Garrett SaundryBy Cybele (Event Organizer)
I have been looking forward to the 2009 Canary Derby, since the September 2008 event. This year, I took on the role of Co-Chair of the Vancouver event with Jeff Sinclair (co-founder of Xomodigital). The move from Gastown to Deer Lake Park took the organizing committee months to plan and execute. The event was a huge success and Vancouver raised $113,000. Victoria raced the next day at the Victoria Technology Park and raised $129,000. The Canary Derby weekend raised $242,000 in total for early cancer detection and over the past few years has raised over $600,000.
I’d like to express my sincere thanks to all participants in this year’s Canary Derby: 6S Marketing, ACL, Aquatic Informatics, BCTIA, Canary Foundation, Cisco, Coastal Contacts, FCV, FINCAD, Nitobi, Polycom, Rogers Wireless, SalesXperts, Wired Woman and our own team Webnames.ca.
I’m proud the Webnames.ca team won the Top Fundraising Award for the second year in a row. Special thanks to our top donors:
Odlum Brown, McNeill Nakamoto Recruitment Group, G. Wilson Construction , Enercon Products, October 17 Media, Promosapien, Miles Employment Group and RipeB2B.
Kudos to our drivers Meryll and Mathieu for their nerves of steel going down that steep hill even after seeing other drivers crash! Stay tuned for a video of the event by our very own Rami who filmed the video from last year!
Here are the official results:
Style Category:
1st Place – 6S Marketing & their Team Mario Cart
2nd Place – FINCAD
3rd Place – Tie between ACL and Webnames.ca
Speed Category:
1st Place – Aquatics Informatics (The Waterboys)
2nd Place – Rogers Wireless
3rd Place – Webnames.ca
Fundraising Category:
1st Place – Webnames.ca
2nd Place – BCTIA
3rd Place – Aquatics Informatics
Bent Wheel Award:
Unanimously given to Team Cisco Human Racers (Human Crashers!) with the first major spill of the day and a trip to the hospital
We wish you a “speedy” (no pun intended) recovery
By Meryll (Driver)
This past Saturday Webnames.ca sponsored, helped organized and participated in the Canary Foundation’s second annual canary derby. The Canary Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the goal of identifying cancer early through a simple blood test and then isolating it with molecular imaging.
The Webnames.ca team built and raced a soap box car to raise money in support of the foundation. I shared driving duties with Mathieu St. Marie placing us in a highly respectable 3rd place. The hill was really steep but that didn’t worry me as much as the turn did, because the steering on the car definitely had a mind of its own! But thanks to Mathieu and Max for making last minute alterations to the car to ensure I took the turn safely. Luckily, I didn’t see the first two crashes and the last crash was right after me, otherwise I would of thought twice about going down that hill. Despite all the crashes I would definitely do it again next year.
Congratulations are also in order to Cybele for winning the Top Volunteer award. This year the Canary Derby weekend raised $242,000 for early cancer detection. With Webnames raising over $13,000, taking home the Top Fundraiser Award.
By Max (Pit Crew)
The Canary Derby this year was awesome, and a huge sum of money was raised. Located at Dear Lake Park, the race this year was held on an actual slope, which made for an exciting event. Maybe a little too exciting, as three of the cars suffered spectacular crashes. Thankfully no one was seriously injured. The hill was more then a little bit steep, some of the cars reached 40 km/h, which is pretty fast considering gravity is doing all of the work. All in all, a successful event, a fun day and all for a good cause!