EP 11: They Built a Life of Sundays - Stacey Tourout and Matthew Yeomans

[00:00:00] - [Nina]
Sometimes accidents just happen. There's nothing anybody could have done. But when it involves a dangerous activity in a remote location, the results can be fatal. A young couple that was so full of life, Stacy and Matthew, were doing what they love when an accident happened. It sits very heavy in the hearts of those that adored them.

[00:00:21] - [Nina]
Their bright future had ended so abruptly. This is episode 11. They built a life of Sundays. Stacy Turout and Matthew Yeomans. Welcome to mishaps and mysteries.

[00:00:34] - [Nina]
I'm your host, Nina.

[00:00:36] - [Cassie]
And I'm your host, Cassie.

[00:00:38] - [Nina]
Our podcast explore stories of misadventures in the wild landscapes of British Columbia, Canada. Thanks for being here with us today. A brief content note before we begin. While today's episode touches on death, there are no explicit or gory details ahead.

[00:01:01] - [Cassie]
Today's story took place within the off roading community. So let's talk a bit about what off roading is. It's the thrilling activity of taking a vehicle on natural terrain and unpaved surfaces. It can be casual and fun, or it can be competitive. Like any outdoor activity, there's a range of how intense people are about it.

[00:01:25] - [Cassie]
There are several types of off roading. It seems that the subjects of our story today, Matthew and Stacy, did a mix of overland and rock crawling called rock landing, just a name putting the two together. So overlanders prioritize going long distance for exploration, bringing everything they need to camp and see remote places and stay out in the bush. Whereas rock crawlers want to tackle the obstacles. They do highly technical driving up rocks, boulders, steep terrain, and so on.

[00:01:59] - [Cassie]
Combining the two, all of a sudden, you can see places many won't ever with the ease of a vehicle to get there. You need to have a lot of vehicle and mechanical knowledge along with incredible driving skills. The off road vehicle has to be built with specific undercarriage features and special tires. Off roading groups typically have a lot of knowledge and preparation for safety and self rescues. The group in today's story was one such group.

[00:02:31] - [Cassie]
The activity does come with some controversy. Environmental impacts are the main concern. Pollution, damage to trails, and habitat destruction. There's also concerns over noise pollution impacting wildlife. But it's the type of activity you do because you find the love for it, the passion, the rushes of adrenaline, the community of others that feel the same spark.

[00:02:56] - [Cassie]
The four wheel drive association of BC has several programs to encourage and develop responsible recreation in the backcountry.

[00:03:04] - [Nina]
Young and energetic, Stacy Turout and Matthew Yeomans lived in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. Stacy was 30 and from Lansville, and Matthew was 32 and from Nanaimo. They'd been together for five years. They loved travel, off roading, and had big dreams. They ran the YouTube channel Toyota World Runners, and they had a blog about their retrofitting of vehicles for off roading.

[00:03:30] - [Nina]
Stacy and Matthew had quit their jobs and sold their belongings and became YouTubers, documenting their travel and off road adventures. They had bought and modified a 1976 Toyota Chinook Land Cruiser with a camper and special off roading retrofits. They named the vehicle Sunday. It took them one hundred days to work on it and get it ready for their dreams. Though the work never truly ended, there was always something to fix along the way given the rough nature of off roading.

[00:04:01] - [Nina]
They were considered to be talented YouTubers. They had an impressive 348 videos and had amassed 200,000 followers on their YouTube channel and 78,000 on Instagram. By all means, this is very successful. YouTubers are awarded the silver play button when they reach a 100,000 subscribers. Less than 0.6% of all YouTube channels have earned one.

[00:04:26] - [Nina]
Their videos mainly depicted their adventures in BC and their adventures brought them as far as Central And South America and New Zealand, of which they had just recently traveled back from earlier in 2025. Their long form video from New Zealand from this recent adventure abroad was published in May 2025. Their biggest adventure was driving the longest line from Canada to Argentina. The video titled the greatest road trip on Earth, a Pan American movie, was published in December 2024. It was beautifully written and produced, and now has over 1,700,000 views.

[00:05:05] - [Cassie]
Watching those videos definitely made me dream of going back to Central And South America. How about you, Nina? Oh, yeah. It's definitely on my bucket list, Cass. I've always dreamed of going to Patagonia, and their footage showed just how beautiful it is there.

