Recent surveys and word on the street will tell you that young people would leave if and when they get the chance. The rationale I've often heard is there's just nothing big or interesting already happening here.

Whether or not you like this place is a subjective conversation, in my opinion. But the truth, as it's become more revealed to me the more people I talk to, is that beneath the plain skin of winnipeg, inside its walls, under its sidewalks, and behind the open doors we've been misled to believe are closed, a life exists that stretches farther out into the globe than we can imagine on our own.

There are people with roots proudly planted here who've done incredible things, and their stories are the inspiration to carry on the torch they are waiting to hand off to us. Listening to the William Rew talk about his time spent as a pilot for World Vision and the BBC in the 1980s is to feel the heat of that torch and find the inspiration to grab ahold of it. But enough of metaphor and general commentary - let's get to William Rew.

As with many tragedies, our experiences and memories of momentous disasters in history are marked with momentous storytelling. Today marks the 30th anniversary of the start of media coverage on the tragic ethiopian famine of the mid-198s, and pilot and local Winnipeger William Rew played a key role in making it happen.

While working for air canada in the 1980s, he took a year of absence to fly planes with World Vision in Ethiopia, which at the time was embroiled in civil war, the true extent of the famine only partially understood. Near the end of his time, he was assigned to fly BBC reporters and World Vision aid workers in what would be the journalistic exhibition that would ignite media coverage of the famine worldwide.

I could tell you more, but I can assure you your time will be better spent listening to William's story first hand.

 William Rew still lives in Winnipeg and still works for Air Canada, flying Beoing 777 jets.