Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
To get into and where the broadcasting business or I suppose it wasn’t even a broadcasting business then.
00:00:06 Speaker 2
No, no. I was working with the. I was in the vice President’s office WD robs office in the CNR and Gill St. in Montreal.
00:00:16 Speaker 2
And then when Sir Henry took over the.
00:00:19 Speaker 2
The Grand Trunk and all the other railways and called it the Canadian National.
00:00:24 Speaker 2
He decided that we should have a radio department.
00:00:28 Speaker 2
Which is radio was coming popular and he hired Bill Swift from New York City and he came up.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
And they asked me if I wanted to.
00:00:39 Speaker 2
Well, I had 90 years experience with the railway and I was.
00:00:42 Speaker 2
I figured well, I’ve got a job anyway, even if the radio doesn’t go, I’ve still got a job.
00:00:49 Speaker 2
So anyway, it proved successful and I was the first one there and.
00:00:55 Speaker 2
And there we had this he got Gordon Olive.
00:00:58 Speaker 2
I think it was next.
00:00:59 Speaker 2
And then a fella named Aaron McEwen from the states.
00:01:03 Speaker 2
New York came up too.
00:01:05 Speaker 2
He was assistant.
00:01:09 Speaker 2
And then on the the in late December, I think I think it was the 30th of December 1923, we hooked up Ottawa and Montreal for the 1st.
00:01:20 Speaker 1
Network program or of course, you had the Telegraph wires, which would make this feasible.
00:01:25 Speaker 2
Yes. Yeah.
00:01:25 Speaker 1
There was no it wasn’t the costly thing that was for private stations that had to rent.
00:01:29 Speaker 2
Oh, no, no, no.
00:01:30 Speaker 2
We used to order the lines from the CNR.
00:01:34 Speaker 1
How was the voice quality on those things?
00:01:36 Speaker 1
Because they were.
00:01:37 Speaker 1
Designed pretty good there.
00:01:38 Speaker 2
Yeah, not bad. You know, the lines were 5000 cycles and then they improved them to wait as soon as we got going, you know.
00:01:48 Speaker 2
And then of course, you get the higher frequencies later on.
00:01:52 Speaker 1
What sort of equipment would you have in your Montreal and Ottawa?
00:01:55 Speaker 1
These were your stations.
00:01:57 Speaker 2
No, no, we no, they they see on our rent at the stations and at that time there was only one station in each city allowed on them at night.
00:02:08 Speaker 2
We’d go on a Tuesday night.
00:02:09 Speaker 2
We’d have witness tonight.
00:02:11 Speaker 2
We I have the Northern electric station.
00:02:14 Speaker 2
And then.
00:02:16 Speaker 2
Thursday night, my press CKC.
00:02:20 Speaker 2
And then on Friday night, the next week, we’d have.
00:02:26 Speaker 2
CFCF, the Canadian Marconi station.
00:02:29 Speaker 2
It was the first Canadian station.
00:02:32 Speaker 2
So that one week would be on Wednesday night, the next week, Thursday night, the next week, Friday night.
00:02:37 Speaker 2
You see?
00:02:37 Speaker 2
Until then, later on, we we rented the station from one company from CF, from CKC.
00:02:47 Speaker 2
On a Thursday night and that was our night for broadcasting.
00:02:52 Speaker 1
I see an hour, so how many hours a week would you broadcast?
00:02:55 Speaker 2
Just from 7 till midnight or sometime one o’clock 2:00 o’clock.
00:03:03 Speaker 2
Penny, sometimes you know well when they Jack Denny’s orchestra came to the Mount Royal, the first big band there, we broadcast that and we’re supposed to go to 12:00 o’clock.
00:03:14 Speaker 2
While everybody across the country want to keep going, so we went about 3:00 o’clock in the morning and burned, tired and general manager of the hotel.
00:03:22 Speaker 2
I was so pleased, he.
00:03:24 Speaker 2
Had us all to dinner after the broadcast, Sir Henry Thornton was there dancing to the band.
00:03:30 Speaker 2
And everything well there.
00:03:31 Speaker 1
Were almost no regulations other than the fact that there were to be?
