Click on the picture to see a larger version.
Walter Drayton's gritty sketch depicts the mangled cab with Tony -- or an injured passenger -- being carried from the wreck.
Source:
Walter Drayton, illustration for"Taxi!" by Don Kelvin. Canadian Magazine, June, 1927, p. 12.
Winnipeg Cab History / 58
Tony Dorco
"Taxi!" is a tale of romance and international intrigue with Winnipeg as its unlikely setting. The story opens with taxi driver Tony Dorco waiting for fares outside Union Station:
At 8.50 o'clock of Tuesday, January 9th, 1926, the evening train from Montreal pulled into the Winnipeg Union Station. A moment later, Tony Dorco, standing beside his taxi on Main Street, just outside the front entrance of the station, saw a young lady come out of the middle doorway and pause uncertainly on the steps.
The reference to nonexistent steps at the station door shows that author Don Kelvin was not a Winnipegger. Local colour may have been inserted into Canadian Magazine stories to help boost readership outside Toronto.
Unfortunately, Tony is almost immediately killed when his taxi collides with a street car. The story meanders along for another eight pages with most of the action, such as it is, taking place in Winnipeg's General Hospital where the amnesiac heroine waits for her comatose leading man to regain consciousness.
Dismayed at the loss of the story's most appealing character, members of the TAXI-L discussion group tried to resurrect him in a series of rewrites. See Tony Dorco Rides Again.