelled,
"Snake!" three lines over,
everybody would clear.
Hundreds of people just running away.
There was one fork truck driver
that was famous in the plant.
Jonny: And he'd come bombing in
with the forklift and he'd run it over.
[laughing]
David: He could move that fork truck over.
I don't know if he made a bandana out of it or
what he did with it, but that was his fame.
Jonny: And I thought, that's pretty good,
but what do you do with it then?
And I guess you can throw it into the air conditioned
trunk of your Crown Victoria.
[laughing]
♪
David: I remember the supervisor walked me
down the line the very first day.
"Do you have a new car?
You can afford it now." Jonny: Yeah.
David: Coming from a stage in my life
where money was hard...
then having a job where it's like,
oh, my God, I can travel.
I can be a little bit more generous.
I can do this, I can do that.
I can send my kids to university.
I will have my house paid off.
♪
Jonny: As SUVs became more popular and
the demand for large sedans dropped,
David told me there would be temporary layoffs.
♪
The economy of the town was so tied up with the plant.
David: The Elgin Mall,
I was in there buying some stuff,
a lady, she knew I worked at Ford.
She said, "When's your next layoff?"
I said, "Why do you need to know that?"
She goes, "Well, when you guys are laid off,
our stores go down 50% that day."
Jonny: It's crazy how connected they were.
In the Railway City, layoffs at the car plant
meant you could lose your job at the Subway.
[laughing]
♪
And in 2011, Ford closed the plant for good.
David: The last day was so mixed emotion.
[crowd chatter]
♪
The last car was a white car.
Jonny: All the workers signed it.
David: An older gentleman there,
he was so distraught and hurt and confused.
I had to help him sign his name.
Jonny: Really? Oh, man.
After that, people who worked at the plant,
if you were driving around and you see a Crown Victoria,
it was mixed emotion.
There was pride because you know you helped
build that, but it also...
you know, hit you with some heartbreak.
As opposed to the rest of us
when we see a Crown Vic,
we hit the brakes and have a heart attack.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Jonny: There's still automotive manufacturing
happening in St. Thomas.
I went by the Formet plant,
the largest car parts plant in Canada.
-Megan, nice to meet you! -Nice to meet you.
I got to meet a robotic welder who was
actually much more human-like
than her job title would suggest.
Megan Dobbin.
[cheering & applauding]
She works with these robot welding arms.
Megan: So whenever there's any kind of welding problem,
then they would call a team leader
who would then call me,
and then say, "Oh, I need this fixed."
Jonny: She pinpoints the area that needs a weld.
She plots out the path where it needs to happen
by using a teach pendant.
And once she programs it, then the robot
can go and do it however many times.
Megan: It's almost like playing a video game,
because you use controls to move it,
almost kind of like you would in, say,
like a driving game.
Jonny: I said, it's a lot like a video game.
In fact, I've been playing automotive robotic
welding simulator for a couple of weeks now.
[laughing]
♪
She walked me around the plant,
and there's robots all over the place.
These massive robot arms.
At one point we're watching these two robot arms,
and they're picking up 500 pound
Silverado frames like they're weightless.
♪
I wanted to throw some pizza dough up there
and see if they'd like...
[laughing]
I couldn't help think,
why am I still dressing myself manually?
[laughing]
These things could get a pair of pants on me, no sweat.
And if one had to pick me up and spin me around
while the other one got the pants and put-
that's fine.
[laughing]
♪
With a strong history of automotive manufacturing,
car culture is strong in St. Thomas,
and that includes the 4x4 off-roading scene.
Jeeps here are big, and I met a woman
who makes them even bigger.
-Hello. -Nice to meet you, Laura.
Laura: Nice to meet you as well.
Jonny: From Off Road Addiction, Laura Galea.
[cheering & applauding]
Laura told me that Jeeps are like Lego for adults.
Laura: Jeeps are so customizable.
One little brick here, one little brick here,
it looks totally different.
There's no end to the pieces that you can tack on.
Tires, we do lift kits,
which is modifying the suspension.
Bumpers, there's different types of lug nuts
you can get.
Jonny: You can get those long, spiked lug nuts.
They're like Lego,
especially if you step on one in the
middle of the night with no socks on.
[laughing]
Laura: It's like an extension of your personality.
Once you get started in building stuff,
no two vehicles look the same.
It gives you that feeling when you park
your vehicle somewhere,
and you walk away from it,
you always turn back and take a peek,
and you're like, yeah, that's mine.