00:03:34 Speaker 2
No commercials and you couldn’t.
00:03:37 Speaker 2
You couldn’t broadcast recordings those days.
00:03:41 Speaker 1
Not a night.
00:03:41 Speaker 2
Not at night.
00:03:42 Speaker 2
You could if for in between acts of a play you could play so many seconds of recording, but you weren’t supposed to play recordings after 7:00 o’clock at.
00:03:55 Speaker 1
Strained regulations.
00:03:57 Speaker 1
What brought that about?
00:03:59 Speaker 2
I that was at the beginning.
00:04:00 Speaker 2
I don’t know just who it was and.
00:04:04 Speaker 2
Donald Manson was head of the Radio Department of the Government and gradually things begin to change and.
00:04:13 Speaker 2
CNR had to get permission to use their own. Call it as they had to get permission from Morocco to use the word the letter CN you see.
00:04:21 Speaker 2
It was assigned to more often and international agreement.
00:04:23 Speaker 1
You know, as an Internet part of the Internet.
00:04:29 Speaker 1
Oh, I wonder, why did you ever sit down? And I suppose as years went on, but it seems to me strange that an official of a railroad company in 1923 would say we ought to be in the radio business.
00:04:43 Speaker 1
We’ve just been there.
00:04:45 Speaker 2
And then two, there they put radio on the trains too. You know, that was 100 foot radio on the trains and that was a big thing and.
00:04:56 Speaker 2
I many a time when I was a travelling supervisor coast to coast, you get on the train and.
00:05:04 Speaker 2
They dining court Stewart to get mad.
00:05:06 Speaker 2
There was nobody in the dining room.
00:05:07 Speaker 2
Everybody was in the observation car.
00:05:09 Speaker 2
That was the time that, Amos.
00:05:10 Speaker 2
And Andy was on course.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
And it was jammed and.
00:05:15 Speaker 2
The only place we.
00:05:16 Speaker 2
Couldn’t get reception was in Northern Ontario.
00:05:20 Speaker 1
And there just wasn’t anything there.
00:05:20 Speaker 2
Well then we could grammar.
00:05:21 Speaker 2
We put gramophone records on.
00:05:23 Speaker 1
Well, there just wasn’t anything went up there.
00:05:24 Speaker 2
Build the minerals in the ground.
00:05:27 Speaker 2
We could pick up Katie KA and go right through and then when you get to Lamont, just pick up K MOX and you got a right to the coast.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
All except you could tell you those two stations right through, except through Northern Ontario.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
Interesting because.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
We’ve been the First Fleet station.
00:05:45 Speaker 2
It was the first yes, yeah.
00:05:49 Speaker 1
So how how did these these these radio cars operate?
00:05:51 Speaker 1
You had headsets in each of the seat?
00:05:54 Speaker 2
We had a loudspeaker.
00:05:57 Speaker 2
They got Victor sets.
00:05:58 Speaker 2
Eventually, when they had recordings and the victor set looked big set like that.
00:06:03 Speaker 2
And their recordings on the top and there were 32 headphones in each car and if somebody objective the large speakers, the operator would cut it off from everybody. You wanted to put the earphones on.
00:06:14 Speaker 1
And there was the radios receiving sets in those days were such a nature that it almost took a trained operator to to get them tuned in to.
00:06:22 Speaker 2
Yes. Oh yes.
00:06:24 Speaker 2
The Americans tried it there, but they didn’t have any operators.
00:06:27 Speaker 2
None of the Americans, anybody in this coach put it on, but it wasn’t not the same, you know.
00:06:36 Speaker 2
The operators would put the hours on and go right through, and then a matter of fact, the Montreal to Toronto train, the International Limited they put on telephones too.
00:06:48 Speaker 2
You could telephone.
00:06:50 Speaker 1
That must have been quite something in those.
00:06:51 Speaker 2
Yeah, I talked to fellows.
00:06:52 Speaker 1
Years. Oh yeah.
00:06:53 Speaker 2
Let me talk to London, England, when he was talking on train, just to go to Coburg and Coburg could take from there on from a moving train, it was just.
00:07:02 Speaker 2
As clear as.
