Diabetes epidemic.

An article in today's Winnipeg Free Press (July 02/2011) outlines the status of this disease-Briefly type 2 diabetes is an epidemic which is rapidly accelerating with the potential of crippling our public health care system. Health care providers stress the importance of exercise and diet control. Yet it seems we are not getting the message across.

It may be time to introduce and practice these life style changes earlier and in our school curriculum. We might begin by reducing the number of those yellow buses we use to get our children to their schools.

In my day (1940's) our high school was about 3 miles from our home in North Kildonan. Each day I would peddle my bicycle to get there. It took about 15 minutes. This gave my brother and myself sufficient time to travel home for lunch and even do some work on the garden. Indeed I used this same means of transportation for the next 5 years I attended university travelling approximately the same distance to reach the street car line.

We seem to have made a start by creating numerous bike trails in the city. Such trails should be expanded to our schools .