Calgary · Halloween, 1956
No Unescorted Ladies
"No Unescorted Ladies Will Be Served." The sign hung in bar after Calgary bar, propped up by a law that had kept men and women from drinking in the same room since 1928. The official reasoning was that the atmosphere was simply too boisterous for a lady to bear.
The women of the Ace-Hy took a dimmer view of the whole idea. On Halloween night in 1956, they tucked their hair up under a cap, pulled on a baggy jacket, and walked straight in, the same riders who had spent the day on the same hills and the same start lines as the men. The disguise held for a good while, until one of the bartenders finally clued in that there were women in his bar and threw them out. Within the year, though, the law caught up to all of them: Alberta's 1957 Liquor Plebiscite struck down the mixed-drinking ban for good.
A Club Tradition
The Boot Run
Picture a Le Mans start: riders sprinting flat-out to their machines the instant the flag drops. Now add one cruel twist. Before the off, every last boot is pulled from every last foot and knotted together into one enormous tangled heap.
When the flag fell, the race began not with an engine but with a scramble: find your own boots, wrestle them free of the knot, and get them laced before you could so much as look at your bike. It was chaos, it was hilarious, and it was pure Ace-Hy. (With thanks to Lorraine for the photographs.)
Games at the Track
The Egg Relay
The Ace-Hy took their racing seriously. Their field days, not at all. The Egg Relay was the proof: carry a raw egg clenched in your teeth for a full lap of the track, and bring it back whole.
One bump, one laugh, one over-eager corner, and you were wearing your breakfast. The same grandstands that packed out for the real races stayed right where they were for this one.
Any Excuse to Ride
The Scavenger Hunts
Not every Ace-Hy outing ended at a finish line. The club ran scavenger hunts across the countryside around Calgary: a list of clues, a full tank of gas, and a long afternoon chasing hand-lettered notes tacked to fence posts and back-road signs.
Half navigation and half excuse to put miles on the machine, they turned the whole of southern Alberta into a playing field.
A Harder History
White Help Only
Not every mile behind the Ace-Hy is easy to look at. One day the club pulled up to a small-town cafe, Indians lined along the curb, and over the door hung a sign that spoke plainly for its era: "Cafe Dining Room. White Help Only."
What sharpens the photograph is the man behind the camera. It was taken by Jack Leong, a Canadian of Asian descent who knew that prejudice from the wrong side of the counter, and who would later marry a white woman at a time when a sign like this one still spoke for much of the country. He rode with the club, and he aimed his lens at the truth of the day rather than away from it. We keep the picture for the same reason he took it.
ACE-HY M.C.
