Drive-Ins in Alphabetical Order 

• Barrie (Ontario) Canada Barrie Drive-in:  705-487-2212  / 3758 located on Highway 11, ten mins north of Barrie); (and situated fifteen minutes south of Orillia) Three screens, each of them lit-up with a double feature. The Barrie Drive-In still has a large traditional playground for the wee folk, and caps the summer season with an annual Labor Day weekend all nite Dusk-to-Dawn screening. Admission: $10 (age13&up); children 12&under free. 

• Elmvale (Ontario) Canada Elmvale Drive-in:  705-322-2890  located on Simcoe Road {92} at Crossland Road, on the way to Wasaga Beach; west of Barrie, Ontario 

• Fonthill (Ontario) Canada Can-View Drive-in:  905-892-9929  / 1155 four screens located at the junction of Highway 406 (Kottmelier Road) & Highway 20 

• Gatineau (Ontario) Canada Cine-Parc:  819-663-0915  

• Grand Bend (Ontario) Canada Starlite Drive-in:  519-238-8344  located on Grand Bend Road 

• Gravenhurst (Ontario) Canada Muskoka Drive-in:  705-687-4880  located on Doe Lake Road 

• Guelph (Ontario) Canada Mustang Drive-in:  519-824-5431  located on Guelph Eramosa Townline Road, south of Hwy 7, between Guelph & Rockwood The Mustang's long season runs from late March or April (weather willing) thru Thanksgiving wknd., during which time the screen is lit with double features and Sunday all-niters - Dusk to Dawn. 

• Hamilton (Ontario) Canada see: Stoney Creek, Ontario 

• Hanover (Ontario) Canada Hanover Drive-in:  519-364-2066  located on RR1, aka: Drive-in Road 

• Kingston (Ontario) Canada Kingston Drive-in:  613-530-2707  located on Division Street, north of Route 401 (you may remember it as The Mustang Drive-in) 

• Lindsay (Ontario) Canada Lindsay Drive-in:  705-340-6666  located at 229 Pigeon Lake Rd (Hwy.17) off Hwy.36 Well-run deuce, screening double features on each of it's 2 screens; open seasonally, mid April thru early October; weekends spring & fall; 7nites during peak summer season; Tuesday: carload nite. 

• London (Ontario) Canada Mustang Drive-in:  519-644-1160  located on Rural Route 7 

• Midland (Ontario) Canada Midland Drive-in:  705-526-2411  located at 1299 Angela Schmidt Foster Road 

• Oakville (Ontario) Canada The 5 Drive-in Theatre:  905-257-8272  located at 2332 Ninth Line & Hwy 5 (Dundas) The 5'er has three screens. Screen 1 is the largest of the three (95'); all are lit-up 7 nites a week, seasonally; April thru October, and lit with a double feature on each (their third screen was added during Season 2001). Admission: 13&up $9.50 per person; 12&under free (the adult fare is discounted to $4.25 on Tuesdays). BTW: and it ain't just hotdogs & burgers anymore .. in addition to their existing snackbar, this season {2001} the 5'er has also added a BAR-B-Q PIT that makes dining under the stars more interesting, with among other notions, barbeque'd steak sandwiches, Canadian Bacon sandwiches, and buttered CornCobs. * A couple of times a month the 5 makes a point of bringing back classic B&W Drive-in reels of the 50's such as: Creature of the Black Lagoon, The Blob, (of course!) Invasion of the Body Snatchers, etc .. added as a bonus third feature - juss for the fun of it. 

• Owen Sound (Ontario) Canada Owen Sound Drive-in: two screens located off Highway 70 

• Oxdrift (Ontario) Canada Sunset Drive-in Theatre:  807-937-5192  located at Wainwright Twp 

• Pembroke (Ontario) Canada Skylight Drive-in:  613-732-2136  located on Forest Lea Road 

• Peterborough (Ontario) Canada Mustang Drive-in:  705-745-0241  located on Rural Route 3 

• Port Hope (Ontario) Canada Port Hope Drive-in:  905-372-5379  located on Theatre Road (off Highway 2) One of the oldest Canadian drive-ins (1945); open seasonally, April thru October; screening double features. Sunday Carload Nite: $10/Carload. (alternate phone number:  905-434-8233 ). 

