When William Rew left Montreal at age 30 in 1983 to fly aid missions in Ethiopia, he never expected it would help spark one of the largest charity broadcasts of all time two years later.
Rew joined up to deliver food and medicine to drought- and famine-stricken Ethiopia in late 1983 and throughout 1984 with Mission Aviation Fellowship of Canada (MAF). Those efforts contributed to the making of a groundbreaking BBC television report in 1984, which led to the 1985 Live Aid worldwide benefit concerts that raised over US$100 million in aid.
“I kept a diary. And in my one year in Ethiopia, I had more stuff to put in a diary than I did in the other, you know, 39 years of my commercial flying career,” recalled Rew in an interview with The Epoch Times. …