>From: "SherryB" <catlover@ii.ca>
>Subject: Re: [CR]Can you help ID this 1980s "CBS" tourer?
>Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:30:08 -0800
>
>Hi all:
>I don't remember the fellow's name, CBS (Canadian Bicycle
Specialists)
>bikes were made in a small shop in the Fairfield area here in Victoria
BC,
>in the 80's. As you might imagine, his full-531 frames were quite
popular
>locally. His work was superb: when I (foolishly) decided to modernize
my
>Gitane TdF with braze-ons, I had CBS do the work, and it was top notch.
>Cheers,
>Sherry Buttnor.
>Victoria BC.
Hi Sherry, Canadian Bicycle Specialists were originally out of Mapleridge B.C., and the brainchild of Larry Ruble and Gay Wise. As far as I know CBS were the first in western Canada to stock DT spokes, along with all the goodies that members of this list drool over nowadays: T.A. cranks and rings of every size as well as T.A.'s distinctive bottles and cages, Brooks, Campagnolo, Universal, Carradice, Bluemels, MoaSport clothing, and on and on. It was the ups and downs and headaches of running a mail-order and lightweight shop combined that eventually caused these two to move on, selling off what they'd started to another buyer, even before Tony Hoar was involved (I could be wrong about this; those in the know please correct me if I am). Last I heard of Larry, he worked at Russ Haye in Victoria.
However, some of the best products CBS ever sold were frames by a Scottish engineer named John McCullough, and named "Wester Ross" after a particularly lovely area in Scotland. John specialized in building bikes for short people and women, even equipping such bikes with very-hard-to-get brakes levers for small hands, made by Weinmann. In common with a lot of bikes from the UK, there were a multitude of brazed-on bits for racks, fenders, and lamp, but what set his apart were unique pump braze-ons, made necessary by the inability to mount a frame pump in the usual location, on a very small frame: his were typically tucked underneath a seatstay, a practice that became commonplace but not seen much anymore, due to the predominance of 'shorty'/bottlecage pumps.
Cheers,
Paul Woloshansky