UP IN THE AIR
Long-standing site becoming ‘surrounded’ by subdivisions
The future of Carleton Place Airport is uncertain as the 86-acre property has been put for sale. Claude Roy has been flying out of the site for two decades and is hoping it doesn’t shut down.
It doesn’t rival O’Hare or Heathrow, Toronto Pearson or even nearby Smiths Falls-Montague Airport with its paved 4,000-foot runway lighted for night flying, but for nearly 60 years Carleton Place has boasted its own airport.
The tiny grass field just south of town, with its portable outhouse and seasonal duck pond when the landing strip floods in springtime, has been a labour of love for Malcom and Allison Horton since they bought it in 2000. Now Carleton Place Airport is for sale. For $2.5 million, you’ll get 86 acres of land, a 2,400-foot grass landing strip, a clutch of aircraft hangars and a chance to build on the legacy of the airport’s founders, Dr. W. Roy and businessman Marvin MacPherson, who built the airstrip in 1959.
“It’s a beautiful piece of property,” said Allison Horton.
Malcom, a pilot and long-distance truck driver, literally grew up on the site. MacPherson was his Sunday school teacher, and as a boy Malcom worked as a “rock-picker” as load after load of fill was dumped during the runway’s construction.
Putting it on the market was a tough decision, said Allison. Malcom, who turns 61 in February, is looking to retire and spend more time at home with the couple’s two teenage children.
“We’re doing this as a personal choice. It’s been difficult. We go out there and it’s like, ‘Ahhh ...’ My children were raised there since before they could walk. They learned to drive their go-karts there. My daughter loves to go to the gravel pit and collect the tadpoles. There’s lots of connection to it.”
You won’t find Carleton Place Airport listed in the tourist brochures, but you will find it in the Canadian Flight Supplement, the official list of Canada’s aerodromes and seaplane bases. It has its own code — CNR6 — and it uses the common airport radio frequency, 123.6.
“It’s called all different kinds of names, depending on where you are and whether or not you like airplanes,” Allison says, laughing. The locals call it Carl-Beck, since it’s on the boundary of Carleton Place and Beckwith Township.
It hosts an annual summer fly-in, is used by an Ottawa flight school to practise emergency landings and is the backup airfield for the Carleton Place & District Memorial Hospital helipad. About a dozen aircraft call it home, mostly ultralights and a couple of larger Pipers and Cessnas. It is also home base for the 15 or 20 members of the Carleton Place Flying Club.
“We’ve always operated as grassroots,” Allison said. “We have an outhouse. We did talk once about paving — we talk lots — but it’s a lot of work. We did have big plans for it. Marvin and Dr. Roy did, too.”
Just cutting the runway grass is a 12-hour job, she said.
But like landing strips everywhere, Carleton Place Airport is slowly being swallowed up by urban sprawl. Houses are sprouting in what were farmers’ fields that surround it.
“Unfortunately we are being completely surrounded by subdivisions,” said Allison. “That’s the reality. I’d hate to lose the history of Dr. Roy and Marvin and their vision. But at the same time, you have to be aware of your surrounding community.”
The Hortons put the airport on the market in September and recently lowered the price to $2.5 million.
Claude Roy (no relation to Dr. W. Roy) has been flying his ultralight aircraft out of Carleton Place for 20 years. The retired air force major lives in Carp, but Carp Airport wasn’t interested when Roy approached them about teaching ultralight flying there. Instead, he found a home at Carleton Place, where he teaches students to fly in his Challenger ultralight, painted in the same air force grey of Canada’s CF-18 jet fighters.
“The people who will want to buy it will be wanting to put houses on the runway,” Roy said. “It’s always the case; cities encroach onto airports. The airports are built on the fringe, and the cities keep growing and growing.”
Roy said he’ll be sad if Carleton Place shuts down and he’s forced to move. Until then, he’ll do what he can to help the Hortons keep it going.
“They have invested in a family airport, but also a family way of life. They’re emotionally attached to the property.”
Neighbour Steve Malenfant, co-owner of Stonefields Heritage Farms, a wedding venue across the road, says he is OK with the airport becoming a subdivision but says the Hortons and the flying club have been good neighbours. Many guests have no idea the airport is even there until an ultralight skims overhead.
“Having the ultralights flying around during events is always a bit of an attraction for guests to ooh and aah over,” he said. “It’s kind of neat to see a grass runway and the old-school, traditional type of flying. We don’t want to see these things get lost.” Neither does Malcom Horton. “There’s a lot of interest in building
subdivisions around there, but I’d really like to sell it to someone who wants to keep it as an airport,” he said during a phone call from the road in northern Alberta.
“I’m in no particular hurry to sell, but if you get the right aviation person looking, it could happen fast.”
It’s called all different kinds of names, depending on where you are and whether or not you like airplanes.