About WR3

During the spring of 2008, a small group of runners were lamenting the lack of a half-marathon race in Charlottetown around that time of year, and they decided to do something about it for the following year. A few months later, during HMCS CHARLOTTETOWN’s annual Run-4-Wishes fundraising campaign, the PEI Military Family Services Centre came to their attention, and the MFSC was then selected to be the beneficiary of any race proceeds.

Part of the MFSC’s mandate is to promote Wear Red Fridays to demonstrate public support for our men and women in uniform, and their families. It then became an obvious choice to name our event the Wear Red Road Races, hence: WR3.

The initial, core organizing committee was formed by Cécile Beaurépair, Allan Callard, Andrea Hoyles, Doug MacEachern, and Charlene McInnis. With a lot of help from their friends, the inaugural WR3 was held on 4 April 2009, with half-marathon, 10K, and 5K races.

The founding objectives of WR3 are still valid today. They are:

• to demonstrate public support for our servicemen and servicewomen;

• to raise discretionary funding for the work of the PEI Military Family Services Centre; and

• to help promote physical fitness in PEI.

During the first three years of WR3, our thoughts were often with our men and women serving in Afghanistan. We talked about ways to honour those Veterans – especially those who were injured – and we decided to seek a partnership with ParaSport & Recreation PEI, whose mandate is to provide recreation and sport opportunities for Islanders with a physical disability. Our fourth WR3, on 21 Apr 2012, honoured disabled Veterans by inviting athletes with disabilities (AWD) to enter all events in divisions appropriate to their disability, i.e. wheelchair, mobility impaired, and blind/visually impaired.

WR3 has become an annual event in the spring running calendar for PEI and, in 2012, made history as the first established road race in PEI to include those with a physical disability.

In January 2014, the PEI MFSC was replaced by the PEI Military Family Resource Centre (MFRC). In 2015, the seventh WR3 moved to HMCS QUEEN CHARLOTTE in order to better accommodate increased registration numbers. On 31 Jan 2016, the MFRC itself relocated to HMCS QUEEN CHARLOTTE, 210 Water Street, Charlottetown.