The Voyageurs Rally was born in the mid 1970’s in a small gravel pit just northwest of Kitchener Waterloo. Known as The Barum Rally Sprint, the event attracted notable drivers John Buffum, Taisto Heinonen and Randy Black. The competition between the drivers was intense and did not let up until the final run. But the length of the short stage used was limited by the size of the gravel pit. Longer stages were needed and organizers began to look for another venue.
The next year, the rallysprint moved to Owen Sound and ran as a full Performance Rally, the Peninsula Rally. That too had only a single year lifespan and a more permanent home was sought.
Huntsville was the headquarters for the appropriately named Muskoka Rally which next took up the mantle. Stages were run in the northern part of the region for one year. The rally HQ then moved a little further north to Burks Falls and used many of the same roads for stages.
Until this point, the rally was being organized under the Canadian Automobile Sport Clubs (CASC) by its rally division and was run as a national level event. Terry Epp was the Director of Rally for the Ontario Region. He and his committee took over the running of the event in the late 1980s and moved it to North Bay. It was during this time that stages were given names of famous coureur de bois which means, literally, runner of the woods. Groseilliers and Raddison were two well known special stages. The rally then became the Rally of the Voyageurs with sponsorship from a Canadian company, Voyageurs Airline. Hence the reason for the coureur de bois names.
In 1990, the CASC divested itself of its rally division and a new organization , the Canadian Association of Rally Sport, (CARS) took over the management of rallying in Canada. Terry Epp became its first president, and the organizing of the Voyageurs Rally then became the responsibility of KWRC. The Voyageurs Rally, run as a regional level event, was a part of the Ontario Performance Rally Championship (OPRC) at this point. Also on the OPRC calendar was the Georgian Trials Rally organized by the Kitchener Waterloo Rally Club (KWRC).
The club continued to use North Bay as its headquarters for another two years. The town of Mattawa, north of Algonquin provincial park, then provided a home for the rally for a decade. KWRC took a break from organizing the event for two years at the turn of the new millenium, after which they organized the event from Parry Sound. The stages used were a mixture of roads from the Parry Sound area and some from the older Georgian Trials days further to the south. The Voyageurs Rally was last run in 2002 on those northern roads.
In 2017 the rally returned as grass roots level rally sport. That year the Rally of the Voyageurs ran on the Parnell Quarry access road that had been used for the Galway-Cavendish Forest Rally. That year it was won by Simon Vincent and Peter Thomson was second. The headquarters that year was near Flynns Turn.
This year, 2025, The Rally of the Voyageurs is back on the Parnell Quarry access road, as a regional rally, and part of the OPRC and ECRC championships. Headquarters will be at the Cavendish Community Hall.