Jonny: If I wanted a vehicle that was an extension of
my personality, I think I'd have to go with an MG.
It's cute in a funny kind of way,
but you rarely leave home with it because
it's going to break down in public.
[laughing]
Laura: This one right here is mine.
Jonny: That got some... big ol' tires.
Laura: It does.
Jonny: It looks fantastic, it's got the lift kit,
it's go half doors and the soft top.
She said sometimes they like to go topless.
Laura: The soft tops, there's a couple latches,
and then you flip it back.
And she said, sometimes they go...
naked.
Riding naked in the Jeep is pretty much the soft top
is completely off, your doors are off,
and it's just wide open.
Jonny: And I explain that because I don't want you
to make the same mistake I did.
[laughing]
If you ever get invited to go along on an off-road...
and you got some Jeep or Bronco people who are like,
"Weather looks good, I'm going naked."
[laughing]
Don't make the mistake I did.
It's very embarrassing.
[laughing]
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Jonny: There is one other thing St. Thomas is known for.
I suppose it's time to talk about
the elephant in the room.
[laughing]
[applauding]
This is the place where Jumbo the Elephant,
the huge seven-ton elephant that came from
East Africa and astonished the world...
met his end.
The Northern Trunk Freight Train that rolled into
St. Thomas back in 1885...
on a cool September night,
struck and killed Jumbo the Elephant.
He was crossing over the tracks,
and it's hard to stop a train.
Hard to stop an elephant, probably.
[laughing]
Jonny: While I make a joke about it,
I get the impression in my short time here
that people here honour Jumbo.
You've got that big, beautiful statue of Jumbo.
You see Jumbo depicted in all these beautiful murals.
So, I'll respect that, and I'll try not to
make too many bad jokes, but my god,
did the train have to be Northern Trunk?
[laughing]
♪ [hip-hop] ♪
♪
St. Thomas is now called home by a couple
of Canadian hip-hop legends.
Before we called it a wrap, I had to have a
chat with Choclair and Malichi Male!
[cheering & applauding]
When I asked these guys how they went from the
hip-hop scene in Toronto to living in a small town,
Malichi told me it all started out
when his driver took a wrong turn.
He had a gig in London.
His driver went out the highway.
Half an hour later, he's lost here.
[laughing]
But he caught a vibe from St. Thomas.
Malichi: Kids playing around just freely, no traffic.
The cost of living was amazing.
By the time I got back to Toronto,
I just sold everything, and said,
"I'm gone." Just like that.
Jonny: And then, he convinced his buddy, Choclair,
to move here as well.
Choclair: Because of the nature of what I do,
it's always late nights,
and it's all these crazy strobe lights.
So when I get home, I just like
to just kind of just chill out.
Jonny: Although, these guys have hardly
put their feet up since they got here.
Malichi ran for mayor for Pete's sake.
-Are you serious? -Yeah, I ran for mayor.
It was 2018, right?
The first thing I noticed, right,
the younger generation were pretty much
embarrassed to be from St. Thomas.
I said to myself, what can we do in this city
to make, you know, the youth
or even the citizens a lot more proud?
♪
Jonny: So, they started a clothing line, Saint T.
Malichi: Saint T, which is the nickname for St. Thomas.
Jonny: They do a Jumbo t-shirt,
and I've seen people around town wearing them.
They're big. They're really big.
In fact, no matter what size you get,
they're all Jumbo.
[laughing]
They opened a barber shop.
Malichi: One of the specialties that
you need to learn in urban culture...
the fade.
Jonny: Malichi offered to teach me how to do the fade,
and I got the clippers there and I'm doing these
like little like kind of jabs and moves.
And Malichi, God love him,
he's very encouraging. He's like-
Malichi: That looks perfect.
So, and same thing with the other side.
So now...
Jonny: Geez, man, you do it like that.
Malichi cuts a perfect fade the same way
I wash a bowl.
[laughing]
He said, "You can even draw designs."
I said, "Could you do Jumbo the Elephant
into the back of my head?" He said, "Yes."
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Jonny: Some motorheads feel the need for speed,
while others want the slog of bog.
Jarrett, how are you?
Jarrett: Not too bad, Jonny, how are you?
Jonny: I met the general manager for the
St. Thomas Dragway, Jarrett Spriet.
[cheering & applauding]
It's become very aware to me, obviously,
since I got to St. Thomas,
there's huge car culture here.