00:07:04 Speaker 1
Red several contemporary newspaper cause able to receive.
00:07:09 Speaker 1
Radio programs while moving at 40 miles an hour.
00:07:12 Speaker 2
Yeah. Oh yeah. And then.
00:07:14 Speaker 2
Of course I had to put the.
00:07:18 Speaker 2
Battery proper batteries underneath the cars we have to test them and everything else you know.
00:07:24 Speaker 1
The batteries were right to to to run the radio we seen you.
00:07:24 Speaker 2
Veterans one.
00:07:25 Speaker 2
Yeah, and road and radio, yes.
00:07:28 Speaker 1
And yet, an antenna on top of.
00:07:30 Speaker 2
I’m kind of right around the car, just about that high above the car, just right around.
00:07:35 Speaker 1
With the Telegraph wires the help and then pulling in distance signals that it did, they create sort of a magnet that drew them or concentrated them until.
00:07:45 Speaker 2
No, no, no, no.
00:07:48 Speaker 2
You see the wire as the Telegraph wires along the railway.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
They they they run like that, and then the next one goes up above you see, that’s the stop.
00:07:55 Speaker 2
The message is jumping across.
00:08:00 Speaker 1
So when when did you actually begin or when did you actually own a station?
00:08:06 Speaker 1
When did the scene?
00:08:08 Speaker 2
I’ll be in there.
00:08:09 Speaker 2
I can’t.
00:08:10 Speaker 2
I can’t remember.
00:08:11 Speaker 2
My mind is not just.
00:08:14 Speaker 1
That’s a long way and a lot of things.
00:08:18 Speaker 2
Yeah, the first station was Ottawa.
00:08:22 Speaker 2
1924 is February 1924 was the first station we owned in Ottawa. The next one was month and in August.
00:08:30 Speaker 2
24.
00:08:32 Speaker 2
Ours at the opening of both stations.
00:08:34 Speaker 2
That’s right.
00:08:36 Speaker 2
And then we.
00:08:39 Speaker 2
The Super, the director of radio.
00:08:43 Speaker 2
Went out to different stations and got them to take the CNN program.
00:08:48 Speaker 1
You know, they were completed with you as many stations are with the CBC now.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
And then Bill Swift, the director.
00:08:55 Speaker 2
He was the one that started at the Canadian Broadcasting Association.
00:09:01 Speaker 2
All the stations used to send the money in and $10 a year and I had most of the work to do being safe treating.
00:09:10 Speaker 1
What was the purpose of the?
00:09:12 Speaker 2
Well, to get them to so that they get.
00:09:15 Speaker 2
Get together, talk together and arrange programs and it’s still going yet this just Canadian Broadcasting Association is still.
00:09:23 Speaker 1
Going to be.
00:09:24 Speaker 2
Seeing, yeah.
00:09:26 Speaker 1
Well, you where a station was affiliated with, you would be in a town and now how would they get connected up to the Telegraph?
00:09:36 Speaker 2
We we started Ernie Jackson and started the Telegraph and the traffic department with me.
00:09:45 Speaker 2
And we used to send out.
00:09:47 Speaker 2
5:00 o’clock we send a wire to Winnipeg. You will fill 7:00 to 7:30.
00:09:53 Speaker 2
Shixian Calgary will till 7:30 to 8. Vancouver will fill 8:00 to 8:30 and that’s where we should set it.
00:09:59 Speaker 1
Up, but it was just one night, a week before.
00:10:03 Speaker 2
And that was when we were on every night when we had the network and then we started after that.
00:10:09 Speaker 2
We had a big traffic department.
00:10:11 Speaker 2
We should send out the orders three weeks in advance.
00:10:15 Speaker 2
And the railways or the bell or whoever was get, they got copies to and they knew what station they cut.
00:10:22 Speaker 2
If CFCN and Calgary and Calgary wasn’t supposed to get a program from 8 to 9 when they cut it off to make sure they didn’t.
00:10:31 Speaker 2
Get it, you see?
00:10:31
OK.
00:10:34 Speaker 2
Especially on commercials, you had to do that.
00:10:38 Speaker 1
Did you ever do any commercial selling at all, or was that left to another?
