Sea-to-Sky Rally Raises Funds for ALS
Deviating from our normal fare of ridiculing the decisions of automakers and skewering bad product choices, we would like to highlight a good news story – a car rally that is raising money for those suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease.
Taking place midway through June, the Sea-to-Sky ALS Rally is an annual multi-day event, taking off from Vancouver and wending its way up the tremendous Highway 99 through places like Kamloops and Lillooet before arriving in the resort town of Whistler. Far from the Bullrun-type rallies which tend to attract crypto bros and assorted hangers-on, the ALS Rally is open to all hands and doesn’t care if you drive a supercar, classic muscle, or JDM icon. There appears to have been a riot of makes and models on tap in past years, from Gulf-liveried Porsches to Audis and the scattered Lambo.
The ALS Rally was founded by Aidan Bate-Smith, a 25-year-old gearhead from Vancouver. His dad was diagnosed with ALS in 2019 and sadly passed away a couple of years later. Now, the Rally is a project for him and others to celebrate the life of his father and create funding for ALS research and treatment. To date, they’ve raised nearly a quarter million bucks and hope to double that amount this year.
Their goal is to continue the expansion of awareness for ALS – wide swaths of the public learned of the illness through that Ice Bucket Challenge about ten years ago – through this annual rally plus other various and sundry automotive activities. Registration is open for this particular event until a couple of weeks prior to the June 10th rally, with participants encouraged to sign up as a team and then seek some donations from their buddies. Hey, there are far worse ways to spend a few bucks.
None of us here have any skin in this game, nor are we tied to the event in any way. We just thought it a car-related good news story, the type which we can all use after a day spent doomscrolling on our devices.
[Image: Sea-to-Sky ALS Rally]
Become a TTAC insider. Get the latest news, features, TTAC takes, and everything else that gets to the truth about cars first by subscribing to our newsletter.
Matthew buys, sells, fixes, & races cars. As a human index of auto & auction knowledge, he is fond of making money and offering loud opinions.
More by Matthew Guy
Comments
Join the conversation
Sorry to hear about his dad. Unfortunately progress is very slow from our human perspective, we have only one life and progress takes much longer time. I hope money goes to research and not to bureaucrats.
My husband has Lou Gehrig’s disease, he is about 63 years old it was diagnosed 2 years ago. It was getting more difficult to live for him, because of stiff muscles he couldn’t even move. Riluzole and tofersen medicines were given, but didn’t give much relief. He couldn’t eat food without choking. I thought this might be the last stage and the medications he was given did not help at all, so I started to do alot of research on Ayurveda treatments, I was introduced to Natural Herbs Centre and their ALS/MND Ayurveda Protocol. He started on the Ayurveda Treatment last year, his symptoms gradually diminished including his vocal cord spasm, Muscle Weakness, speech and Difficulty with swallowing. Reach them at naturalherbscentre.com , he is getting active again since starting this treatment, he is able to walk again ( down the street and back ) he has also resumed exercising to strengthen muscles!! God Bless all ALS Caregivers. Stay Strong, take small moments throughout the day to thank yourself, to love your self, and pray to whatever faith, star, spiritual force you believe in and ask for strength. I can personally vouch for these remedy but you would probably need to decide what works best for you.