#Fathers'Day

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Listen up, ungrateful youngsters — dear old Dad has a special day coming up and you need to remember to get something for him. He’s brought you to hockey practice, bailed you out of the drunk tank, and deftly handled the gruff owner of a taxi company into one of whose cars you reversed into at 1:00 am the previous night. That last one was a suspiciously specific example. Anyway.

We’ve pawed through Amazon and found a few items that he’ll actually want, which means there will be no pen holders shaped like Mount Rushmore or loudly patterned ties on this list. Also, I’m a Dad myself, so I know what to look for. Now, get to reading this list before I count to 10 and turn this car around for good. Don’t make me come back there.

On this Father’s Day, I’m thankful my dad showed me his love of cars.

Unlike some fathers and sons, we have never turned a wrench together. Instead of teaching me how to fix cars, my dad, a quality engineer at Honda, taught me how to look for paint runs and inconsistent panel gaps. While some families sit around the dinner table sharing stories of a classic car they restored, my dad reminisces about the time I found a hair in the paint of a new Dodge Viper at a car show.

For the past 16 years, we’ve done the same routine with varying frequency; it started when I was 2 or 3 years old, at my insistence. Go for a swim at the YMCA, then lunch at McDonalds (always a Filet-O-Fish, since nothing else was kosher. I didn’t know what a Big Mac was until Junior High) and finally, we would arrive at Mecca, 715 Milner Avenue, the site of Honda Canada’s head office.

My son Harley, raised with a love for everything on wheels.

As I paused in the driveway and waited for the garage door to open, I felt an unexpected presence by my side. Unbeknownst to me, my six year old son had slipped the confines of his booster seat in the rearmost row and made his way forward past his sisters with surprising stealth. Now he stood between my wife and I as we prepared to travel the last few feet of our journey.