reworking a fully restored car

That really stinks that someone would do this to you. Do you have any bank statements showing the withdraws to make these cash payments that you do have a receipt for? If you can show a pattern of these transactions ( with your pics ) you may have a case to recover some of your money he took from you. Anything is worth a try at this point, even if you can't recover everything I'm sure Canada's IRS would be very interested in looking into this.
Best of luck!!