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This is my dad's story about the bike:

Providence of the 500 cc Royal Enfield motorbike.

In 1956/7 I was in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) reserve in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. One of my officers and I got talking and he said he had an 1938 500cc Royal Lee Enfield in his garage that had been there since before the war. I went to look at it and he looked in the gas tank and saw old brown sludge that had been gasoline some 30 years before. He emptied the gas tank at the petcock and put in some more gasoline and to his and my surprise the bike started. I bought it on the spot for 100 dollars and rode it home.

It was black enamel and very scratched up, dinted and dirty. It was summer and I took it all apart. Every thing including the engine. I found the piston has scored the cylinder and that the magneto gear was cracked. I got the cylinder reground and my dad found a iron piston from some car that would fit with a little lathe work. My dad also made a new magneto gear centre and used the old gear outside.

I cleaned every piece in solvent and soap and water and hammered all the dints out. I sanded most of the old black enamel off and had all the parts spread out in the family garage beside the family 1955 Chevy. car.
My mother's favourite colour was (Canadian) robin's egg blue so I bought a quart of automotive enamel and painted every part with two or three coats and reassembled the bike. I used that bike summer and winter for a couple of years. In the winter I did not have studded tyres so I wrapped steel clothes line around my tyres. I fell off several times on the icy roads, once near twin bridges. I used the bike a bit at "hill climbing" and once the bike came tumbling back down the steep hill and landed on me and the hot exhaust pipe burnt my leg quiet badly. In the same fall it also broke one cylinder flange off and the bike had the cylinder flopping but still running. I got the flange brazed back on and ground and ran the bike after that. I got a scholarship to go to the university of London in Engineering and sold the bike to a fellow Rover scout by the name of Brian Smith. He kept it for some time as when I came back from England three years later he still had it. After that I do not know what Brain did with it but he later had a 1000CC Arial Square Four. I came back from England with a red JAWA 350 CC twin bike. Later I saw the blue Royal Enfield driving around Calgary.

it was cool this morning, -15 outside.
i was riding my "new" bike today. i bought it for a couple of dollars the other week. it's a 3 speed raleigh from the late '60's or early '70's. when i got it none of the 3 speeds were working, so yesterday i took it apart and fixed it.
it's a nice ride for a couple of bucks and a few hours work:)
my apologies for the poor filming, but the road was covered with snow and ice and the slick summer tires make filming and controling the bike rather difficult.