00:10:41 Speaker 2
That’s another department now, and for the last 25 years I was and I was on the traffic. We ordered all the lines in the early days.
00:10:49 Speaker 2
You did everything you you were announcer, producer, director, everything got the programs up and hired the orchestras and all the.
00:10:58 Speaker 2
Rest of it.
00:10:59 Speaker 1
Well, it must have taken a fair amount of courage on your part.
00:11:01 Speaker 1
Not from fear of losing a job, but just to go into something like radio, which was brand new.
00:11:06 Speaker 1
You couldn’t have known an awful lot of money and nobody nobody did.
00:11:08 Speaker 2
Oh no, much about it those days.
00:11:14 Speaker 1
What sort of programs did you have on the?
00:11:17 Speaker 2
Well, we had quite a lot of.
00:11:19 Speaker 2
Good programs and.
00:11:23 Speaker 2
You’d hire good orchestras and singers.
00:11:27 Speaker 2
And we used to pay in the early days. We used to bring him in as a singer or a good person, well known from New York, and we pay him $500 in the train fare, which is a lot of money.
00:11:40 Speaker 2
In those days.
00:11:42 Speaker 2
A lot of money and they’d we had.
00:11:47 Speaker 2
All that great tenor singer John McCormack.
00:11:50 Speaker 2
We had him up.
00:11:53 Speaker 2
And a lot of.
00:11:55 Speaker 2
Big singers we.
00:11:56 Speaker 1
Have we bring them up up to Montreal, Toronto.
00:11:59 Speaker 2
Yes, Montreal, Toronto.
00:12:02 Speaker 2
We used to do the Toronto Symphony Orchestra once a week from once, once a week or once a month, once a week.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
I think on the Thursday night from The Simpsons Arcadian Court, that’s when we did.
00:12:15 Speaker 1
That you shared the frequency for a while in Toronto.
00:12:18 Speaker 1
With CFRB, didn’t you?
00:12:22 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
00:12:23 Speaker 2
We didn’t have a station and we were using.
00:12:27 Speaker 2
CPCN in the the battery people up on Dirt Davenport Rd.
00:12:33 Speaker 1
We can see you.
00:12:34 Speaker 2
She came and she or something like that.
00:12:37 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:12:39 Speaker 2
We used their station, rented it for quite a while until they got a station in Toronto.
00:12:44 Speaker 2
That was.
00:12:45 Speaker 2
In the 30s or early 40s, when they built that.
00:12:49 Speaker 1
You know well, of course, by that time, the CNR was out of it and.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
Oh yes, the government took over in 33. As matter of fact, we didn’t know.
00:12:58 Speaker 2
About it, where they took over in April, we didn’t know.
00:13:01 Speaker 2
Until August.
00:13:03 Speaker 1
And then and then you went with you became all of a sudden, the CCRB CDC employees.
00:13:07 Speaker 2
CRBC and 33 and then 36 came Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
00:13:14 Speaker 1
So you didn’t stay with the railway quite as long as you might have.
00:13:17 Speaker 1
Thought you were going.
00:13:23 Speaker 1
Any idea how successful did?
00:13:26 Speaker 1
The idea that the radio idea and the operation and the the cost of operating this thing where they actually met by commercials or was it a a kind of a lost leader that we would win?
00:13:38 Speaker 2
Well, in the early days, they did pay, you know, and then when you start getting networks and the cost of the lines went up and you start to get better quality and the bell got into this.
00:13:50 Speaker 2
Rental of lines 2.
00:13:54 Speaker 2
And then you had to call for bids.
00:13:55 Speaker 2
Of course when the.
00:13:58 Speaker 2
Contracts then and the costs went up.
00:14:03 Speaker 2
And of course he had, you know, for Telegram.
00:14:06 Speaker 2
Voice level to anything up from 4 to 5000 was good enough for a key, but when you have to get up to 8 and then when later on up to 15,000.
00:14:17 Speaker 1
The most home we see we would be lucky to be able to.
00:14:19 Speaker 1
Receive five, I would think would be.
00:14:20 Speaker 2
Oh, it’s 55. In the early days are five.
