Hi all,
 
I believe a lot of you know my home town is Petrolia, Ontario from previous posts I've made.

My folks still live there in the family home they bought back in 1967. My mother's passion is the history of the town and area and has acted as the president of the local
historical society for years. She's always told us the stories of her and my aunt, as young girls,  cleaning the house of a nearby wealthy family (only know to us as the Thompson's).
Through the years, she's still kept in touch with the remaining members of this family. The last surviving member of the family came home recently from Ottawa (I believe)
and gave my mother a scrap book she had of the family business to donate to the town archives. I've included a small portion of the pictures from the scrapbook, just to
give you an idea of what's in here. 

The family owned a number of new and used dealerships, service stations in many locations and provided fuel to many industries and farmers.
When my grandfather was working there, no one saw the new cars until there was an unveiling in September.  The carrier would come to the garage in the evening.  All the cars were covered except for part of the windshield and grandpa would drive the cars off the carrier and right into the garage.  At a certain time and day all the dealerships would unveil the cars where they sat in the display windows.

This is a personal note from my mother :  "We always had a fridge because General Motors made General Motors fridges and dad bought (on time) the last one they had before the war started in 1939 (the year I was born).  No ice box for us."

You'll see pictures of the founders, the local business in town, their equipment, storage facilities, my mechanic grandfather and then finally a few pictures from a London Free Press
insert from 1959 that describes the new Supertest head office. Supertest at the time was lead by a relative of this Petrolia Thompson family. What I didn't include was pictures
of all the office staff and dealer locations in Alvinston, Wyoming, Sarnia, Brigden, Watford, Bothwell and the list goes on and on.

In the late 50's the McFarlanes took over the car business and they still own it to this day.

I hope you enjoy it.