Stuart Hayward and Dorree Barnhouse stand in front of Hayward’s red Corvette during the Turtleford Co-op car show on July 5, 2025. It's Barnhouse’s favourite car in his collection. The classic sports car is powered by a 427 engine. (Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW staff)

By Kenneth Cheung

BELAIR LOVE

A ’57 Bel Air and Bobby Curtola’s Corvette: Sask. couple finds romance through classic cars

Jul 8, 2025 | 12:56 PM

For Stuart Hayward and Dorree Barnhouse, love didn’t arrive over a candlelit dinner or a bouquet of flowers — it pulled up in the chrome fin of a 1957 Chevy Bel Air.

In 2020, Barnhouse was browsing dating profiles with friends in Arizona when something unusual caught her eye.

“I went, ‘Oh, go back, go back, back, back, back, back,’” she recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘That’s a fin of a ’57 Chevy Bel Air.’ And they go like, ‘What?’ I said, ‘It’s a ’57 Chevy Bel Air.’”

She sent him a quick message about the car, which led to a coffee date — and “we’ve been together ever since.”

Hayward, who grew up in Turtleford, still laughs about how his prized classic landed him a second chance at love.

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“She didn’t see me. It was the car that stood out. It wasn’t me,” he said.

“He’s not bad looking. He looks normal,” Barnhouse teased.

Hayward said that same Bel Air, and his entire collection of classics, might not even exist if he hadn’t kicked his smoking habit three decades ago.

“When my daughter was very, very young, I thought to myself, if I don’t quit smoking, I’m not going to be here to see her graduate,” he said. “So I quit. And where does everybody put their cigarette money? They don’t know, it evaporates.”

Stuart Hayward brought two classics to the Turtleford and District Co-op car show on July 5: his prized white Corvette once owned by Bobby Curtola and a red Corvette with a 427 engine. (Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW Staff)

Instead, he poured that money under the hood.

“After 32 and somewhat years… that’s a third of a million dollars that I would have smoked and blown away if I’d still be alive.”

Today, Hayward owns 10 vintage vehicles — including a Corvette that once belonged to Canadian pop idol Bobby Curtola, known in the 1960s as “Canada’s equivalent to Frankie Avalon.”

He still remembers exactly how he found that piece of rock ’n’ roll history.

“As I was starting to collect Corvettes, this one came up, and it was in Edmonton,” he said. “I talked to the fella, he told me that he couldn’t document it, but it was Bobby Curtola’s car, and he had a price on it, and he wouldn’t budge. He wouldn’t take $5 off. It was fixed, and if I didn’t take it, he had other buyers sitting on the line.”

Stuart Hayward’s prized Corvette, once owned by Canadian pop icon Bobby Curtola, on display at the Turtleford and District Co-op car show. on July 5, 2025. (Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW Staff)

Hayward bought it on the spot, but said he needed proof.

“I did trace down the family of Bobby Curtola, and they confirmed it. Yes, this was one of his cars. And it’s a really unique piece of automotive and styling,” he said.

“It’s pretty — the girls like that car.”

Curtola, who once rubbed shoulders with the Rat Pack and Elvis Presley, was named a Member of the Order of Canada and inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2019. His biggest hit, Fortuneteller, topped the charts in 1962 and sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide.

(Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW Staff)

(Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW Staff)

But the rock star is just part of the story. Hayward said each of his cars carries a memory, even the ones that taught him a lesson or two.

“Nobody buys a bad deal car and not admit to it,” he said.

When Hayward first showed up for that coffee date with Barnhouse, he might have had to admit to one rookie mistake.

“I asked him, I said, ‘Well, where’s the Bel Air?’” Barnhouse laughed. “He goes, ‘Well, it’s at home.’ I said, ‘Oh… you should have brought the Bel Air.’”

They tied the knot in 2022, both widowed before they met. These days they split their time between Saskatchewan and Arizona, spending weekends criss-crossing highways and parking lots for vintage car shows.

“Every weekend is a car show, whether we’re here or in the States,” Barnhouse said. “It’s kind of our bonding thing that we have in common more than something more normal, I guess.”

In addition to his two Corvettes, Stuart Hayward brought his rare Suburban Carrier truck. It’s one of only 170 hand-built in the late 1950s. Here it is at the Turtleford and District Co-op car show on July 5, 2025. (Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW Staff)

(Kenneth Cheung/battlefordsNOW staff)

Hayward’s advice for anyone dreaming of tracking down their own Bobby Curtola Corvette — or finding love through chrome tailfins — is simple: “Buy it so that you like what you’re buying,” he said. “Because if your heart’s into it, then you’re going to enjoy it.”

For Barnhouse, the secret is just as straightforward.

“If you don’t have anything in common, it’s probably not gonna last very long,” she said. “We both got lucky.”

The couple was among the exhibitors at a car show hosted by Turtleford and District Co-op on July 5, which attracted about 70 vehicles lining up on the town’s main street.

—

Kenneth.Cheung@pattisonmedia.com