Chances of establishing an airport adjacent to the Town of Whitby and the City of Oshawa under the great empire air training scheme recently announced from Ottawa, have been greatly improved as the result of the visit over the weekend to the district of the Hon. C. D. Howe, minister of transport in the King cabinet.
The minister, shortly after his arrival in Whitby on Friday afternoon last (Feb. 16) inspected in company with W. H. Moore, M. P. and representatives of the Town of Whitby and the City of Oshawa, a site of approximately one thousand acres bounded on the west by Heydenshore Park, Whitby, on the east by the Bonnetta farm close to Corbett’s Point, south by Lake Ontario and on the north by the tracks of the Canadian National Railway. A plan of the site, made in 1918, was produced and shows level land as far as the eye can see from the bridge on what is known as Whitby Street, adjacent to Heydenshore Park, Whitby, from which the view was made by the minister and those accompanying him.
Close to the Lake, with no obstructions, the site impressed the Hon. Mr. Howe, who went so far as to remark that it possessed in some respects more advantages than the Malton airport at Toronto, now in farms would be involved if the site was acquired by the government.
The minister promised to send government surveyors at once to Whitby to inspect the site and submit a report on it. This is practically all that can be said at the present time.
When the minister arrived in Whitby with W. H. Moore, he went to the office of His Worship Mayor Fred T. Rowe where Whitby’s representatives were assembled. They were the Mayor, Reeve A. Mansell Irwin, Deputy Reeve Frank Threadgold, Town Clerk and Treasurer John R. Frost of the Town Council, and Francis J. McIntyre, president, and William Davidson, vise-president of the Whitby Chamber of Commerce. Later the Oshawa representatives, His Worship Mayor J. C. Anderson, K. C., Alderman W. H. Gifford and the City Council, and Ed Bradley of the Chamber of Commerce. The party proceeded in cars to the site where the inspection was made.
Whitby representatives through Mayor Rowe, were highly pleased with the co-operation of the Oshawa officials, particularly with the remarks made by Mayor Anderson to the Minister that the site in question was quite satisfactory to the City of Oshawa. The site inspected and favored by the minister, it may not be generally known, was much in the limelight in Whitby in 1918, when Sir Samuel Hoare, on behalf of the British Government which it that time was said to be seeking to locate airport sites in Canada, made a tour of the Dominion. On his way from the west, where he had spent several weeks, Sir Samuel, who incidentally is now Lord Privy Seal in the Chamberlain Cabinet, came to Whitby, inspected the site, and said it was one of the finest he had ever seen. At the time through the efforts of F. Howard Annes, of Whitby who was deeply interested in the scheme, a plan of the site was prepared by Herbert L. Pringle, Town Engineer, of Whitby, and this plan was turned over a few days ago by Mr. Annes to Francis J. McIntyre, president of the Whitby Chamber of Commerce, who showed it to be Hon. C. D. Howe in Mayor Fred T. Rowe’s office before an inspection was made of the site. Copies of this plan will now be made and forwarded to Ottawa.
