Charles (Chuck) Rathgeb

Charles Irwin Rathgeb Obituary
BUSINESSMAN – SPORTSMAN
1921 – 2005
Charles (Chuck) Irwin Rathgeb passed away peacefully at home in Toronto on June 24, 2005 at the age of 83.
Chuck is survived by his loving wife and friend of 58 years, Rosemary Clarke, originally of Montreal and nephew Thomas Sceats, his wife Fabienne and nieces Charlotte and Martha.
Loving thanks for continuing care to the house staff Tony, Gloria, Teresa and to Al and Sarah of the Bahamas. Special thanks to Dr. Ung of the Sunnybrook & Women�s College Health Sciences Centre and to Dr. Robert Francis of Medcan. The Toronto Community Care Access Centre�s palliative team headed by Dr. Russell Goldman are to be commended for their loving care and support, as are his health care givers – Trudy, Joyce, Linda, Nellie, Valerio, George and Ken.
Chuck Rathgeb was born in Trois Rivieres, Quebec. Moving to Toronto at an early age, he was educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto (Zeta Psi). After leaving Upper Canada, he joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (13755) serving in Western Canada. Transferring to the Royal Canadian Navy he was a decorated officer, serving in the North Atlantic, Norwegian Sea, the Bay of Biscay and the invasion of Europe.
Following the war, Chuck joined his father as proprietor of Comstock International Ltd. for over forty years in the field of mechanical and electrical construction with major undertakings across Canada, the United States and around the globe.
He was a director of many major corporations both here and abroad and was associated closely with various charitable organizations.
Chuck’s big avocation was sports. He was at various times a Canadian member of the Commonwealth Cricket Team, a mountain climber (Canadian Rockies and Alps), a big game hunter (earning the Explorers’ Club gold bracelet for big six animals), member of the Canadian Marlin and Tuna Teams, Offshore Power Boat Racer (Miami-Nassau, London-Monte Carlo), Cresta Rider and World Cup Bobsledder, as Manager of The Gold Medal Canadian Olympic Bob-Sled Team, Innsbruck, Austria – 1964.
For many years, he ran the Comstock Ford Auto Racing Team, competing on major tracks in Canada, the U.S. and Europe and major rallies in Canada, Asia and Europe.
He also found time to run a small but successful thoroughbred horse-racing stable. In the air, Chuck was an accomplished gas and hot air balloonist (Trans Canada, Trans Alpine), a glider pilot and a jet pilot, setting a World record Atlantic crossing in a Canadian CL41 jet. But the sport he enjoyed most was golf! In a different vein, he produced a Broadway play “Staircase”, a major film “Fahrenheit 451” and he also did a brief, if memorable stint, as a rock promoter, staging a “Doors” concert.
The family will receive friends at the HUMPHREY FUNERAL HOME – A.W. MILES CHAPEL, 1403 Bayview Avenue (south of Eglinton Avenue East), from 4-7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 28. The funeral will take place at DEER PARK UNITED CHURCH, 129 St. Clair Avenue West at one o’clock on Wednesday, June 29th.

The Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame
Inducted 1993 – Motorsport Builder – Road Racing – Comstock Racing
The head of Comstock Canada, Rathgeb built the most successful racing team Canada has ever seen. Comstock Racing gave many promising Canadian drivers a chance to compete in major North American races- and win. A true sportsman who has competed in many of the world’s toughest rallies, Chuck Rathgeb also financed the building of the Comstock-Sadlers, which helped to put Canada on the racing map
The Ford that beat Ferrari
Bob English
February 11, 2010
(Globe & Mail) … The Canadian connection also began with Ford’s aspirations for North American market dominance, which led to a five-year alliance with what was to become one of our best-known racing enterprises, Chuck Rathgeb’s Comstock Racing Team.
Charles Rathgeb Jr. was a fascinating character. Born in Quebec in 1921, he attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, then joined the RCMP and served with the navy in the Second World War before completing his education and joining the family firm, Toronto-based engineering and construction company Canadian Comstock.
A keen sportsman (among other things, he was a mountain climber and coached the gold winning 1964 Olympic bobsledding team) he discovered auto racing by chance.
David Charters, in his book The Chequered Past, says curiosity took Rathgeb to the St. Catharines, Ont., workshop of Bill Sadler, who was building highly advanced racing cars at the time; and then to a still-under-construction Mosport racing circuit (which incidentally celebrates its 50th anniversary this year).
Car racing had a new convert and Comstock Racing was soon formed and fielded a trio of Sadlers for 1961. But Charters says it was Mont Tremblant Que.-born rising star Peter Ryan who first put the team’s name in the headlines.
Ryan won the first Canadian Grand Prix for Sports Cars in a Lotus 19 painted in Comstock’s colour scheme – white with twin green stripes and maple leafs on the doors – that year, beating a field of top international drivers.
Comstock, now sans Sadler who had gone his own way, hooked up with Ford for 1963 and Toronto’s Wietzes and U.S.-based Ken Miles won 18 overall and 35 class wins in a pair of Carroll Shelby’s new Ford-powered Cobra sports cars.
The team at various times also raced rear-engined Cooper-Fords (known as King Cobras), Ford Anglias, Cortinas and Mustangs and ran Holman and Moody Falcons in the cross-country Shell 4000 rally, chalking up four wins.
With Ford’s GT40’s teething years behind it, and an impatient Henry Ford II still looking for revenge for Ferrari’s bad behaviour, Comstock joined the company’s assault on the world sports car championship for 1966 and took delivery of a pair of GT40 Mk IIs equipped with the smaller 289-cubic-inch (4.7-litre) engines.
Selected to drive the cars, which were prepared by Shelby America, were Eppie Wietzes and Craig Fisher from Ontario, Jean Ouellet from Quebec, and 1965 Canadian champion Bob McLean from Vancouver.
Expectations were high, but the team’s first outing, the 12 hours of Sebring, ended in tragedy with McLean crashing his GT40. The car flipped, hit a pole and burst into flames, killing him instantly. The team withdrew the Wietzes/Fisher car.
Charters quotes Fisher as saying that McLean’s death seemed to hit Rathgeb hard, and that while the team continued to run the other GT40, his heart was no longer really in it.
The Comstock GT40 went on to race briefly in the new Can-Am series in 1967, but wasn’t competitive; by the end of the year, Rathgeb pulled the plug on Comstock Racing, ending a short but intense and dramatic episode in Canada’s racing history.