Saturday February 4th dawned with a light cloud and no flurries, a perfect day to explore some back roads and participate in the first Rally of Abandoned Ontario. Winter in Canada is usually long, grey, cold and conducive to moping around the house dreaming of fine weather exploration and camping. Steve Rock, originator and organizer of Rally of Abandoned Ontario, had decided that enough was enough. It was time to get a few friends and acquaintances together for a fun couple of days of back road driving. What Steve had thought would be a get together of 6 to 12 people with a final prize of a case of beer quickly took on a life of its own.
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It would seem that Steve was not the only one in Ontario who was looking for an excuse to get out of the house and back to exploring. Within a few weeks, the Facebook page had over 1000 interested and 270 confirmed. Undaunted by the numbers, Steve Rock enlisted the aid of some fellow overland friends and was able to quickly use the large numbers to secure multiple prize packs from vendors including Core Outfitters, Backroad Mapbooks, 4WDrive Magazine, Off Road Addiction, Ron Brown & Firefly Books Ltd., Just Jeeps, Deadbolt Decals, Towronto Towing, Husky Station Truck Stop (BRADFORD), K&S Kreations and NV Euro Motor Works. Colin Hughes, Back Road Map Books local rep, was on site to provide maps and assist with collecting non-perishables. A portion of the entry fees went to the local Bradford food bank along with any non-perishable goods donated.
This rally was set up not as a time trial, but rather to locate and photograph key points based on the backroads map book of the area and clues provided the morning of the event. The photos are uploaded to a Dropbox account designated for that team. Points are awarded based on location and quality of the pictures.
This rally was set up not as a time trial, but rather to locate and photograph key points based on the backroads map book of the area and clues provided the morning of the event. The photos are uploaded to a Dropbox account designated for that team. Points are awarded based on location and quality of the pictures.
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My sister, Ursula, and I were driving up to join the Recovery crew vehicles for the Saturday portion of the event. We were both very impressed with the organization and planning of the rally. Upon pulling into the meeting location, a large Husky transport and vehicle fueling station along side of Highway 400 at Bradford Ontario, we meet two greeters who directed us to the back side of the large station. A second set of greeters at this point queued us into vehicle lines for registration. We had arrived early to get set up to photograph and talk to participants, so as we rolled up the registration it was Steve Rock himself there to admit us as the 13th entry.
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We would be team 13 “Unlucky For Some”, we all had a good laugh at this. Fortunately for us, 13 has proven to be a lucky number. After our donations and receiving our info package we quickly jumped the queue and pull up in front with the recovery team trucks and meet with Nathan Mc Donald, David Av Smith, Jason Butt, Mike Cerutti, Greg Dale, Dan Tee Yota, Peter Msai, Richard Mclean, and Diego Ramz, James Drever, Dylan Rideout, Bruce Minkai Zhang from the Core Canada Recovery Crew. Heavy towing was generously supplied by Max from Towronto Towing. As the numbers of participants swelled the lines we were surprised at the various groups of people that were here. Rally Race groups, off roaders, overlanders, photography enthusiasts, and people just looking for a bit of wintertime fun.
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Once the last of the participants were away the Recovery teams held back for about 30 minutes and then headed out as two groups to cover the middle ground of the event. With the great weather and good drivers no major recoveries were needed. There were a few soft shoulder recoveries, but many of these were made by good hearted fellow participants.
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As participants found the locations they were to take photos of the abandoned structures and things from the inside of their vehicles. These would get uploaded to a Dropbox link for review and points scoring. The participants had two days to complete the rally and some drove well into the night. Participants were really getting excited and some people, unfortunately, broke the in vehicle photo rule and a few trespassing issues occurred. Anyone caught having broken the rules were disqualified and we could tell how upset and sad this made Steve. His online posts showed that some people had put a lot of work into their submissions, only to be disqualified.
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My sister and I had a great time driving around with the recovery crew and even managed to photograph a few locations. Our submission was only three pictures, we thought we would send them in just to complete the experience. Little did we know that this was a ridiculously low number of submissions compared to the rest of the participants. I think it bewildered Steve, and as such earned us the "Disorientation Award" How fitting that was to add to Team 13 "Unlucky for Some".
Overall this was a surprisingly successful event. We did not encounter a single person who did not have a good time, including the disqualified. I believe next years event will be even better. I was able to interview Steve Rock a few weeks after the event. For that video please click on the following link. Video Interview with Steve Rock. For more information on the event please visit Rally of Abandoned Ontario.
Overall this was a surprisingly successful event. We did not encounter a single person who did not have a good time, including the disqualified. I believe next years event will be even better. I was able to interview Steve Rock a few weeks after the event. For that video please click on the following link. Video Interview with Steve Rock. For more information on the event please visit Rally of Abandoned Ontario.
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