Loud revving pickup truck engines, horns honking, and even a train horn sound out loudly as another unsanctioned truck rally was held last night in the rear parking lot of Park Place in Barrie’s south end.
There are nearly 300 vehicles in the lot, parked in rows with young people sitting in the beds of trucks and milling around in small groups in front of heavily modified trucks, some brightly lit up from custom lighting systems placed on the chassis underneath the vehicles, making them light up like Christmas trees.
And there are cars on hand as well, as Austin Clarence, 18, from Orangeville, brought his 2023 Dodge Challenger.
“(It’s) just for people to see some nice vehicles and just hang out, in all honesty,” he tells BarrieToday in the parking lot, surrounded by a few of his friends.
He says social media is the main mode of communication when loosely organizing the events, which are held on private property, much to the chagrin of the landowner.
"That's kind of a tough situation, just because …”. He trails off for a few seconds thinking about the question of trespassing.
“A lot of the time it is hard to get permission, but then at the same time it’s not the best thing either to just show up somewhere. We put a big emphasis on people being respectful and behaving themselves, and not everyone adheres to that, but we try to keep it clean,” he answers.
Police say they were notified late Friday night about a truck meet that was planned and were dealing with it “in the most peaceful way possible.”
“Everyone has pretty much been respectful,” Det. Const. Don Langdon, with the traffic unit of the Barrie Police Service, tells BarrieToday as he watches over the proceedings.
“They don’t have permission from the property owners to be here. We are trying to do our best to make sure everyone enjoys the beautiful vehicles and all of the work involved in the vehicles, and try to address any issues before they become issues,” he adds.
Langdon says they will crack down on anyone doing any stunts within the parking lot, and will try to address loud revving vehicles and any drinking in the area.
“We’ve pretty much stopped everyone before they got into the parking lot, and we’ve laid out some ground rules – be respectful, enjoy the show, no weed, and no alcohol, and no burnouts and no stunts – and if people do stunts in the parking lot, we will take their vehicle under the Highway Traffic Act for 14 days, and they will be charged,” he stresses.
Langdon notes they don’t condone this as a police service and says “This is unsanctioned and uninsured. The property owner really does not want it here.”
Restraint has been the strategy by police so far.
“We could come in here and hammer everyone as hard as we can, but at the end of the day, there’s four officers here, and over 300 cars, right? So we are trying to keep this as peaceful as we possibly can. Safety is the number one issue, (for) everyone to enjoy it, everyone to go home, everyone to wake up in the morning, everyone to have their vehicles – and that’s the goal," he says.
The first of the trucks arrived at around 7 p.m., with numbers steadily growing throughout the night.
“They usually lose steam around midnight, and the kicker is most of these people aren’t from Barrie,” Langdon says. “90 percent of these folks here are not Barrie residents, and that’s something we can’t control.”
Blake Langlois, 22, of North Bay, made the trip south to Barrie in his 2018 Chevrolet Colorado.
“I like it. It’s cool. It’s not something I get to experience up north, as there’s not really a scene like this, so I have to come down here for it,” he says. “It hurts the gas bill a little bit, but I think it’s worth it to come down here for a couple hours and drive back.”
Not everyone there was willing to speak to a reporter about the unsanctioned event and being trespassers on private property.
“No, I don’t want to answer any questions,” one young man flatly stated. “It doesn’t matter,” he coldly answers when asked why, then walks back his truck, which is lit up from underneath, much like the others.
Another young man bristles at being asked questions and says the media is making them look bad.
One man nearby pipes in by saying “It’s private but it’s public. It’s an in-between area.”
One 18-year-old man from Oro-Medonte, who is clearly drunk, is slurring his words as he offers advice to the reporter.
“(We’re) just having a good time and getting drunk with the boys,” he stammers.
“People are going crazy out here, it’s all about having a good time. You only live once, and we’re only young for this long. We might as well just have a good time while we can. When you get old, you’ll regret the shit you didn’t do,” the man adds.
At around 11 p.m., as a few of the attendees begin to try to make their way out of the Park Place parking lot, a small pickup truck is pulled over by police, as the truck has three young men riding in the open bed of the vehicle.
An officer is then seen scolding the occupants trying to make them understand the danger of such an activity.
Other people in the rally laugh and honk horns at them, mockingly, before returning to socializing among themselves in clouds of exhaust and engine noise.