00:14:24 Speaker 1
And they were all badly run, too, when they.
00:14:26 Speaker 2
And better, early early sets were battery.
00:14:26 Speaker 1
Were the weight.
00:14:28 Speaker 1
Matter of fact, the early transmitters were bad.
00:14:31 Speaker 2
Only. Yes, right, right.
00:14:34 Speaker 1
Must have been quite the jobs trying to keep them charged up when operating.
00:14:43 Speaker 2
That wasn’t in the engineering end of it, but.
00:14:48 Speaker 2
We used to go on.
00:14:51 Speaker 2
Travel around and.
00:14:54 Speaker 1
Well over a long distance even now.
00:14:56 Speaker 1
But I think even more so in that time there’s a problem with keeping the power amplified.
00:15:02 Speaker 1
How did you look after you?
00:15:03 Speaker 2
Then well, 2A and there’s a station somewhere in Ontario here where the government controls your frequency too. You get off your frequency.
00:15:14 Speaker 2
You got a phone call, you got back on.
00:15:15 Speaker 1
Well, that’s pretty bad.
00:15:16 Speaker 1
Pretty bad now.
00:15:17 Speaker 1
But I gather in the early days you wandered around fairly freely.
00:15:20 Speaker 2
And then they they got.
00:15:21 Speaker 2
Their gadgets in the transmitter that kept them on so long.
00:15:25 Speaker 2
And then you can’t change that but.
00:15:31 Speaker 2
Those days, there wasn’t so many stations now where the Toronto station or Montreal station could get down Philadelphia and Nashville, where we’d be heard all over.
00:15:40 Speaker 2
But now there’s so many you can’t.
00:15:43 Speaker 1
Then then do the antenna direction.
00:15:46 Speaker 1
So finally control.
00:15:48 Speaker 2
You smell.
00:15:52 Speaker 1
Or driving across the country with the radio cars, you must have come across a few instances that were offbeat or funny or unhappy.
00:15:52 Speaker 2
OK.
00:16:03 Speaker 1
OK.
00:16:05 Speaker 2
It was generally and generally people look forward to.
00:16:08 Speaker 2
It you know.
00:16:10 Speaker 2
Night time you there, everybody wanted the radio on.
00:16:18 Speaker 1
I suppose we have more people traveling and the trains.
00:16:20 Speaker 2
Too, yes, those days, there’s no no airplanes those days.
00:16:30 Speaker 1
So you the the CCNR then actually went from 19 to about 10 years and from 23 to 30.
00:16:36 Speaker 2
Three, that’s right, yes.
00:16:40 Speaker 2
And the the the trains they took off the radio on the trains because the CPR tried, but they couldn’t.
00:16:49 Speaker 2
You see, they had a lot of cars that were wooden cars.
00:16:55 Speaker 2
They just put metal over them afterwards, you see.
00:16:58 Speaker 2
And for some reason they couldn’t do it as well as the CNR and they.
00:17:04 Speaker 2
Well, you could see we when you come and going from Toronto to Montreal, coming in to Montreal.
00:17:12 Speaker 2
The lines are parallel from Roberts and Dan and the Sean would be jammed and the sheep, even nobody in it.
00:17:23 Speaker 2
There was that.
00:17:24 Speaker 2
And then of course.
00:17:25 Speaker 1
They steered fairly clear of owning stay on operating stations.
00:17:29 Speaker 1
I think they just actually presented programs on other stations.
00:17:34 Speaker 1
I mean the the CPR.
00:17:36 Speaker 2
CPR. Yeah, they just.
00:17:37 Speaker 1
I never actually got into the experiential business.
00:17:39 Speaker 2
No broadcast, no.
00:17:40 Speaker 2
They did rent a few stations.
00:17:43 Speaker 2
They did a little broadcasting, but not too much.
00:17:48 Speaker 2
We can go into it the way that.
00:17:49 Speaker 1
She and our date.
00:17:50 Speaker 1
That’s strange.
00:17:51 Speaker 1
Is something you would have thought private enterprise might have picked.
00:17:53 Speaker 1
Up faster.
00:17:54 Speaker 1
And then the public could have how many stations did the CN are ultimately own remote 11?
