COMOX, B.C. -- A professional mountain biker in Nanaimo has paid tribute to the Canadian military’s Buffalo aircraft and the search and rescue team members that fly them.
Reece Wallace can be seen in a YouTube video custom-building his new Giant Reign Advance Pro 29, which has become an instant hit with bike lovers.
“People are pretty blown away by it,” Wallace says. “It really pops. There’s not many yellow bikes out there and it really stands out.”
The bike rider, who’s also a private pilot, first got the idea for the project when he was refueling his aircraft at the Tofino airport and saw one of the de Havilland DHC-5 aircraft land there.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this is a cool airplane,’ and the search and rescue crew came out and they gave us a tour of the whole airplane, took us inside the cockpit and showed us everything. I just kind of fell in love with the plane,” he says.
Wallace commissioned a company in the United Kingdom to paint and decal the bike’s frame – a process he says took between five to six months but was worth it in order to pay tribute.
“It’s cool to honour those guys because they do a lot,” he says. “They’re out rescuing people and they’ve done a lot for the mountain biking community, getting people out of tough places.”
The gesture hasn’t gone unnoticed by those who operate the aircraft at 19 Wing Comox.
“In times of the pandemic, we’ve been so disconnected from each other so it’s been pretty awesome to know that the public is thinking about us in times like this,” says Capt. Fahim Awan of the 442 Transport and Rescue Squadron at the base.
Awan pilots one of the Buffalo aircraft, which is due to be replaced by the new Airbus Kingfisher within the next few years. He says the bike replica is a fitting tribute to the retiring aircraft.
“It gave us all a big morale boost just to know that somebody from the public was thinking about us and did something of this magnitude to honour the squadron or honour the aircraft that we love so much” Awan says.
