DEFENCE OF CANADA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22743, 1 June 1937, Page 10

DEFENCE OF CANADA

PROGRAMME IN PACIFIC £2,000,000 AIR BASE SCHEME VANCOUVER, May 2S Canada has inaugurated an extensive programme of naval and especially air defence on the Pacific coast, and construction has already started at English Bay, on the west side of Vancouver city. Plans are in hand for the immediate expenditure of £2,000,000 in the construction of the most extensive air base 011 the Pacific, with the exception of San Diego. Fifty aeroplanes, half of them equipped as fighting craft, will be based here in the most ambitious military programme ever undertaken by this Dominion. Details of the scheme will not bo announced until the return of the Prime Minister, Mr. Mackenzie King, from London, but it is assumed here that Canadian military experts are now working in conjunction with British builders, who visualise something like a second Singapore baso 011 this shore of the Pacific. It is known that an outlying air base will be established in the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are 400 miles nearer to Japan and Alaska than is

.Vancouver. Two ships are to-day being fitted out, at Vancouver for the greatest hydrographic work ever attempted in these •waters. They will spend the next six months making complete photographic maps of the entire British Columbia coast, from the United States boundary line to Alaska, mapping and charting the route in a manner never before attempted, while the United States authorities are finishing the same sort of task on their coastline. The Premier of British Columbia, • Mr. Pattullo, recently announced the annexation of the Yukon by the British Columbia province, and there is a renewal of plans for the construction of a great highway across this province, and the Canadian and Yukon, joining the United States and Alaska.