00:18:02 Speaker 2
How about that?
00:18:03 Speaker 2
Jenna, Halifax, Moncton.
00:18:09 Speaker 2
Quebec, Montreal.
00:18:17 Speaker 2
I think there was about 11.
00:18:19 Speaker 2
Now in the restaurant all affiliated.
00:18:21
Yeah, yeah.
00:18:22 Speaker 1
So they would come in.
00:18:24 Speaker 1
Would they always be included in the network and just?
00:18:27 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah.
00:18:30 Speaker 2
Yeah, most of the programming was done from Toronto.
00:18:34 Speaker 1
And you were saying the first network as far as you know, was the Montreal, Ottawa, Ottawa hookup.
00:18:40 Speaker 2
Yeah, Sean, I think was the 30th. We’ll be right here. I think it was the 30th of December 23.
00:19:03 Speaker 2
Again, the 30th of December.
00:19:14 Speaker 1
Well, you did you do any announcing when?
00:19:16 Speaker 2
You were last in the early days.
00:19:18 Speaker 2
I did quite a bit quite a bit in Ottawa too.
00:19:22 Speaker 1
Which we’ve been just announcing programs saying. Here’s John Smith’s orchestra.
00:19:26 Speaker 2
Yeah. We go down there.
00:19:27 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:19:30 Speaker 2
You know, I don’t enjoy the courses.
00:19:32 Speaker 2
Orchestra is a funny.
00:19:35 Speaker 2
We should do the dance orchestra.
00:19:37 Speaker 2
We’ve announced 3 numbers.
00:19:39 Speaker 2
And then then rest for five minutes and then dancing, you know, down in the dining room.
00:19:44 Speaker 2
Late at night 11:00 o’clock on.
00:19:47 Speaker 2
And George Corsi, he would never have his program ready for you.
00:19:51 Speaker 2
There was no writing of scripts those days.
00:19:53 Speaker 2
You just went on.
00:19:56 Speaker 2
And Joe, at the last minute you go and you’d be announcing Mr.
00:19:59 Speaker 2
Joe de Corsi and his orchestra from the shadow Lori and Joe would be handing you the three numbers.
00:20:04 Speaker 2
And if you read them one after the other, you’d have a red face.
00:20:07 Speaker 2
He picked his titles that would make you embarrassed.
00:20:10 Speaker 2
So you all be very careful.
00:20:13 Speaker 1
Leave a long pause between the victims.
00:20:18 Speaker 1
Of course, that was one of the problems.
00:20:20 Speaker 1
You’re not one of the problems, but one of the things about the early days is there was no recording and everything.
00:20:24 Speaker 1
Everything you did was July.
00:20:25 Speaker 2
And life live, yes.
00:20:29 Speaker 1
Any stories about Telegraphers accidentally getting in on the broadcast side?
00:20:33 Speaker 2
Well, the, the one funny thing we were, I think it was the 1st.
00:20:38 Speaker 2
Coast to coast, broadcast.
00:20:41 Speaker 2
And Sir Henry was sitting there in the on my desk and.
00:20:47 Speaker 2
The program was going on and all of a sudden we got a phone call.
00:20:52 Speaker 2
Every station from Winnipeg W some some train man hooked up on the dispatchers line to get his orders and there was music.
00:21:03 Speaker 2
And he let out some curses, and why he would have music?
00:21:07 Speaker 2
How could they expect to run trains with music on the lines and all this, you know?
00:21:11 Speaker 2
And it went out on every station West of Winnipeg, Winnipeg and West.
00:21:17 Speaker 2
He is Henry.
00:21:18 Speaker 2
He laughed and he told him, he said now I must, he told his secretary, Bill Hogg, to tell the Superintendent that he was to be reprimanded, but by no means was.
00:21:30 Speaker 2
He to be fired.
00:21:32 Speaker 2
He is a great man, you know.
00:21:33 Speaker 2
Sir Henry.
00:21:34 Speaker 2
Great thought.
00:21:36 Speaker 1
It was one of those things that could happen.
00:21:38 Speaker 1
I don’t suppose the trainman would be.
00:21:39 Speaker 2
Aware of, you know, he didn’t know that they were using the lines for.
