John:

You cannot make an accurate comparison or even estimation of the number of people living close to the Island Airport or Pearson by looking at census data.  A tract that has 50,000 people in it is enormous and spread over a large geographic area.

There is no doubting the fact that a number of people live close to the Pearson runways.  I have the greatest sympathy for them.  I am sure they suffer from foul air pollution and the noise is intolerable.  The sound of a whining jet airplane will shake you to the core, but we are talking about something different. 

Our question is, how many people live within a given distance of the runways of each airport?   A census track will not give that information.  The only way to measure it would be to have a researcher measure out distances from the runways and then count the number of people living within each of the distances at both airports.  Then we would be comparing apples to apples.

I do not know anyone who has done a study like that.  All I know is that a high density community has been built very close to the Island Airport, and those people are suffering from the expansion of the Island Airport, and will suffer even more when Porter expands its fleet to 18 planes.

Bill Freeman