Revisiting the Canuckmobile — a Neverland moment, a fantasy lived

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By the time Ben Ellison showed up at his friend’s house in Seattle to watch the Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers battle in the second round on Wednesday night, his beloved hometown team was already down 2-0.

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Could it be, he whimsically mused the day after, that it was his presence in front of the TV that sparked the Canucks’ dramatic third-period turnaround in their 5-4 win?

“Everyone gave up and I sat there in front of the TV … and I’m not saying I willed anything back into being, but that was a magical night last night. That was magic,” he said, chuckling.

“I’ll just tell you this: My number-one hope is Canucks-Bruins or Canucks-Rangers. There are scores to be settled. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re not even out of this round. But if we could undo the curses of the past or avenge wrongs … oooh — so sweet.

“Last night, I came away just being, ‘Oh, how sweet it is to be a Canucks fan.’ That doesn’t happen nearly often enough. But for one night, it was.”

The thing is, Ellison might have a little magic in him, a little vestige of the supernatural from a bygone age. He and three friends were, during a magical Stanley Cup run by the Canucks in 1994, the distillation of the team’s playoff soul.

They created the legendary Canuckmobile, a beat-up jalopy-art piece, a 1976 AMC Matador that probably inhaled several Olympic pools’ worth of gas ferrying Ellison, Derek Mah and Will Verner to Calgary, Toronto and New York City during that playoff run.

They were minor celebrities after a fashion, phoning in nightly on Sportstalk with Dan Russell during their journeys, and being profiled by a young — like, baby-faced young — Don Taylor on Sportspage.

“The Canuckmobile, it’s always really a fusion of me and Derek and Will Werner, and also Dan Russell,” said Ellison, now 50 and a lawyer.

And its life began with a death.

Ellison’s father, a doctor, had a patient of his pass away, and willed the Matador to him. “My dad dutifully said, ‘Hey, congratulations, you’re 16, here’s your car,’” he laughed.

Mah and Ellison were in school together at St. George’s, where they “dominated” their shared art class. Ellison would draw just about anything, while Mah was a little more … specific.

“Every project that he did, he did Troy Gamble, or some other Canucks goalie. He had like 15 assignments all year long, and all he did was NHL goalies,” said Ellison. “And at the end, I’m like, ‘Mah, why are you doing this crazy s–t?’ And he’s like, ‘I can’t draw faces.’ If Derek hadn’t been unable to paint faces, we wouldn’t be here. But his goalies were f—in’ amazing. You couldn’t tell. They were just beautiful, beautiful things, and generally he expanded out. So I’m the face guy and he’s the body and skates guy.”

It was around 1991 when Ellison first let Mah loose on the Matador — he did the goalies, Ellison chipped in, with a collage of players from Frank Caprice to Trevor Linden, Garry Valk and Pavel Bure embellishing the car, along with logos and slogans.

There have been other Canuckmobiles through the years — not counting the Nashville Predators’ emotional outlets for frustrated Preds’ fans — but none have risen to the Matador’s level of magnificence. “Justin’s” flag-and-sticker festooned Jetta in 2007 was a good effort, as was the 1994 Pontiac Trans Am in Chilliwack — a 300-hp beauty with Roberto Luongo on the hood, and sides covered with Don Cherry, Ryan Kesler and the Green Men — that was on the market a few years back. (That car, incidentally, is still for sale, if you contact the first seller). Fan Ed Zezchuk had a glorious Astrovan with giant sticks and pucks on the top, while Shane and Patti Kabisch had two nicely decked-out Nissans.

“I think it’s because we had the artistic background and the car was motivated by the art, as opposed to a hockey fan wanting to deck up his car,” said Ellison.

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And then there’s the journey. Boy, what a journey.

Gassed up and high on life, the now-university students hit the road for Calgary to see Game 7 of the first round series against the Calgary Flames. The one with Pavel Bure’s double-overtime game winner. The one with Kirk McLean’s kick save.

It was after that game, said Mah, now a provincial court judge, that the adventure gained momentum.

“Afterwards, we drove to the rear of the Saddledome where the Canucks were exiting. Some players began to sign the car, and while Dave Babych was signing, he asked if we were going to drive to Dallas where the Canucks were playing next. At that point, the seed for the trip was planted,” he wrote via email this week.

“We made our way back to Vancouver, and for some reason, had an atlas in the car. We began to study the logistics of driving to Dallas and decided that we would do it. But before we were ready to leave, the Canucks swept the series against Dallas (Eds note; they won the series 4-1) and so, we decided to drive to Toronto where the Canucks would face the Maple Leafs in the third round.”

