Editor:
When people hear about the upcoming Sechelt airport runway celebration, they should remember that until 1999 the landscape surrounding the runway was a wilderness. Aerial video footage shows the extent of the problem.
In 1999, roads were bulldozed, trees and bush removed, the gully buried with 50 truckloads of rock, and gravel “taxi ways” and paths were laid, thousands of feet of drains and ditches installed, a small creek redirected, and a large permanent washroom building was constructed. All this work required heavy equipment and labour over the course of weeks, along with all the necessary materials, including a special concrete pad constructed at the end of the runway, where some drivers could warm their tires safely. Helpers estimate that Fiedler Bros. alone donated over $20,000 of Caterpillar work. This work too was recorded on aerial videos.
And ALL of it was provided by the Sunshine Coast Drag Racing Association (SCDRA) free of charge. Zero cost to the council or to the airport – local car enthusiasts donated labour and materials to make that facility accessible to the public and improve access for the planes. Example: acres of brush clearing enabled planes for the first time to land safely from the northwest. The “jungle” on the northeast side of the runway, from which coyotes and deer used to invade the runway, was cleared and drained for today’s parking and spectator areas.
Veterans will remember this. Some have since died, but it is a tribute to their generosity that today there are young women and men racing and winning who were not even born when the SCDRA’s spades went into the ground. Over the past 22 years, the drag racers and their families and friends have routinely cleared and mowed that site before each race. A total of maybe 50,000 spectators have come to watch 40-plus separate drag race days.
This year, 2021, Sechelt council is unable to grant its normal use permit to the SCDRA because of a year’s warranty restriction on the new-laid asphalt.
I am writing this appreciation of the SCDRA’s gift to our coastal community because I reasonably assume that Sechelt council will welcome racers back to their airstrip, a public and not private asset, in 2022.
David Kipling, Gibsons
