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When Julie Ikey’s youngest child was born premature at 30 weeks, she was forced off the air ambulance that flew her newborn thousands of kilometres away from a remote Inuit community to Montreal for emergency medical treatment.

The distressed Salluit mother was frantic — would her baby survive?

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“That was the scary part. I wasn’t sure if the baby would make it. But I had no choice. ‘Hopefully I’ll see you,’ I told her, and then left the plane,” Ikey said. “I didn’t see her for three days.”

But this week Ikey became the first mother to accompany her ailing child on the Challenger “air hospital.” A new policy took effect the day Dominick, 12, crashed his bicycle riding downhill. He hit his head and passed out. The accident also ruptured his spleen and he suffered internal bleeding.

The last time Dominick was sick, Ikey couldn’t go with him because of the Quebec government’s controversial practice of denying parents the ability to accompany their children when they have a medical crisis and require an air ambulance from remote communities.