Iconic Cape Breton relay race needs new space to hold closing banquet

More than 1,100 people attended the Cabot Trail Relay Race closing banquet at the Victoria Highland Civic Centre in Baddeck, N.S., seen here on May 26, 2024.

More than 1,100 people gathered inside the Victoria Higland Civic Centre in Baddeck, N.S., on the final Sunday of May to celebrate the end of the Cabot Trail Relay Race, an event some participants call, “Christmas for runners.”

The team relay race began in 1989 and circles Cape Breton’s iconic Cabot Trail. The Cabot Trail Relay Race committee always caps race weekend with a banquet on Sunday evening.

"I think the banquet has come to make the race stand out as more than just a running event, but let's call it 'an event of community,'" said committee member Dave Parkinson.

For more than three decades, the Cabot Trail Relay Race committee has hosted their banquet at the Baddeck arena. In October it was announced that the more than 50-year-old arena was closing due to structural problems.

"So we're assuming now that we don't have a parking lot to use and we don't have a facility to use, so we have to come up with another alternative", Parkinson said

For the Baddeck Lions Club, which has long taken pride in feeding more than a thousand hungry runners, serving up the meal at the banquet is one of their biggest sources of income each year.

"There's about 70 volunteers, so it's a big event for everybody", said Lions Club member Mary Campbell. "This fundraiser is about one-third of what we would bring in to run the whole island. That expense is raised over the years – it costs about $70,000 to run."

With the 2025 relay five months away, the race committee is optimistic a solution will be finalized in January, which is when they collect entry fees from the 70 relay teams, each consisting of seventeen runners.

"We have reached out to some big tent suppliers, who are more than willing to provide us with what we need for this", Parkinson said. "We can make it work within our budget."

Parkinson said the committee reached out to the Cape Breton-Victoria Regional Centre for Education about using some school property in the community as part of a temporary fix.  

"And what we have to look forward to is, in two to three years (or so), a brand-new facility that we get to be part of christening," Parkinson said, referring to plans to build a new arena in Baddeck, pending federal funding, which has been requested but not yet received.

The next Cabot Trail Relay Race weekend is scheduled from May 23-25, 2025.

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