A local historian, whose enthusiasm for the Dewdney-Alouette Railway Society was unbounded, has passed away.
Dick Sutcliffe, who died on Sunday, Sept. 24, was a long-time Maple Ridge Museum board member, Maple Ridge Historical Society member, and railway society member.
Sutcliffe was a current board member when he passed, explained Shea Henry, executive director of the Maple Ridge Museum and Community Archives, noting that he had been a board member longer than she has been alive.
He joined the board in 1983/84, Henry noted, when the museum was moving into the current location and he had been a historical society member already. He worked alongside past-president of the historical society and former museum curator Sheila Nickols, (who passed away in 2020 at age 85), to set up the new museum and the area in the old Haney Brick and Tile managers house for the model railroad society.
In 2017 he was a heritage award recipient after winning a Maple Ridge Community Heritage Commission special History Hero Award for outstanding contributions to Maple Ridge and B.C. history.
He was always ready to lend a helping hand whether that be to manage the set up of Music on the Wharf for the past 26 years, or to liaise with the local model railway society.
Henry said Sutcliffe will be really missed.
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“He knew everything from the beginning, really, about our current museum,” she said, noting that he was the go-to guy.
According to an obituary published by Rob England, Sutcliffe was born in Vancouver in 1935 and his father was a “prominent Vancouver railway modeller”. He grew up in a house with a large outside-third-rail, O gauge layout in the basement, and he used to thing that everyone had the same thing.
“There is little wonder why trains ended up being such a big part of Dick’s life,” said England, noting that Sutcliffe’s first venture into railway modelling was in his teens.
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Sutcliffe worked as a shop teacher for SD42 until he retired about 25 years ago. But he never retired from railway modelling, and over the years, built a number of layouts in his home.
He contributed not only to the Dewdney-Alouette Railway Society, but also the BC Society of Model Engineers and the seventh division Pacific Northwest Region, (PNR), of the National Model Railroad Association, said the obituary, winning the Ross Heriot Memorial golden spike Award in 1990, in addition to the PNR Person of the Year Award in 2000.
Sutcliffe, England wrote in the obituary, died after a brief illness.
A memorial will be held from 1:00-4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 19, at Burnaby Central Railway’s station meeting room at the north end of Willingdon Street, Confederation Park, Burnaby.
“All who knew Dick are welcome.”
