I'd been semi-collecting militaria since I was a teen (money pit #1, thanks dad) and started playing paintball in HS. In college I began shooting airguns semi-competitively and still played PB a bit, though I was getting increasingly fed up with the lack of realism and how money-hungry an industry it was.
In the early 90s, with the introduction of bill C68 and the prospect of having to get a firearms license and register airguns looming on the horizon (figured I'd get real firearms if I had to do that), coupled with how difficult it was getting to find a place to shoot airguns and the increasingly limited challenge, I sold off my stuff and started looking for something new. I started looking at paintball again since there were new developments since the days I'd played with PGPs and SL-68s.
About the same time (mid 90s), this fellow whom I played an online game with (a sort of early Battletech MMORPG kinda thing) happened to hear my story and mentioned airsoft, told me to check it out, gave me links. Told me to get my ass in gear before C68 made it difficult to import anymore. Turned out he lived not-so-far away from me too (Ottawa). That guy was Poncho (heh, remember Solaris?)
Soon I was a semi-regular on ASZ, had a couple of guns and was looking for people to play with (didn't know of any other airsofters in Montreal). Someone pointed me to this crappy little Canadian team's forum (haha j/k) where a lot of Canadians hung out, and I was in turn pointed to Raven (who ran PQAC) who introduced me to the 20 or so other folks in Montreal who played airsoft.
That little team forum eventually became ASC and the rest is history.
If you remember this, you've been around a while:
Mmmm classic (yeah, I kept it, I'm sentimental like that).