Down Payment on the Future

EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

Air-minded Canada last week made a down payment on her future in the air. The Dominion announced that she would repay the U.S. the millions of dollars which the U.S. Army had poured into 35 Canadian airfields and flight strips. These opened up the northeast and the northwest air passages linking America to Europe and to Asia.

A current surplus of U.S. dollars in Canadian banks enabled Canada to pay the U.S. $76,800,000 for work done by U.S. soldiers and civilians. The Canadian share in the joint enterprises came to another $34,700,000. The total cost to Canada: 120,000,000 Canadian dollars.

By liquidating all U.S. military investments in her airways, Canada was getting ready to bid for her share in the postwar air-transport business. She was in a prime strategic position. The Geography of World Air Transport, just published by Washington's Brookings Institution, showed that the Canadian airfields formed part of two of the three principal aerial gateways from North America (the third: southern U.S. to South America).

Northeast Gateway. The least valuable of the main airfields were five which the U.S. built in subarctic Canada to ferry short-range aircraft direct to Europe. They are located at The Pas (in Manitoba), Churchill (on Hudson Bay), Southampton Island, Fort Chimo (near Ungava Bay) and Baffin Island's Frobisher Bay. They lie far north of what is likely to be the real northeast gateway to Europe: the great base at Goose Bay on Labrador's Hamilton Inlet. To bring Goose within easier reach of the continental U.S., the U.S. Army built a base at Mingan, Quebec, which increased the pay load, reduced the fuel load of planes flying through this gateway to Europe. Canada acquired this airfield too by the new deal.

Northwest Gateway. The other airfields stretch from Edmonton to the Alaskan boundary. They are likely to be in heavy use in the postwar air age. Over them in the last two years nearly 5,000 Lend-Lease planes have been ferried to the Soviet Union. The route passes over rugged mountain country where the temperature in winter sometimes drops to 70 below. But the airway is relatively free of the fogs and rain that blanket the Pacific Coast from Puget Sound to the Aleutians. And it is the shortest practical route to Siberia and the coast of Asia.

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