Bill Martin wrote:I'm hoping somebody knows more about this than me, but from what I remember hearing, Canada picks a Championship Day and several regional championships take place at the same time across the country. I think they somehow analyze the results...maybe something like a PAX result, and then declare a national champion. Not at all sure about this...I was hearing it third hand some time ago. From Gary Milligan I think. Kinda sounds like the future to me.
Bill, that was the case from 1972 until 1992 inclusive. And Gary would have known of and competed in the series over many years. In fact the organizer of the event was Alan Rae who lived in Vancouver during that time and thus well-known to him.
All those years, the Canadian program was run by two people, both of whom I know since they both currently live in Calgary: Alan Rae (retired and still goes to Packwood/SCCA Nationals in his D-Mod Caterham Super 7 - although last year he shared Ambrose Fung's red Elise in SS) and Brian Smetaniuk (doing solo 1 in a Formula Atlantic).
There was no one to take over following that and there was no National Championship in Canada until 1999. Each region slowly "descended" into their respective abys, changing and modifying their rules locally to suit themselves/locally. The rule situation was a mess.
A group of 11 or so people got together over the internet and decided that there should be a National Championship in a single location. I was among that group. We never met once for a meeting in person and organized the event over the internet which was pretty cool.
The old "many locations" format was not deemed to be fair nor possible to realistically compare times due to differences in weather, running surface, time of day cars were running, actual dimensions of the course (note that the course had to be designed for the smallest lot in the country that the event would be run on! In 1992 when I ran in Calgary, that meant a figure 8 type of layout with loops and cross-overs being done....think I'm dizzy thinking about it!
In 1999 and 2000 the event was held in Winnipeg - more or less the geographic center of Canada - directly north of Topeka about 14 hours driving time. Attendance was low and the Winnipeg Sports Car Club (by the way, I think they have 17 people going to Topeka in Sept!) did not want to lose money in the future so that idea was abandoned in favor of having Eastern and Western Championships - Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Calgary with one of them being designated the official championship. The idea was that the Championship would be alternated between East and West. In 2005 it was held in Red Deer (just north of Calgary about 90 miles) of which I was the chair and included an Evo School with Kevin Dietz, Ron Bauer(?), Dwight Mitchell and I think Randy Noll (?) who also stayed to compete. In the East in 2005, the eastern championship was held in Montreal.
Few people travelled across the country and thus the "National" was almost more of a regional championship in reality.
This was changed to a single location format in 2006 with the event held in Toronto, 2007 in Vancouver and this year at Slemon Park in PEI which is being held this very weekend:
http://autoslalom.rgisolutions.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
So, there you go, a brief history of autoslalom (autocross) in Canada starting in 1972!
Reijo
Not counting contingency I got enough to pay for half my gas for natls. 
