Ottawa Sun
Published: Wednesday, March 3, 2010

New beginnings: Airport community has done us proud with effort to help Haitians

The games of the 21st Winter Olympiad are done. Our front yard snow is melting. Each morning we roll up our rims to win. And parents are scrambling to register their kids for March break activities. For early March, life is basically normal.

Meanwhile, Chile is dealing with the aftermath of a magnitude 8.8 earthquake that struck early this weekend. And our friends in Haiti are still in tents almost two months after a 7-plus earthquake rocked them back on Jan. 12.

In the shadow of the Haitian situation, a city within our city responded over these last seven weeks in spades. It's not often that we give the Ottawa airport -- YOW in airline code -- much thought unless we are flying out or picking up someone; but in many respects it is a city unto itself, or at the very least, a distinct and special community.

And it is a community that has done us proud in how it quietly and professionally supported Canada's Haitian relief efforts. A few weeks after the January quake, I was struck by a national news story which profiled the efforts of Air Canada employees and their partners diverting one of their aircraft for a mercy mission of supplies and medicines to Haiti.

As part of the flight's return, it stopped in Ottawa before Toronto or Montreal. So this scribe did some digging.

Well it turns out that Hangar 11 -- the VIP and military staging hangar -- out at YOW was the perfect place to expeditiously process Haitian refugees and returning Canadians. Out of the glare of news cameras and in a non-intimidating setting, folks fleeing or returning from Haiti were effectively screened and processed by border services and immigration officials.

Airport employees donated money and winter clothing (along with countless volunteer hours) to aid in this effort. The Salvation Army and Red Cross were on hand to distribute winter clothes and the Sally Ann canteen fortified volunteers and employees alike. The Ottawa paramedic bus was parked inside to provide primary care services for those who were fleeing Haiti's devastation and they effectively treated several conditions including intestinal problems that are prevalent in disaster areas.

Airport management turned their meeting rooms inside the terminal into a safe haven for children and families to rest as they waited to be reunited with family and friends. And as the efforts continued over the last few weeks, everyone involved improved and adapted as customs officials started to process people on the planes and the relief agencies ensured that kids and parents were outfitted with proper fitting winter clothes before deplaning.

When pressed to comment on the effort of his employees, the airlines, ground crews, concessions staff and safety partners such as police, fire and paramedics, airport CEO Paul Benoit noted that "they ensured that landing at YOW was a welcome difference from the chaos from which they departed in Port-au-Prince." Translation: A new beginning.

Now employees from the airlines, public agencies and airport tenants have formed a group called the Ottawa Airport Community which is raising funds to purchase a 60-foot-by-24-foot structure to get a Haitian clinic out of a tent and into a more durable and lasting building. Now that would be another new beginning.