D. Gregory Powell

After graduating from Strathcona Composite High School and attending medical school at the University of British Columbia, he spent time as an observer in the Vietnam War. This experience showed him the advantage of using aircraft to get critically ill people to medical treatment. In the 1970s, while a resident physician at the University of Calgary, Powell served as chief of the emergency department at the university's Foothills Medical Centre. He had also been trained as a pilot. "I saw people coming into our care who could be salvaged if we had a bit more speed and talent applied to the pre-hospital part of their care," he later said. So he decided to create an air medical transport service for Calgary. He was a Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Fellow in Emergency Medicine from 1983.