(Side note on their quest. They didn’t know where they were going to be staying when they got to Calgary, and had brought some food to be cooked. At some point, they started eating the uncooked spaghetti they’d brought. After the 2OT win, it became something of a superstitious ritual, and they carried on through their next two trips.)

While crunching uncooked Orilla pasta and burning dead dinosaurs crossing the country, they made some epic stops, something that probably couldn’t be repeated in today’s climate.

“We bought a bunch of hockey cards, pulled out all the Canucks, and we looked to see where they were born,” said Ellison. “And every time we were going through Lethbridge or wherever, we’re like ‘alright, Murray Craven was born here, let’s see,’ and we’d go to the payphones … (and open) the white pages. We would look up the last name of the hockey player and just cold call. ‘Hi, are you related to Murray Craven the hockey player?’ And they’d say ‘Oh yeah, that’s my nephew’ and we would just invite ourselves over to the extended family of various Canucks, and have a great time. Have a meal, they’d tell us stories, take pictures together, play frisbee, and then we’d just drive on to the next town.”

Ellison still has the pictures, and Mah has the memories, including meeting Linden’s grandmother.

After their stop — Craven is from Medicine Hat, for the record — it was on to Regina where their voyage was interrupted by the need for a new transmission. Once the repairs were made, it was back on the road, destination: Toronto.

“During Game 5, we stopped briefly in Brandon to check the score and learned that the Canucks were losing 3-0,” Mah wrote. “We continued driving to Ontario assuming that we would likely see a game there. Later that night, we stumbled upon the radio feed for the game and listened as Jim Robson called Greg Adams’s goal to win the series — again in double overtime.”

It meant the Canucks were off to New York to face the Rangers. And there was no way they weren’t going, too. When they got there, they took the train to one of the games and ended up riding with Dave Randorf and Ron McLean, before going out to dinner with Russell, John McKeachie and Paul Carson.

When they finally got back to Vancouver, the car ended up in Mah’s driveway, where it sat for years. Paint fading and peeling, the body rusting away, the car was offered to the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame, but they didn’t have the budget or space for it. It was eventually scrapped.

“In 2006, I went out to Derek Mah’s parents’ place in Richmond and met with Derek about possibly having the car donated to the BC Sports Hall of Fame,” BCSHF president Jason Beck wrote in an email.

“Many years of sitting out exposed to the elements had not been kind to the once beautiful vehicle. If we had unlimited space and budget we would have taken it and restored it for sure. But we didn’t have either. I do regret not taking the front and rear hoods though, even if the artwork was in bad shape.”

The three friends still see each other occasionally; Verner now lives in the Okanagan, where he works for an American lumber company. He was the only one of the three to follow the hockey dream, spending five seasons as coach and GM of the Junior A Fernie Ghostriders in the mid-2000s.

“God bless Will for following the hockey dream. We’re the corporate sellouts,” Ellison joked.

They’re all still Canucks fans, even if Ellison has season tickets to the Seattle Kraken and lives just blocks from the arena.

“We met many people during the trip and even if they did not cheer for the Canucks, they were kind and appreciative of our enthusiasm,” Mah wrote. “… I will always remember the kindness and generosity of Canadians.

“I feel very fortunate that we stumbled upon the road trip of a lifetime and am grateful that we had the support from our families to go. To this day, I carry many good memories of this trip and am happy that we were able to share them with others along the way.”

Will it ever happen again? As we’ve seen, there have only been hollow imitations, echoes of the AMC’s greatness. Is there even an modern equivalent to the Matador?

“The thing about the Canuckmobile is that it was such a f—ing undesirable car. Like, it had to be given away,” said Ellison. “It was like a hot potato. One guy tries to die to avoid having to keep it, the other guy’s like, ‘Yeah, congratulations. How old are you? Happy birthday.’ And then I gave it to Derek.

“The paint job was kind of cover a cover up to try and put lipstick on a pig. So I think that the emphasis here (for the next car) should be a darling, lovable pig.

“But I don’t think this generation will feel the same way about their cars the way that we did, when it was something that could be customized and deepen your emotional bond with it. I feel like kids today are gonna have or do have a very different relationship to the cars.

“I think at the end of the day, that Canuckmobile story wasn’t really about the car. It was, but it was about crazy dreams of young people that aren’t quite old enough to have adult responsibilities. And I think that’s what charmed people.

“I think kids today could do the same thing as Canuckmobile, because it’s just a story about kids living out one last fantasy before they have to grow up, and that happens all the time. Even today.”

jadams@postmedia.com