MOTORCYCLE RIDE HELPS SUPPORT LOCAL CHARITIES
Annual event reminds everyone that two-wheelers are back on the roads
May is Motorcycle Awareness Month across Canada and around North America.
There’s a good reason for this. With the warmer weather, it’s the time of year when machines are tuned up and returned to the roads to mingle with all the other traffic.
Calgary’s Motorcycle Awareness Ride, first started by Mick Cawthorn in 1991, is set to run this year on May 28.
Cawthorn, of Kane’s HarleyDavidson, had the backing of some influential Calgarians for the first few events, including then-mayor Al Duerr and CTV News anchor Barb Higgins.
Others involved in the ride were legendary motorcycle retailers Walt Healy and Bob Kane. Both men had worked hard during their own era to establish motorcycling as a sociable and fun pursuit for the entire family.
“When I started this ride all those years ago I tried to get as many shops as possible involved,” Cawthorn said. “We had a lot of groups and interested people working with us to help raise awareness of motorcyclists with other motorists, and to raise money for charity.”
It was first called the Mayor’s Motorcycle Ride in honour of motorcycling mayor Al Duerr. A group of riders met at the old Race City track, and took a meandering route to Symons Valley Ranch.
In its second year, 1992, the event became the Motorcycle Awareness Ride, and was held in support of charity. Cawthorn selected the United Rehabilitation Service Agency, otherwise known as URSA.
In 2014, a new charity was selected and Wood’s Homes, a Calgarybased organization that has been helping children and their families in southern Alberta for more than 100 years, partnered with the ride and raised more than $30,000.
For 23 years, a contingent of riders met in one location and headed out en masse to a final destination. There were police escorts and key intersections would be blocked to allow the stream of machines to pass.
When the ride was first established there were as many 1,000 motorcyclists involved, but in later years that number had decreased.
To re-establish the ride’s significance, in 2015 a new Motorcycle Awareness Ride committee was formed, led by the late Roger Hyde. Hyde, a lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, was a passionate spokesperson for what he hoped would be a reinvigorated 24th annual ride.
The committee chose to make some changes, including how the event was organized. Instead of one long line of motorcyclists snaking through Calgary, enthusiasts met at various points across the city and then rode to the Grey Eagle Casino in smaller groups, followed by a short ride to the Ranchman’s Cookhouse on Macleod Trail.
Hyde and the committee achieved what they’d hoped, as the number of participants almost doubled.
Now in its 26th year, there are more changes to how the Awareness Ride will take place.
“We’ve outgrown the Ranchman’s, and we wanted to increase the length of the ride,” said 2017 Awareness Ride co-chair Rob Dzikewich.
On Sunday, riders will once again meet up at shops, including Blackfoot Motosports, Cycle Works and Lucid Moto Co. (www. yycawarenessride.com). From locations such as these, smaller groups of motorcyclists will ride out to the Big Hill Springs Shell station, just north of Cochrane at the corner of Highways 22 and 567, meeting up at 11 a.m. for registration.
At noon, the kickstands are up and the group will travel about 50 kilometres to the Genesis Centre at 7555 Falconridge Blvd. N.E., arriving at 1 p.m.
Dzikewich said, “The Genesis Centre offers more than ample parking and we’re able to accommodate a larger number of people there.
“This is about the greater motorcycle community, with people from all walks of life,” Dzikewich said of the Awareness Ride.
“That means it includes all makes and models of machines.”
At the Genesis Centre there will be a motorcycle show and shine, food, live entertainment and both live and silent auctions.
Over the ride’s lifetime, more than $1 million has been raised for charity and in the three years Wood’s Homes has been involved, they’ve received close to $70,000.
At the end of the day, the event is about increasing awareness of motorcyclists, honouring the memory of four dedicated motorcycling ambassadors — Bob Kane, Walt Healy, Roger Hyde and the Ranchman’s Harris Dvorkin — and raising funds in support of Wood’s Homes.