VALUE OF PLANES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 April 1938, Page 8

VALUE OF PLANES

TRANSPORT IN CANADA’S BACKBLOCKS. OTTAWA, Canada. To a country covering the very large area that Canada does and with her widely scattered population in the northern districts, the value of the aeroplane has been inestimable. A striking illustration may be taken from the recent assistance given in combating an outbreak of measles among the Indians in one; of the remote sections. At Stoney Rapids in the northern part of central Canada, a number of cases of the disease appeared and within a few hours a doctor and an agent from the Canadian Government Department of Indian Affairs arrived travelling a distance of some 200 miles. After taking the necessary precautions, they returned to headquarters only to find a similar outbreak had occurred among the Indians in another isolated location. They were able to take to the air again and once more put things in order within a few hours. Before the advent of modern travel by air, simultaneous outbreaks of disease, or for that matter, even single outbreaks, would not be reached by the physician for perhaps weeks, depending on distance and the speed of the older means of transportation, which in the northland, was in most cases, by dog-sled.