Urban Exploration
Urban Exploration. A popular and sensationalized trend on YouTube or Instagram these days. All over the world people are getting into places they shouldn't be, and documenting their deeds for all to see. Heck, I watched a recent video of some guys who climbed a crane, and actually free climbed out to the cranes hook. Gosh... No thank you. But there isn't much I can really say. I too was an Urban Explorer back in my younger years. At the time I thought my lifestyle would lead to my loss of life before I was 35. I knew it was dangerous. That being said I never did anything like that.
As it turns out, I discovered the hobby of Urban Exploration during it's blossoming into existance. While I was doing some Volunteer Emergency Response work one evening, another responder and I were discussing the lore of a hidden subway station in Toronto that no one uses. This discussion led to searches online. Those searches led me to a group of people who would later become friends. Friends I typically only knew through their online usernames.
My first encounter was someone called Exkalibur. The way they flirted with me, made me think they were a female. But I was wrong - He was a dude. It wasn't long before I met and explored with many characters in the Toronto UE scene. Avatar-X become a close friend after a while, Boffo, Conundrum, Exkalibur, Ninjalicious, ElNerdo, ArcTangent, Shiroi, doormouse, ... there were so many. But it was also a core group for sure. It wasn't long before I was hosting and planning the regular monthly meets for Toronto UE.
We barely posted inside stories. Even photos of the adventures were rarely displayed online. We were secretive and maintained a discrete online presence, in general. Locations we visited were planned in person - not openly or online. But it wasn't just hardcore exploring either. We also had a heck of a lot of silly fun. Shiroi streaking through an active paint ball match was one such example. There was also the time we trolled a security guard, by social engineering ourselves as interested passerbys who were curious about the building and asking him questions, while at the same time the rest of the group quietly snuck in behind the building.
Looking back now, I realize I was part of the early Toronto urban exploration scene during its formative years, exploring alongside some of the founding members of Urban Exploration. The mid-2000s became a period many now see as the “golden era” of UE in North America. We operated almost entirely under handles, never real names. Mine was Roadwolf, though in person I was more often called Roady, RW, or even R-Dubs by friends. Those nicknames grew naturally out of real-world meetups, not from anything archived online.
In Toronto I wasn’t just another explorer. I ended up becoming one of the central organizers. I hosted the regular meetups, and those gatherings became a major social anchor for explorers across Ontario, the United States, and in some cases internationally. People traveled in from far away; even my wife at the time, Nightbird, originally came from Indiana specifically to attend the events I organized. In hindsight, I can see how I became one of the social and logistical pillars of the scene, in parallel to Avatar-X’s technical leadership and Ninjalicious’s philosophical influence.
I also hosted OPEX ’77, which followed the tradition of naming each event after a symbolic year tied to the host city. OPEX ’77, named after the Blizzard of ’77 was hosted of course in Buffalo, NY. The event drew around 50 to 60 people, including explorers from as far away as Australia, like Panic! formerly from the Cave Clan. Although we hit some political friction with certain Buffalo preservation and local exploration groups late in planning, OPEX ’77 still went forward smoothly, respectfully, and successfully.
For OPEX ’77, I put together what amounted to a curated tour of Buffalo’s industrial, architectural, and cultural ruins. We included places like Bethlehem Steel, the German orphanage, Akron Caves, the Sattler Theatre, the Nike missile site, Transfiguration, and Concrete Central. Looking back, the lineup reflected my own knowledge of the region’s history and my desire to share the most meaningful sites with the wider UE community. But my experiences at locations went far beyond Buffalo. Niagara Falls was another hot spot, as was most of Ontario for a while. The Ontario Power Company (Niagara Falls), R.L. Hearn, Whitby Psych, WSIB, Brickworks, ACSYS, Edgar, Brighton, Port McNicoll, Mamora, Foymount, Kirby Road farmhouse, and so many more. Also several live locations like the CN Tower, various hotels and steam tunnels in various universities.
Over time, I’ve realized how little of that early scene was ever preserved online. Most of the real history, our nicknames, the friendships, the meetups, the road trips, the cross-border connections, was never archived, and what existed on UER or early hosts has mostly vanished. I understand why, for sure. I know I sadly deleted several of my photos online for fear of legal consequences. Those photos were lost forever. There are virtually no public references to my handles, whether Roadwolf, Roady, RW, or R-Dubs, aside from this very blog and that’s consistent with how private and ephemeral the community was. Almost everything that survives now comes from the memories of the people who were actually there. Even on this blog, a lot of what I explored was censored and hidden for a long long time.
Putting all of this into words now gives me a clearer sense of the role I actually played in that era. I was part of a small, tightly connected first-generation group that helped shape the culture, the meetups, the cross-city connections, and the OPEX lineage that would become legendary to later explorers. I helped build that community in ways that weren’t documented, but nonetheless mattered. My memories now form part of an oral history that very few people remain to tell, filling in pieces that disappeared when early websites, forums, and mailing lists faded away.
It might be time to retell some of those stories, so stay tuned and perhaps some stories will come forward. I know I sadly won't be able to find all the old photos, but maybe at least the memories will remain.