A Quick Run Through 2012
2012 was our breakout year where we really started to fill out our site. Trail Swag covered a lot of events, and started new sections. We have big aspirations for 2013, but we wanted to look back at 2012 first. We posted about 700 blog posts, held four contests and gave away prizes to some very appreciative winners. Ferris Park turned 50 (while Canada turned 145) and it was definitely the year that Adventure Racing took off.
London's Most Interesting Store
Farewell to Tumblehome
It was a sad year for the independent outdoors store as we had four family-run stores around Ontario close...
- Tumblehome in Burlington
- Bigwood in North Bay
- Canyon Mountain Company in Cobourg
- Novack's in London
SAIL Burlington
North Face Yorkdale
On the flip side, we saw the expansion of a fewer of the bigger stores such as...
- The North Face opening at Yorkdale
- A new SAIL in Etobicoke
- A new SAIL in Burlington
- MEC Ottawa expanded the size of their store to meet the need of their customers
Wild Rock Outfitters in Peterborough found an innovative way to price match to suit their customers better, brought the Ontario premiere of the Mountain Bike movie Strength in Numbers to Peterborough and celebrated 20 YEARS!
Northern Park Apparel
Trail Swag sat down with a blind runner, Mountain Biker extraordinaire Rider Mel, and two innovative guys in Newmarket who are capturing iconic Canadian images on shirts.
Kevin Callan released a DVD of his movie The Happy Camper's Wilderness Quest which was years in the making.
Explore Magazine made some changes, is now a quarterly magazine, and ramped up their content in 2012. If you're not reading Explore, you're missing out. It is informative, offers plenty of tips and shows exactly how much Canada has to offer.
Les Stroud had a busy year, he released a new CD, an App, a knife with Helle, and two new episodes of Survivorman.
Kevin Callan explaining how the Kelley Kettle works
We saw that auto manufacturers were interested in reaching their outdoors community at the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto, we had another great year at the Toronto Outdoor Adventure Show, and we saw the first ever Ottawa Outdoor & Adventure Travel Show!
IMBA Canada announced IMBA Ontario, held the Mountain Biking Trailblazing Festival at Hardwood Ski & Bike, and we had a chance to interview the new Ontario rep, Igor Hoogendoorn.
We saw technology trickle down into camping gear to offer us advances such as...
- Carbon Fiber tents (but at a cost... yikes!)
- Helinox Chair One - my new favourite camping chair
There are already things to look forward to in 2013...
- Not one, but two new books from Kevin Callan
- It's expo season again! Can't wait for the Ottawa Outdoor & Adventure Travel Show and the Toronto Outdoor Adventure Show
- A new Survivorman book, and the possibility of new Survivorman episodes! (Les is still ironing out the details)
- The Canadian Canoe Museum will be making strides to explore a new location that is closer to the water
- Now that Canadian Tire owns Atmosphere, we expect to see more Atmosphere stores in 2013
- We have a LOT of camping gear that we're still testing to add to our reviews section, and SO many more camping spots to visit