00:21:45 Speaker 2
He just got on the wrong.
00:21:46 Speaker 2
Line I guess.
00:21:51 Speaker 2
It’s funny.
00:21:53 Speaker 1
Well, 1927, you must have been rather heavily involved in the Jubilee broadcast to the carillon bells from Ottawa.
00:22:01 Speaker 2
Well, the first time we broadcast the Bell personal price.
00:22:08 Speaker 2
The chief engineer, Charlie Finley.
00:22:12 Speaker 2
We didn’t know where we’re going to pick up the, you know, you had the carbon microphones around, didn’t know where we’re going to pick up the Caron.
00:22:20 Speaker 2
And you know where he ended up?
00:22:22 Speaker 2
You know, the gargoyles on the for the cloth.
00:22:24 Speaker 2
There’s four gargoyles stick from the clock.
00:22:26 Speaker 2
He was sitting out on one of those holding a microphone.
00:22:30 Speaker 2
Charlie was an Old Navy man, British Navy man.
00:22:34 Speaker 1
I wouldn’t bother him.
00:22:35 Speaker 2
Didn’t bother him a bit, and he was sitting there.
00:22:37 Speaker 2
Of course he never did it again.
00:22:39 Speaker 2
He wasn’t talked to, but that’s where he picked up the 1st.
00:22:43 Speaker 2
After that, of course, microphones got better and we used to just down on the.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
Those curbing mics weren’t the most reliable thing.
00:22:53 Speaker 2
Oh, no, you keep snapping your fingers in front and get them going.
00:22:58 Speaker 1
Curbin used to pack in the diocese.
00:23:00 Speaker 2
Yes, just shake him up a bit.
00:23:07 Speaker 1
I read I read an account of the.
00:23:10 Speaker 1
Operations for setting up that broadcast and by the time you got the Telegraph companies and the radio stations and the CNR and the telephone company.
00:23:19 Speaker 1
And I gather the just simply the volume will be equipment of amplifier when now were difficult to assemble and again you hadn’t been around that.
00:23:27 Speaker 2
And then all those days too, there was no such thing as.
00:23:31 Speaker 2
You’re calling a taxi.
00:23:32 Speaker 2
You know you like today, you can get a taxi and or they have their own trucks.
00:23:38 Speaker 2
If it had a handle on, it was portable.
00:23:40 Speaker 2
You carried it portable, portable.
00:23:44 Speaker 2
Yes, if you could carry the reportable.
00:23:48 Speaker 1
You know the early remotes people have been telling me carry out anywhere from 40 to 150 pounds of equipment.
00:23:55 Speaker 2
Oh well, we used to.
00:23:57 Speaker 2
We start up at the studio later on and broadcast from the studio.
00:24:03 Speaker 2
And then we carry the equipment up to Saint Patrick’s Church in Montreal, you know.
00:24:11 Speaker 2
And we do 1/2 an hour an hour from there for the organ by a fellow named Biggs. I think he went out to California eventually.
00:24:21 Speaker 2
And then.
00:24:23 Speaker 2
We switched back to the studio for 1/2 an hour and by that time you carried from Saint Patrick’s Church. These amplifiers and microphones and carried them along to the Press Club at Phillips Square.
00:24:35 Speaker 2
And we broadcast the.
00:24:38 Speaker 2
Band dance band from the Press Club on Phillips Square there till 12:00 o’clock midnight.
00:24:45 Speaker 1
Would these buy time on the stations, or did you simply use it?
00:24:50 Speaker 2
Oh no, we use them.
00:24:51 Speaker 2
See, there was no, you didn’t pay them.
00:24:53 Speaker 2
You see it or say it was a good program and.
00:24:57 Speaker 2
There’s good advertising for them.
00:25:00 Speaker 1
First got a lot of people started that otherwise wouldn’t have.
00:25:04 Speaker 1
Wouldn’t might not have been able.
00:25:05 Speaker 1
To get into it.
00:25:05 Speaker 2
And in those days, we used to pay the bandaged men.
00:25:08 Speaker 2
And if you had them in the studio, you know.
00:25:10 Speaker 2
250.
