Canadian Winter Rally

In 1974, my friend Ken Frausel, who had done very well in local and regional rally competition, wanted to try a special stage rally. He asked if I'd be his co-driver in the Canadian Winter Rally - we're talkin' full-speed, all-out, playin'-with-the-big-boys rally.

Simply put, a stage rally is run over a set of closed roads, usually in logging camps or other privately owned tracts of land that have a path or lane through them. The cars follow each other starting at a minute apart and the goal is to traverse the course in less time than the competition. A time limit is allotted to traverse the stage with no penalty for completing the stage faster than the allotment. Time exceeding the allotment is added to a running total and the team is disqualified if the total lateness exceeds 30 minutes. The cars travel from stage to stage over public roads and some of these transit legs include stops for gas, food and repairs.

It was just the two of us with no support crew. We drove to Toronto in the same car we were to compete in (and that we'd have to drive home in). The event route was 1100 miles long and then there were the miles to get there and back. We were planning to give it all we had - but with moderation.

It was a great time. There was a lot of excitement at the start in downtown Toronto with crowds, the press, a radio station. As we left the starting line we heard the announcer say, (probably for the 83rd time), "... car 83 will be the one to watch...."

We did pretty well in the first stage: 47 cars had faster times so we came in right in the middle. The time allotment was 7:00 and we did 6:08 so we had no penalty: Hey ! we could do this ! The second stage was a disaster - we got stuck behind a car that couldn't make it up a crest - after all, it was shear ice after about 60 cars had been over it. The third stage was discarded and during the fourth stage we got stuck again behind other cars. We had reached the 30 minute limit.

We didn't finish. We got time-barred in the fourth special stage. Out of 95 cars, 18 finished - in the words of the sponsor, "driving conditions were extreme". But then, so was the experience.