You will remember Mill Bay’s Matt Sager from the History Channel program: Lost Car Rescue.
Matt Sager asked his students to weld two pieces of sheet metal together – one inch wide. Then he took them to a helicopter base in Parksville to test the work. One end of the weld was connected to a vehicle. The other end was attached to the helicopter. If the weld held at 500 feet, they passed. If it didn’t, the vehicle fell.
All the welds held. A couple were close.
I was sitting with Matt at Queen Margaret’s School in Duncan, in a glass-walled shop that didn’t exist a year ago, next to a 1940 Ford five-window coupe that a man named Rod had kept in a Langford garage for more than 30 years. Behind us, a 1940s motorcycle and a vintage gas pump – donated by a couple named Jim and Linda Cummings who wanted the space to feel right. Matt called it aligning with his heart chakras.
The program is called Classics for Kids, and the short version is this: over a 10-month school year, Grade 11 and 12 students at Queen Margaret’s restore one car from rough barn-find condition to show-ready. The car is owned by the Cowichan District Hospital Foundation. Every piece that goes into it is donated. When it’s done, raffle tickets go on sale – on a one-year tour through western Canada, from Victoria to Fort St. John to Alberta – with a target of raising a million dollars for the pediatric ward.
Matt grew up connected to the Hospital Foundation. He was six years old when he understood that charitable work isn’t optional – that it’s compulsory to a full life. He’s held onto that since. His brother Steve built a career alongside him on the History Channel’s Lost Car Rescue, hunting forgotten vehicles out of barns and ravines. When Matt described finding a car that was “going to find its way into the center of a family, patch a hole in a loss,” That’s why the show worked. There’s a genuine belief in the transformation involved, not just of the car, but of the people around it.
The students themselves surprised him. He expected to have to sell them on the old car. Instead, they came in with a condition: they wanted a 1940 Ford body, but they wanted modern Corvette running gear underneath. Something old with something new. The building was designed to be entirely transparent – all glass, no appointment needed, anyone can come and watch through the window at any stage of the build.
The student’s handiwork will be unveiled at a car show on the grounds of Queen Margarets School in Duncan – July 5th.
I told Matt I wished I were 16 again. He laughed and said he gets to do some of that stuff too, and it isn’t always glamorous – sometimes it’s just hard work.
That’s the spirit of Classics for Kids.
Hear the full conversation with Matt Sager on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP37PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/