Barriere Town Road

The Barriere Trac-Masters ran quarter-mile drag races on Barriere Town Road to curb street racing. The RCMP had asked the street racers what they could do to help stop it, and talks with town officials and business owners led to permission to race on the public road, starting at Barriere Secondary School and running west toward Highway 5. Races ran every other Sunday, with police timing the cars on radar guns. Ray McDonald, a Trac-Masters president, recalled that things got pretty wild and the club had no liability insurance. The highways department gave them used metal guardrails to put up, and they worked hard to keep the crowds back. As the crowds and the number of racers grew, that got harder. McDonald called it a great idea that turned into too much for them. They knew they couldn’t keep using a public road, and people were getting cranky about losing access to the lakes. The club looked for land to buy or lease for a permanent strip, but everything cost more than it could pay, and it held dances to raise money. In the end they had to shut it down. McDonald said the trouble was the liability and keeping the crowd behind the fence, even as the cars got wilder. He remembered Sunday mornings at his parents’ house making submarine sandwiches to sell at the strip, and they could never make enough.