[00:05:19] - [Cassie]
Matthew and Stacy got engaged in April 2024 at the southernmost part of Argentina with a video put online of the engagement. They seemed like a sweet and happy couple. The video definitely made me tear up. And they were laid back too. Matthew hadn't brought the ring and drew one on with a permanent marker.

[00:05:42] - [Cassie]
Stacy didn't mind at all. And their adventures meant that they made friends everywhere they went. We watched some of their videos even though it was heartbreaking to do so. They had beautiful landscape cinematography. They used drones where permitted to get beautiful shots.

[00:06:01] - [Cassie]
We were able to get a feel for their off roading style. They did rock crawling and trips to beaches and lakes, and their blog. So they were obviously making a decent income with the success of Toyota World Runners and their blog. So they were able to travel and focus on their passion of off roading. On 07/31/2025, they released a video showing Adventures back home on Vancouver Island.

[00:06:28] - [Cassie]
And they were testing another vehicle, their Yeti, which gave them even more rock crawling capability because it didn't have a camper on top like Sunday. Sadly, this would be the last video ever published by Toyota World Runners.

[00:06:49] - [Nina]
In the West Kootenai region on the Western side of the Purcell Mountains sits a small, unincorporated town of Trout Lake. There's lots of cabins there, but with only about 20 to 40 residents living there year round. So we're talking about a very, very small remote community. You may recall the Persol Mountain Range from episode seven, where we were on the eastern side of the range in the Brenda Byman story. The largest towns near Trout Lake are Caslow and Revelstoke.

[00:07:20] - [Cassie]
Trout Lake is more or less in the middle with Revelstoke to the North and Caslow to the South. They are both relatively small towns, and they are both about an hour and a half drive from Trout Lake, which is pretty significant. The Trout Lake area is stunning and quiet. The community sits at the northwest end of the lake. Trout Lake is a ribbon lake.

[00:07:43] - [Nina]
Ribbon lakes are long and very deep and sit in u shaped valleys. They happen as a result of glacial erosion where an area of soft rock erodes faster than the hard rock surrounding it. So the views are of the long narrow lake with the gently sloping small mountains around it. The area all around is undeveloped and densely wooded. It's popular for outdoor recreation including horseback riding and snowmobiling.

[00:08:11] - [Nina]
It was here in the Trout Lake area where, without warning, everything went wrong for Stacy and Matthew while they were on another adventure.

[00:08:20] - [Cassie]
On 08/07/2025 at 06:30PM, CASLO RCMP received a call to an off road single vehicle accident. CASLO Search and Rescue was dispatched, but one RCMP officer went to attend also. The location of the crash was way up a mountain on a logging or mining road off of Highway 31. There had been a group of off roaders that witnessed the accident. They worked to get help.

[00:08:51] - [Cassie]
By pure chance, a CASLO search and rescue manager was traveling in the area and happened to get flagged down by the off roaders. So he was able to get information to rescue crews ahead of time. Search and rescue ground and quad teams and the one RCMP officer were able to get there in really good time despite the difficult terrain. Another search and rescue manager went on a motorbike to get to the crash quicker. And with the help of the other off roaders, they could find the accident site without a huge amount of time spent searching.

[00:09:26] - [Cassie]
However, it was still nearing dark when teams arrived. The search manager, Mark Jennings Bates, led the operation. The rescue was challenging. There were ground teams and a local helicopter. It was brought in from the nearby community of Neckusp.

[00:09:44] - [Cassie]
It was very fortunate that they were able to even get a helicopter because it was wildfire season. The helicopter brought three response team members from CASLO Search and Rescue. They were able to complete their operation before dark. Caslow Search and Rescue usually has calls from tourists that have been riding side by side utility train vehicles. Mark Jennings Bates said that the accident was different from what they usually see.

[00:10:14] - [Cassie]
The two people in the accident were in a well modified vehicle for their off roading activities, and clearly had lots of experience. It was Stacy and Matthew.

[00:10:34] - [Nina]
Matthew and Stacy were with other off roaders up about 7,000 feet or 2,130 meters in elevation in the Purcell Mountains. This was rough terrain. High up on the trail, a single misstep sent them tumbling down a steep embankment, falling nearly 200 meters directly into a boulder field below. 200 meters. To put that in perspective, Vancouver's tallest skyscraper is 201 meters tall.

