The early Castlegar airport story
by Greg Nesteroff - Nelson Star
posted Jun 20, 2016 at 7:00 AM
How and why did the West Kootenay Regional Airport end up in Castlegar?
It’s a question often posed
when flights are cancelled, perhaps with the intimation that a different location would be more reliable. The complicated answer reveals both admirable co-operation between local communities and some old wounds that never really healed.
This much we know, thanks to Chris Wecht’s book Trans Canada Airway: An Aviation History: In the 1920s, the Nelson Board of Trade was scouting locations for an airfield, and decided on bench land at Crescent Valley, but it took until 1938 for the area to be cleared for an emergency field. It saw few if any landings, due to its difficult approach, and the Department of Transport and Trans Canada Airlines (the forerunner to Air Canada) concluded a better location was needed. Their proposed site was at Ootischenia, on former Doukhobor communal land.
According to an early history, “pilots were supplied with sketch maps showing locations of trees and an old foundation and instructed to use the field for ‘belly landings.’”
Wecht writes that few landings were made prior to and during World War II, but development began in earnest in 1945, when the newly-organized Castlegar Board of Trade got involved.<
The Land Settlement Board, which administered foreclosed Doukhobor lands on behalf of the provincial government, agreed to reserve the site for airport use, and through volunteer labour the old foundation and loose rock were removed and the ground leveled.
In November 1946, the Nelson Board of Trade visited the airport, which measured 4,000 by 1,000 feet (1,200 by 300 meters), although the runway hadn’t been completed. Mayor Norman Stibbs said he was “amazed at the natural field and that the potential for a passenger service seemed excellent.”
Following some improvements to the field, the first commercial flight landed there on Sept. 22, 1947 as Canadian Pacific Airlines inaugurated service between Calgary and Vancouver using a 28-passenger Douglas DC-3.
The airstrip proved its worth early on when, during the Columbia River flood of 1948, roads and rail lines washed out, crippling local transportation.
The following year, the City of Nelson and then-villages of Castlegar and Kinnaird proposed to jointly purchase the 128-acre airport site from the Land Settlement Board for $3,200 (the equivalent of $34,000 today), but a legislative quirk prevented the villages from participating. As a result, Nelson held sole title, but a joint committee operated what was dubbed the Castlegar Inter-Municipal Airport.
From The Nelson Star