The fact that Les Diack, known as Bud to family and friends, survived his teen years to lead the points standing at Burnaby, B.C.'s, Digney Speedway is noteworthy. Diack came from a family of 13 children. His older brothers were always buying and selling cars and, at the age of 14, Diack paid one of his brothers $100 for a 1927 Chevrolet touring car that ran but had no brakes.

Always handy, he and his friends used pieces of an old military belt to make linings for the rear brakes. In the spring of 1949, they took off to traverse a twisty, mountainous highway. When the makeshift brake linings caught fire, the car was left without any brakes. The teens carried on anyway.

Remarkably, Diack and his friends made it all the way to their destination before heavy snow forced them to turn back. They experienced hair-raising, out-of-control driving while careening downhill in the old car and had to fix seven flat tires by the roadside by raising the car with a long pole. About the same time, Diack and his brothers got interested in racing.

The year before, a successful British immigrant named Andy Digney had bought four hectares of property in Burnaby for $8,000. He set out to build an oval track.

Despite a near constant battle with city council, the persistent Digney built the track with stands for 4,500 spectators and opened for racing in June 1948. He first experimented with midget racers from the U.S. but couldn't attract enough entries. When motorcycle races failed to attract crowds, he opened the track to stock cars. These were gutted and lightened jalopies that roared around the oval track in packs, often colliding, spinning out of control or flipping over. The crowds loved it. Digney was safety conscious at his track and insisted the cars have strong roll bars and safety harnesses for the drivers. There was an average of 65 stock cars racing two nights a week and big features on Saturday nights.

Diack was an enthusiastic spectator at Digney Speedway, but he and his brother Bill, an experienced mechanic, soon became competitors. Diack's first stock car was a 1936 Ford coupe purchased for $15. He used an axe to chop off the fenders and running boards. Everything was removed from the car that wasn't necessary, including the interior and glass to reduce weight. Track accidents were many, and Diack would drive a series of Ford cars.

of Ford cars. Diack became convinced that he could beat the flathead V-8-equipped Fords with Chevrolet stock cars powered by high-torque, six-cylinder engines. He started racing cut-down Chevrolet coupes. The engines were beefed up with machined connecting rods to replace soft Babbitt metal bearings with more durable ones. To get more speed, higher-geared Chevrolet powerglide differentials were installed.

were installed. The team proved unbeatable, and No. 36 was the points leader for three consecutive years in the mid-1950s. Remarkably, Diack never blew a motor, but his racing was not without incidents.

"One night, I got drilled in the back of my 1937 Chev coupe by another car and flipped end-over-end all the way down the track," he recalls. "I went home and built up a 1935 Chev coupe for the 100-lap race the next week."

As the points leader, he was always at the back of the pack and "had to go like hell" to pass the other cars.

go like hell" to pass the other cars. Diack spent an average of $500 on his stock cars. On Saturday nights when the stands were filled, he earned up to $150. "The money helped me raise my family," the father of five says. His wife Thelma and children attended the races in blue silk shirts emblazoned with No. 36. Diack towed the race cars to the track with a 1956 Oldsmobile.

By the end of 1956, Digney was ready for his retirement and sold Digney Speedway for $100,000. It ran for another two years before it closed.

Diack and many others have fond memories of the 10 years Digney Speedway was the place to go for thrilling stock car racing. Diack is now 79 and still operates the industrial overhead door business he started 45 years ago. Brother Bill is 91. Both have been inducted into the Greater Vancouver Motorsports Pioneers Society.

Alyn Edwards is a classic car enthusiast and partner in Peak Communicators, a Vancouver-based public relations company