By Brian Lee
Doughnuts. You say that word in just about any other Canadian town and it conjures up a glowing wall at Tim Hortons. Around here it means tire marks on the highway and it stirs people to an angry froth.
I grew up near downtown Madeira so I was conditioned to think it was all just part of the local scene. Before I could read a calendar, I knew Friday night by the screeching of tires on the highway across the lake from my bedroom. To an eight year old kid in 1979, names like Scoular or Dubois went hand in hand with names like Camaro or Trans Am.
And that’s what those cars did ― they hacked doughnuts. They rarely hurt anybody while doing it and it gave people something to ponder, like:
"How can they afford to replace a set of tires every weekend?"
By the time I was of age, we didn’t have muscle cars but small compacts with front wheel drive. Aside from the occasional novelty of letting go with spirited reversies in a three-cylinder Chevy Sprint, I never really understood the zeal some guys had for the hobby. And while I don’t want to encourage the art form, you have to admit that sometimes the displays are pretty impressive.
So, why not take a doughnut tour? It’s free and our area is overflowing with viewing opportunities. Follow me:
Any doughnut tour should start at the proving grounds for rubber laying — the IGA parking lot. For decades, it was where youth safely honed their chops before hitting the tighter confines of the highway. Try one yourself ― free videography of your session is provided by the shopping centre’s many surveillance cameras. Ask at the IGA nicely and they might even provide a digital copy for your efforts.
A short stop at the Madeira Park crossroad reveals more history. Decades of doughnuts has produced a layered record, the rubbery sheen an elegy to past masters.
Next comes Misery Mile where three lanes provide a superb canvas for experimentation, fostering a jazzy amalgam of improvisational style and eclectic tread type.
But the highlight of any doughnut tour is the section beyond the Pender Harbour High School. For more than 10 kilometres, one finds a dazzling variety of compounding ellipses, bold brake stands and squigglies without end.
As you take in the spectacle, note the precision of the doughnuts, often just brushing the gravel on either side, the artist teasing the ditch with his own mortality. He seems to fuse chaos with order, laying patterns at random ― at first glance.
A closer inspection with a sophisticated eye finds a performer well versed in modernist abstraction. Devoid of pretense, he challenges one to explore the rules encoded in the subconscious that shape our esthetics.
What is a car?
What is a man?
What is Pender Harbour?
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