• Sharon (Ontario) Canada North York Drive-in:  905-836-4444  located at 893 Mount Albert (north of Newmarket) The North York has been lit-up seasonally since 1955, and has been owned by the same family for all this time. It now has three screens that are lit with a double feature on each; open May thru September (may be adding a 4th screen for season of 2001). 

• Smith Falls (Ontario) Canada Port Elmsley Drive-in Theatre:  613-267-7772  located at Port Elmsley 

• Stoney Creek (Ontario) Canada Starlite Drive-in:  905-664-3800  Take Centennial off the QEW located at 59 Green Mountain Road East (off Highway 20; near Hamilton, Ontario) Open seasonally April thru October, 7 nites during peak season; Fri/Sat/Sun & Tues in spring and fall. Usually screens double features, with wknd Fri/Sat triple features, and also Dusk-to-Dawn on Holidays. Admission: $8 (13&up); $3 Seniors; $3 ages 6-12; children 5 and under admitted free; Tuesday special: Carload Night ($10 per vehicle, for all the occupants). Snackbar here is one of the ten best in North America and also holds record for largest Drive-in hamburger. 

• Toronto (Ontario) Canada The Docks Drive-in Theatre:  416-469-5655  like the name sez .. you'll find it down at the Docks located at 11 Polson Street, on Toronto's east side (Entrance: right off Cherry Street; just past Polson) From the Gardner Expressway {427} take the Jarvis Street exit to Lakeshore Avenue; and continue on Lakeshore through 3 lites, the 3rd lite being Cherry Street; and turn right onto Cherry, then go past Knob Hill Farms, turning right onto Polson; follow to its end. As a component of a sprawling new entertainment complex, The Docks Drive-in Theatre opened up for the first time in the Summer of 2001. It is featuring a capacity for up to 500 cars and is lighting the largest outdoor movie screen in Canada with a double feature 7 nites during summer, and 4 nites of the week (Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun) after Labor Day weekend. Admission: age13&up $13; Tues nite discount: $6.50; for Seniors: $6.50 at all times; children 12&under free. 

• Woodstock (Ontario) Canada Oxford Drive-in:  519-537-7392  located on Governor's Road



The History of the Drive-in Movie Theatre

Richard Hollingshead was a young sales manager at his dad's Whiz Auto Products, who had a hankering to invent something that combined his two interests: cars and movies. Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue, Camden, New Jersey. The inventor mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car, projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard, and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound. The inventor subjected his beta drive-in to vigorous testing: for sound quality, for different weather conditions (Richard used a lawn sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park the patrons' cars. Richard tried lining up the cars in his driveway, which created a problem with line of sight if one car was directly parked behind another car. By spacing cars at various distances and placing blocks and ramps under the front wheels of cars that were further away from the screen, Richard Hollingshead created the perfect parking arrangement for the drive-in movie theater experience. The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent# 1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of $30,000, Richard opened the first drive-in on Tuesday June 6, 1933 at a location on Crescent Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey. The price of admission was 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person. The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know today. The inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor to provide the sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three main speakers were mounted next to the screen that provided sound. The sound quality was not good for cars in the rear of the theater or for the surrounding neighbors. 

The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had parking space for 2,500 cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area, kid's playground, a full service restaurant and a shuttle train that took customers from their cars and around the 28-acre theater lot.

The two smallest drive-ins were the Harmony Drive-In of Harmony Pennsylvania and the Highway Drive-In of Bamberg, South Carolina. Both drive-ins could hold no more than 50 cars.

An interesting innovation was the combination drive-in and fly-in theater. On June 3, 1948, Edward Brown, Junior opened the first theater for cars and small planes. Ed Brown's Drive-In and Fly-In of Asbury Park, New Jersey had the capacity for 500 cars and 25 airplanes. An airfield was placed next to the drive-in and planes would taxi to the last row of the theater. When the movies were over, Brown provided a tow for the planes to be brought back to the airfield.

The drive-in theater movie experience cannot be beat.