Riverside Speedway racetrack in N.S. does it right

Riverside Speedway in N.S. does it right

John Chisholm first built Riverside Speedway track in the late ’60s, sold it and bought it back to renovate it. Now the NASCAR Canadian Tire stock car series, shown above at Mosport, visits each year.

Norris McDonald

MOTORSPORT WRITER

There is a right way to build something, and there is a wrong way. Here is the right way to build a racetrack.

Tonight, at the Riverside International Speedway on the east side of the Trans-Canada Highway, about halfway between New Glasgow and Antigonish, N.S., the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series will take the green flag for the 12th race of its 13-race season.

The racetrack was originally built back in 1968 by an Antigonish businessman and philanthropist, John Chisholm. It's a clone of Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee, albeit slightly smaller.

Anybody's who's ever raced there, or spectated there, will tell you it's a jewel.

Just about a year ago at Kawartha Speedway (near Peterborough, where the Canadian Tire Series will close out the season next Saturday night), I bumped into Chisholm, who makes his money in the heavy equipment business. I asked him how he'd done it.

"I was always a fan of car racing," he said, "and I started thinking about building a speedway back around 1967. So I put in a call to Bill France Sr. and told him I was going to build a half-mile track.

"He said that wasn't the right thing to do – that a half-mile was too big for our area, that it'd be too hard on cars, tires and engines. So he said, `Why don't you come down and take a look at Bristol?' He suggested I get Bristol's dimensions and then shrink it a bit. Make it a one-third-mile oval."

Chisholm and one of his survey engineers flew out to Tennessee for a race.

"France set it all up for us," Chisholm said. "The NASCAR people waited on us like we were half-important. Cale Yarborough won the race and as soon as it was over, we went out on the track and measured it. We came back to Nova Scotia and shrunk it and in '68 we built it. Opened it in 1969."

Chisholm was a lot younger in those days and a guy who liked to keep busy. So in 1970, he decided to go racing himself.

"I raced late-models for eight years," he said. "I won my share. In 1972, I won 23 races. I'd come up this way (to Ontario) every once in awhile to run Cayuga, Flamboro – places like that. But then I got a lot more busy on the business side of things.

"I couldn't keep up with it all and I had to get out of racing, which I did in 1978. I was just running myself ragged. I rented out the track for a while, two or three years, I couldn't run it. I didn't have the time."

He sold it "for a song."

Chisholm said a series of circumstances got him not only back into the speedway business but into the speedway renovation and refurbishing business, too.

"Four years ago, he (the owner) just up and died. His family didn't want anything to do with it (the track) and they put it up for sale and it really wasn't worth anything because it was toast – the original asphalt, the original grandstands, the original plumbing. I had a weak moment, though (in 2005), and I bought it back."

They tore it all down, except the original flagstand. Now, everything is new. Riverside Speedway reopened in 2006 to a capacity crowd.

"I think the lights were over $100,000," he said. "That's what I tell people. It cost a lot of money."

He's likely not finished.

"I can just see the thing continuing to grow," he said. "We've got 10,000 seats now. Some people say that's enough but I say that when we fill those, we'll just build some more."

Chisholm is particularly proud of an annual race that raises money for the Halifax children's hospital, the IWK Health Centre.

"Everybody climbs aboard for that race because everybody in the Maritimes, at one time or another, has had something to do with the IWK, whether it's a daughter or a son or a grandchild. We try to have it (the race) on an off-weekend for NASCAR so we can have access to a Cup driver."

One year, Ricky Craven came and last year, Regan Smith and Eric Armirola showed up.

"We had Smith in the house car – the IWK car – and he won the 250 so it was a very popular win."

As I said, there's a right way of doing things. This is one of them.

Norris McDonald blogs on auto racing at Wheels.ca. nmcdonald@thestar.ca;wheels@thestar.ca

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