Hank Hankins was soft spoken, always in a good mood and wanted to help anyone who raced. I’m sure if you raced in the early years, you would have heard of him. If you ran any kind of Chevy engine, this was the man to know.

My dad took me to the midget car races at Mahon Park in North Vancouver and also to the Cloverdale Fairgrounds in 1946. During the late 1940s, and early 1950s we would go to Digney Speedway in Burnaby every Saturday night to watch the stock car races. We also went to a dirt track at 240^th Street (Brown Road in Langley) to watch

HANK HANKINS - Inducted 2001

Supporter

Hank Hankins  (GVMPS collection)

By Tom Hankins and family, 2001 – edited by Brian Pratt, 2004

stock car racing there.

We also went to motorcycle hill climbs at Boundary Bay during the 1940s and sometimes my dad would take me to motorcycle mud runs somewhere around the Kerr Road dump in east Vancouver.

I remember we went to see midget races at the False Creek Speedway in east Vancouver, and we also went to Haney Speedway for the early laps there. We travelled south to Aurora Speedway in Seattle, Washington, for the modified stocks and midget cars. When Langley Speedway came along he spent most of his time there with his

friends and his sons until the track closed.

In 1971 Hank received a trophy for his 25 years of help to racers and the motorsport community. Racing needs more people like Hank. I am sure he is watching his friends now and enjoying some of the best racing with old friends and heroes.