Jarrett: Well, with the Ford plant.
Jonny: It's in there. Jarrett: Correct.
It's the blood here, right? Jarrett: Oh, yeah.
Jonny: Okay, so St. Thomas Dragway...
how long has it been around?
Jarrett: So St. Thomas Dragway is Canada's
oldest purpose built drag strip.
This one was built in 1962
specifically for drag racing.
♪
Jonny: Every summer, tens of thousands
come here to take in car shows,
and drag racing, and burnout competitions,
mud bogging, sand racing.
People with muscle cars or import tuners, dragsters,
classic car enthusiasts can all come together.
Jarrett: It's kind of this, we're all in it together
family aspect that kind of makes this place special.
♪
Jonny: Jarrett told me about the bounty hole,
the long narrow bog hole,
and the quickest to get through it wins.
Jarrett said, "It's got teeth underneath.
It's just waiting to swallow its next victim whole."
I was like, "Oh my God, like the Sarlacc Pit in
Return Of The Jedi." He said, "Sure."
[laughing]
Jarrett: That's the biggest, baddest pit
in the entire place.
That's what guys come and talk about
when they're talking about this place.
I have flooded that pit for the last 12 and a half hours.
That's quicksand in there.
Jonny: Is there a chance that nobody will
make it all the way through?
That's not the chance, that's the hope.
Jonny: Right, okay.
Jarrett: We've had one guy that's won it
five out of the six years.
Jonny: Who's that? Jarrett: Dan Neeb.
♪
Jonny: I got to take a run at the Bounty Hole
with five-time champ, Dan Neeb,
in his big, red Dodge diesel.
I threw on a helmet, and I hopped in the truck,
and when I say hopped, I mean
I climbed a ladder, not a stepladder,
12-foot ladder to get into this vehicle.
♪
[engine revving]
SFX: [bell chiming]
♪
SFX: [bell chiming]
And then, we're ready and they give us the go.
♪
And Dan hauls it into gear, hits the gas,
we go flying into the Bounty Hole.
♪
And about 20 feet in, it grabs us.
♪
The truck comes to a stop, but Dan's still on the gas,
and the engine is screaming,
and the wheels are spinning.
Mud is flying.
I had a white dress shirt.
Enough said, I had a white dress-
I used to own a white dress shirt.
[laughing]
[revving engine]
Finally, Dan kills the truck and we were stuck.
I mean, we were glued in there.
Turns out we were more stuck than any other vehicle
in the history of the Bounty Hole.
A bulldozer came and it couldn't pull us out.
And then, it was like out of a movie,
around the corner,
this excavator comes rumbling out.
These massive tow straps are snapping like rubber bands.
Everybody's working on it.
I never saw one person give up on the problem.
[effort grunting & laughs]
Dan: Whatever! Abandon ship!
Jonny: Abandon ship! Thanks, buddy!
Yeah, no problem man.
Dan, I'm sorry I had to jump ship, buddy!
Eventually, I got hungry, and it was hot,
and I had to take off, but...
-[laughing] -People stuck with it.
♪
And Dan, I know for sure they got him out.
[laughing]
And I think that's some grit right there.
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Don't let it be said, once the Crown Vic was dead,
so too was Saint Thomas.
That's thoughtless.
It's on the rebound, this town.
Yes, the strip club closed down,
but at least you have Jeeps that go topless.
[laughing]
If I had to choose a car
that's an extension of myself,
I'd choose the Crown Victoria with ease.
I like to think I'm dependable,
I know I'm made in Canada, and for good measure,
I'm familiar to police.
[laughing]
Where you're Jumbo T with pride,
and whether you prefer to drive or ride,
in St. Thomas you'll find yourself
right in your element.
But whether it's mud up to your knees,
or racing crazy quarter mile speeds,
just watch out and have respect
for crossing elephants.
Thanks so much, everybody, for coming out.
-[cheering & applauding] -You've been great.
Love you, St. Thomas, thanks so much!
We'll see you again!
[cheering & applauding]
♪
Choclair: I really love the fact that...
he brought the history of the city into it.
Jarrett: I love the Jumbo stuff.
I'm a big Jumbo guy, always had like a fascination with
Jumbo and his connection to St. Thomas.
♪
Laura: I am surprised, but happily surprised,
by how many people showed up here.
David: 1,500 people made it in here.
We don't get that for the hockey games.
[laughing]
♪