Holy crap, this one almost slipped past me. Mostly because I have the wrong date recorded on the Rally East webpage and I thought I’d missed it. Bad archivist!
Ten years ago we kick-started the life back into performance rally in Atlantic Canada. Up until that point there hadn’t been a stage run on our side of the country since 1992 and it was a pretty daunting task. Steve Quigley and Dana Nauss still had their car and had been travelling occasionally to Baie, NEFR and other events and Ian, Daphne and I had previously purchased a former nationally run Audi rally car that we had spent several years working the old-rally-car kinks out of in several seasons of rally cross and many cold evenings in my driveway in Bedford.
Ron McKenzie and the Bluenose Autosport Club had the vision to organize events where there were absolutely none and did immense amounts of leg work arranging roads and figuring out all the ins and outs of organizing a rally event and 10 years ago today two cars (Driven collectively 5 times) started the roads of Renfrew for the first rally event seen in our area in 17 years. Lots of lessons were learned that day. For us the big one was ‘Puckboard is NOT a sufficient skidplate for a rally stage’. RIP Aluminium Audi Oil pan. Thankfully we had a spare and there was no other damage and the Audi still continues to run our stages to this day in the hands of Jim Theriault.
These were humble beginnings and we’re still growing, but in the last 10 years I think we’ve all had some amazing times on both sides of the stages and I think we all owe everyone involved a round of applause. Rally takes an immense amount of effort and love and I for one am forever grateful to those who love the sport as much as I do for their time, dedication and passion.
Here’s to another decade of great stages, great friends and great community!
Rally rally rally!
