Pierre Lajoie says a small airport requires a jack of all trades.     

The manager of the Collingwood Regional Airport in Clearview Township, has been named chair of Community Airports Group Ontario (CAGO).

CAGO is an organization of 19 smaller local and regional airports with similar interests, formed in 2001 for the purpose of furthering the technical knowledge and awareness of its members, while at the same time finding ways to enhance airport operating efficiencies and services.

Membership also includes such organizations as Transport Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, and Georgian College, which runs an aviation management-training program.
Lajoie said CAGO meets about five times a year at member airports.

“We help each other. We all have similar issues,” the 48-year-old Lajoie said in an interview at the local terminal.

Lajoie has been at the airport since 1998, first helping with day-to-day operations and, in 1999, becoming manager.

Born and raised in the predominantly francophone community of Edmundston, New Brunswick, Lajoie said he spent his early years working at the family-owned bakery, Lajoie Bakery.

He eventually left to pursue other business interests, he said, including broadcast television sales in Quebec and operations at the Alpine Ski Club west of Collingwood.

It was at the ski club that he was recruited to the airport by former airport manager Dick Hutton, working first under a contract with the Town of Collingwood and now under his management company, North 44 Airport Services.

“This has been a great opportunity for me,” he said, acknowledging that never did he dream someday of becoming an airport manager. “I’ve always been fascinated by aviation though.”

He said that running an airport the size of Collingwood is different than overseeing larger facilities.

“This is the type of job where you are a jack-of-all-trades,” he explained.

That means deskwork, Lajoie said, along with gassing up planes, helping clear snow from the runway and sometimes making general repairs around the terminal, in order to save a few dollars.

Since Lajoie came to the airport, which employs a total of four people, the facility has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance.

Gone, not completely but for the most part, are the days when people, including area municipal politicians, sometimes publicly derided the airport, questioning its usefulness to the region and the cost to operate the facility.

Lajoie said he and the then Town of Collingwood airport advisory committee accomplished this change in attitude by providing municipal officials with monthly reports on the activity at the airport.

“We let them know when search and rescue was landing here, buying gas. When the MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources) was using the runway – they do rabies bait drops from the air you know. And we let them know when the corporate jets were here. It was important that we make them realize how much activity we have and the economic benefit,” he said.

Many of the people on corporate jets have business in Collingwood or the Blue Mountains, he said, adding these firms employ people living in the region.

Lajoie said that around 2001, people began showing an interest in building hangars at the airport, which is situated on 392 acres owned by the Town of Collingwood at the southeast corner of Nottawasaga Conc. 6 and Local Airport Road.

This interest in hangar building, on land leased from the town, also helped fuel confidence in the airport, he said.

The construction was due to several factors, Lajoie explained, including rising costs at other Southern Ontario airports and the fact that the Collingwood Regional Airport was gaining a reputation.

“There was a buzz out there that Collingwood was a nice spot to be based. That the facilities were excellent and well-maintained,” he said.

Lajoie said he created information packages that covered the A-to-Z of hangar building at the airport and that he handed them out at aviation shows in an effort to drum up business.

“So in 2002, the boom started. We’ve had 14 hangars built since then,” he said. “This year we anticipate a large, corporate hangar of 22,000-square feet but at this point no contract has been signed.”

Furthermore, another three to four smaller hangars are expected to go up this summer, he said.

The additional hangars mean more planes are kept at the airport, which also means more fuel sales, another benefit for the airport, Lajoie said.

In 2006, a new $350,000 terminal was built. Fuhre Construction Ltd., of Collingwood handled the 2,800-square-foot building project.

The former terminal was sold to Cross Flow Aero Corp., an engine manufacturing company.

Airport officials, including Simcoe-Grey MP Helena Guergis, want the federal government to grant the airport “port of entry” status and the terminal includes space for a future customs office.

The designation means that foreign visitors don’t have to stop elsewhere in the country to clear customs before landing at the local airport.

The airport operates each year on a $120,000 budget. Since 2002, Clearview Township has provided $25,000 to the airport and Wasaga Beach the same amount. Collingwood picks up the rest of the tab each year.

The three municipalities that fund the airport have representation on the joint municipal service board, which oversees operation of the facility.