New Front Door

In the postwar air age, Gander Airport in northeastern Newfoundland has replaced the seaport of Halifax as Canada's front door. More than 300,000 transatlantic air travelers landed there in 1952; many get their first and only impression of Canada at the field. Gander's 8,600-ft. main runway, its instrument-landing equipment, and the high-intensity runway lights now being installed make it technically one of the world's most up-to-date airports. But in the creature comforts by which most tourists form their opinions of a port of call, Gander Airport is as outmoded as a whaling ship.

Arriving at Gander, passengers are herded off their planes through long, wooden ramps appropriately called "sheep runs." The ramps lead to a vast, gloomy hangar built in 1941, when Gander was expanded to serve as a bomber ferry base. Grounded travelers, hung up in Gander for periods varying from an hour or two for refueling to several days for bad weather, have little choice but to haunt the airport's brawling, barnlike waiting room in a bedlam of children's cries and squawking announcements by 20-odd airlines. Grand Falls (pop. 16,059), the nearest town of any size, is three hours away by slow train. Three-day-old newspapers, and long, morose drinks of potent Newfoundland "screech" (rum) at the crowded bar* are the chief available diversions from the monotony of staring at the cheerless landscape.

Realizing that Gander's grim aspect is the worst kind of advertising for Canada's tourist trade, the Department of Transport recently flew a group of government officials into Gander to see what could be done about improving the place. Last week some of the experts' proposed changes began to take shape. A new catering firm was signed up to improve the dining service. Architects went to work on plans to brighten the interior of the hangar waiting room, to tear down the sheep runs and replace them with paved walks. The raucous confusion of airline announcements will be replaced by a single announcer system; newscasts and soothing music will be piped into the waiting room.

Workmen already have converted a section of the hangar into a small but comfortable movie theater. The National Film Board is supplying the theater with documentaries about Canada's modern cities and its showier tourist places (e.g., Banff, Lake Louise, Niagara Falls), all frankly calculated to reassure travelers that the inside of Canada's house is not so forbidding as its bleak front porch.

-- The only bar in Canada open 24 hours a day.

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