NS Department of Education and Culture

    



Garry Sowerby and his 1980 Volvo Red Cloud

Garry Sowerby and Odyssey International

Garry Sowerby graduated from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada with a Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1972 and from there joined the Canadian Armed Forces where he trained as a pilot. He finished his four year stint as a Captain working as an Ordinance Engineer where he tested and developed prototypes for the military, including hovercraft and amphibious support vehicles. Upon rejoining civilian life he worked for the Department of National Defense in Ottawa as an Automotive Test and Evaluation Officer.

In the fall of 1977, on a road trip from Ottawa to Halifax with Ken Langley, a college friend from Cape Breton who was now practicing law, the two cooked up the idea to drive the ultimate road trip... around the world. They promptly left their jobs and incorporated their company, Odyssey International Limited . Based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Odyssey's original mission was to implement an attempt to take 36 days off the existing 103-day record for World Circumnavigation by Car.

This was accomplished in 1980 when Odyssey principals drove Red Cloud, a Halifax-built Volvo station wagon, around the world in 74 days, 1 hour and 11 minutes. Later in 1984, Garry and Ken went on to set the record for the fastest transit of the world's largest land mass (Africa-Arctic Challenge) in a GMC Suburban. In 1987, Ken moved on to different things and Garry took Rolling Stone editor and author Tim Cahill along to break the record for the fastest drive from the bottom to the top of the Americas (Pan American Challenge).

Odyssey has since produced another 50 unique motoring activities traveling through more than 70 countries including Around the Bloc in a Week celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, smuggling a truckload of children's books to Moscow schools, putting a car on top of Toronto's CN Tower and negotiating the perimeter of Iceland in the dead of winter. In 1997 Garry again broke the around-the-world driving record with a flawless 21-day event starting and finishing at the zero meridian in Greenwich, England.

Odyssey's fleet of record-setting vehicles have been on display in their post-expedition condition in Europe, the United Kingdom, the US and Canada. For the past 4 years they have enjoyed feature vehicle status at the prestigious Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, California. And now it's time to bring them back home to Nova Scotia where Red Cloud, arguably the most famous Volvo in the world, will be back among the people who produced her almost 20 years ago. Yes, Red Cloud and her two GMC Truck siblings have earned their upcoming stay at Nova Scotia's Museum of Industry in Stellarton.

Yes, twenty years of producing improbable motoring activities involving myriads of problems such as arranging airlifts over the Iran-Iraq war, dodging ambushers in Kenya and finding himself at gunpoint 21 times during a 3-day transit of Colombia, Garry has the fortitude to find all things Funky at Nova Scotia museums.


The Funky Museum Roadshow was part of Tourism Awareness Month 1999.