Cape Breton race needs new space to hold banquet [Video]

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 …