Happy Birthday YVR. On July 22, 1931, the Vancouver airport was officially opened on Sea Island with a hard-surfaced runway, the first in Canada
In 1927, aviation icon Charles Lindbergh turned up his nose at flying into Vancouver as part of a North American tour marking his epic New York-to-Paris flight because “there was no field fit to land on.”
Their invitation rejected, the city fathers were stung into action and four years later, on July 22, 1931, the Vancouver airport was officially opened on Sea Island with a hard-surfaced runway, the first in Canada.
And Friday, as Vancouver International Airport celebrates its 80th birthday, it draws delegations from airports around the world to admire its public art and West Coast decoration.
“There’s a growing number of airports coming to talk to us about it,” says Don Ehrenholz, vice-president of operations at the Vancouver Airport Authority.
They, too, would like their airports to showcase their regions, in the same way that Vancouver is reflected in the airport’s theme of forest, sea and native art — the centrepiece being Bill Reid’s Jade Canoe.
“They talk to us about how they can move in that direction. It’s a growing trend,” says Ehrenholz.
The original airport, bought and paid for by the City of Vancouver, was located where the south terminal is today.
It might have been elsewhere; the city looked at various sites, including one on the mud flats in North Vancouver, according to airport historian Richard Cook.
“They were looking all over for sites and they did consider North Vancouver, but the area was part of an Indian reserve so they went to Richmond,” says Cook, who began working at the airport in 1957 and is now retired.
He believes the two biggest events in the airport’s history were moving the main terminal to its present site in 1968 and the creation of the Vancouver Airport Authority in July 1992.
“Moving the terminal to the north allowed the airport to expand. By 1968, we were completely overcrowded in the old terminal. We needed room to breathe,” says Cook.
“Then creating the airport authority enabled the airport to expand faster than it would under the federal government,” said Cook.
Ehrenholz says that move was necessary because the federal government didn’t have the money to fund the necessary expansion of the airport.
“Transport Canada decided to move to privatization and the Vancouver Airport Authority was born — the first airport to be privatized in Canada,” he says.
Since then, more than $2.5 billion worth of expansion has occurred at the airport, including a new international terminal, a new runway, development of hotel and commercial facilities and the commissioning of public art.
In 1968, the new terminal provided 700,000 square feet. Today’s terminal encompasses 3.5 million square feet and will likely expand again within the next 10 years, says Ehrenholz.
“We have 17 million passengers a year now [compared to 1,072 the year the airport first opened] and we can handle up to 21 million depending on the mix of aircraft. We expect to be up to 24-to-25 million within 10 years so there will have to be some growth — about five or six more gates — but not as much as we’ve seen in the last 10 years,” he says.
Ehrenholz says YVR wants the airport to become a transit hub for passengers coming from Europe or Asia and heading to other destinations.
“We’d like to grow that business in the next 10 years. It would bring in people and maybe during the two hours they spend getting a coffee here they would get a brief taste of the West Coast and decide to come back for a visit,” he says.
But all that’s in the future. Today is about the past.
So happy birthday, YVR.
By Gerry Bellett, Vancouver Sun
In the 1940s, $3 would buy you a scenic tour of Vancouver by air, courtesy of the Brisbane Flying School. Courtesy of City of Richmond Archives
Gravity always wins!