[00:11:01] - [Nina]
Imagine falling from the top of the Shangri La. To make matters worse, deep in the backcountry, there wasn't a single bar of cell service to call for rescue. So two things happened. The first thing is that there was a smart device on the site that was used. It sent out the signal that help was needed.

[00:11:21] - [Nina]
But those alerts go to an American based call center where it needs to be read, transcribed, and sent back to Canada, which caused the delay. We'll talk about this a little bit later near the end of the episode. The second thing that happened is it was reported that a motorist, presumably someone in their group, had made the drive to Trout Lake to borrow a landline to call 911. When crews arrived, they struggled to get to the crash site given the incredibly steep embankment. The Yeti was absolutely destroyed.

[00:11:53] - [Nina]
Matthew was found in the vehicle and had no vital signs. He was trapped inside. So crews were simply recovering the body. From our research, it seems that the group had tried to save them both. So it's possible he did not die on impact.

[00:12:09] - [Nina]
Stacy was found a few meters away from the vehicle. She was still alive but incredibly injured. She was also disoriented. Another off road content creator named Construe was there and did everything he could to save them. He shared that it was the hardest thing he's ever lived through.

[00:12:26] - [Nina]
He didn't speak more to reporters after that out of respect for the family. Crews worked fast. Within fifteen minutes of making it to the crash site, Stacy was being airlifted by helicopter and taken to the hospital in the cusp, which was the closest community to Trout Lake with the hospital. Sadly, shortly after her rescue, Stacy succumbed to her injuries. Search crews involved were mandated to do counseling for trauma because of the nature of the call.

[00:12:56] - [Nina]
A week after the accident, the RCMP released a statement. It said that Matthew and Stacy were on a narrow part of the dirt road. Stacy was driving and lost control.

[00:13:07] - [Cassie]
On behalf of both of their families, Stacy's mom, Colleen Torout, announced the couple's passing via social media. She shared, quote, they are together forever as we knew they always would be, end quote. Fans gave an outpouring of love and support following the news. Because of their online fame, many people around the world felt connected to them. Colin Stewart, who we mentioned earlier, and the Four Wheel Drive Association of BC, organized a celebration of life with the off roading community of Vancouver Island.

[00:13:43] - [Cassie]
It was at the Coombs Rodeo Grounds on 09/06/2025. They had many attend with their four by fours to remember and honor the couple. Seven months ago, on their Toyota World Runners channel, their friend Jason shared a video about how he, along with friends and family of the couple, were going to be finishing work on another Chinook that Matthew and Stacy had been working on. It was a really sweet video, but we have no further updates on how that project is coming along.

[00:14:14] - [Nina]
Our safety lesson for today again has to do with satellite communication, but the story highlights the potential issues. Where we recommended them before, and of course, we still do, being aware of what can cause delays in communication is important. Many SAT communicators have data that is routed back to stations in The United States. And then as we discussed above, it is read, transcribed, communicated back to authorities in Canada. This can cause delays.

[00:14:44] - [Nina]
There were issues with communication through the device in the story. It's not clear which method ultimately got through to 911 for dispatch first, the person that drove back to Trout Lake to use a landline or the back and forth on the smart device. But search and rescue recommends that if you can get a cell signal, this cuts out the middleman, and you can get in touch with 911 to dispatch search and rescue. We also wanna briefly discuss top safety rules of off roading. This is from the BC government page for off road vehicle safety.

[00:15:18] - [Nina]
Number one, wear a safety approved helmet that is designed for your off roading vehicle. Number two, wear a seat belt. Number three, use lights. Even when the vehicle isn't manufactured with them, use some kind of bike light. In Canada, between 2013 and 2019, there were an average of one hundred fatalities per year from all terrain vehicles.

[00:15:42] - [Nina]
Please be careful out there.

[00:15:44] - [Cassie]
But sometimes too, things just happen. With so much ahead of them, including marriage and without a doubt more success, it's so unnerving that this happy young couple died in such a tragic, sudden way. But at the same time, I'm sure in a way it's comforting for their loved ones that at least they were doing what they loved. Stacy and Matthew were so full of energy. They were having fun and had built a life of adventure and connection.

[00:16:14] - [Cassie]
They had built a life of Sundays. Thanks for joining us this episode. You can reach out to us at info@mishapsandmysteries.ca. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating and a review. It really helps new people find us.

[00:16:34] - [Cassie]
Be safe and never stop exploring.