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Local racing ’family‘ salutes Hall of Famer
KRIS KETONEN
11/23/2009

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It wasn‘t hard to pick out former stock car racer Tom Nesbitt at the West Arthur Community Centre on Sunday. You just had to look for the guy with the biggest grin.

Sunday was Tom Nesbitt Day at the centre, a day dedicated to the Thunder Bay racer and his 50-year career in the wake of his induction into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame.

“This is awesome,” Nesbitt said. “There are a lot of old friends I haven‘t seen in probably 30 years, and they all came over and shook my hand and congratulated me. I think it‘s a great deal. I‘m really happy with it.”

He was joined Sunday afternoon by fans and fellow racers alike. Various pieces of memorabilia, including a helmet and numerous photographs, were on display, and videos of Nesbitt‘s racing exploits were screened.

It was also a reunion, as Nesbitt mentioned earlier, made even more poignant by the fact that, as he put it, “racing is done here in Thunder Bay for quite a while. It‘s sad to see.

“Thunder Bay has a lot of race fans,” Nesbitt said, adding those fans regularly travel to the U.S. to watch races.

“A year ago back there, I really thought we were going to get racing again,” he said. “I really believe it would go here, especially with the economy right now – it‘s not too expensive, and not too far to go.”

All the efforts to get a new track going near Thunder Bay – including attempts to breathe new life into the old Riverview Raceway – have been red flagged due to cost, concerns over noise or other factors.

Nesbitt first raced in the late 1950s at the CLE fairgrounds, taking up racing full-time in 1967.

Over the course of his decades-long career, he took to tracks in Thunder Bay – including Riverview Raceway and Mosquito Speedway – Minnesota, Florida, Louisiana and countless other places in Canada and the U.S.

He won 13 track titles, 157 feature races, and five Canadian Dirt Track Invitational titles at Riverview between 1967 and 1994, as well as numerous championships throughout the U.S., the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame website states.

Nesbitt was inducted into the Superior Speedway Hall of Fame in 2002, recognized as the top dirt late model driver in that track‘s history.

Nesbitt was the first Canadian to be inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in Florence, Ky., in 2005, and made the Northwestern Ontario Hall in September.

“The Northwestern Ontario Hall of Fame, that means a lot,” he said. “There are some friends of mine that had been trying to get me in there for years, and they finally succeeded. That meant a lot to me, to get into that.”

Lil Stieh, who organized Sunday‘s event, said she thought it would be a good opportunity to get city racers and race fans together.

“We don‘t have racing dances or trophy banquets anymore,” she said. “It‘s hard to have a get-together.

“We used to see each other every week.”

Dennis White, a fan and former vintage car racer himself, said events like Sunday‘s should happen more often.

“You see a lot of fellows you haven‘t seen for years,” he said. “You have to pretty well go to the States to get decent racing now.”
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