00:25:12 Speaker 2
Program and then the the leader $5.
00:25:17 Speaker 1
Well, Even so, how?
00:25:18 Speaker 2
That’s when you.
00:25:18 Speaker 1
How much we?
00:25:19 Speaker 1
How much were you getting paid?
00:25:20 Speaker 1
You had a fairly small.
00:25:21 Speaker 2
Yeah, I’ve gotten about 85.
00:25:22 Speaker 2
Dollars a month, I think.
00:25:24 Speaker 1
Well, you were able to live and get your laundry done to keep a roof.
00:25:26 Speaker 2
Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
00:25:28 Speaker 1
Over your head.
00:25:33 Speaker 1
Were there any other firsts or interesting incidents during the CNR era up that is up till 1933 that come to mind?
00:25:43 Speaker 2
Of course, we had the first day.
00:25:46 Speaker 2
Coast to coast network.
00:25:48 Speaker 2
As well as the first network.
00:25:50 Speaker 1
That would be the 27 broadcast.
00:25:52 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think it was in 1927.
00:25:59 Speaker 2
The first to broadcast from the deck of a ship.
00:26:04 Speaker 2
And I think that was the first remote, I’m not sure.
00:26:07 Speaker 1
When was that and where?
00:26:10 Speaker 2
That must have been about 2025 or 26. Somewhere around there, I think.
00:26:19 Speaker 1
Was it done in?
00:26:20 Speaker 2
In the harbor down in Montreal.
00:26:22 Speaker 1
Woodville, well, you were saying that with the Admiral with yes.
00:26:30 Speaker 1
You know.
00:26:35 Speaker 1
Verse 29 comes along and you’ve got the depression starting and then by 33 you’ve got the new CRBC’s right.
00:26:39 Speaker 2
That’s nice.
00:26:44 Speaker 1
What was there any real difference as far as you were concerned?
00:26:47 Speaker 2
No, no.
00:26:48 Speaker 2
We still kept going.
00:26:49 Speaker 2
You know, there wasn’t any.
00:26:52 Speaker 2
That I can remember.
00:26:53 Speaker 2
No, there was no difference.
00:26:55 Speaker 1
Well, there weren’t very many radio sets in the country at that time.
00:27:00 Speaker 2
Well, there were quite a few.
00:27:04 Speaker 2
I remember the first, the first broadcast, her birthday. That would be 1924 in Ottawa.
00:27:15 Speaker 2
We had the man, a fellow named Johnson from the Northern Electric station in Montreal, doing some of the announcing.
00:27:23 Speaker 2
And we were to finish it.
00:27:25 Speaker 2
We started at seven.
00:27:26 Speaker 2
We were to finish 12 and we went out into 5.
00:27:26
You have a birthday on.
00:27:29 Speaker 2
In the morning.
00:27:32 Speaker 2
And I remember him about 10:00 o’clock at night, coming on and saying we got a telegram from Mr.
00:27:39 Speaker 2
So and so and such.
00:27:40 Speaker 2
And such an address in Chicago.
00:27:42 Speaker 2
We thank you for your telegram, I said. You haven’t got a telegram, he said. Don’t worry, we will. We got 5800 telegrams that night.
00:27:52 Speaker 1
Of course, that was your audience survey members, right?
00:27:55 Speaker 2
All over the country.
00:27:57 Speaker 2
And the states.
00:28:00 Speaker 2
5800 and I think our actual number I think was 585,863 something like that. And the boss said I want everyone and the letters all the letters worth hundreds of them.
00:28:15 Speaker 2
We had to reply.
00:28:16 Speaker 2
Everyone had to be separate letter written and get a bunch of stories in and he signed everyone.
00:28:24 Speaker 2
Of course, after that you couldn’t do it.
00:28:26 Speaker 2
You know you got too many.
00:28:30 Speaker 1
Well, what happened in the days in this? In the CBC’s where did you get involved with because?
00:28:37 Speaker 2
Well, we were just kept our own jobs and just they just took over and we kept on.
00:28:41 Speaker 1
Your mother said so.
00:28:48 Speaker 1
It’s actually this.
00:28:50 Speaker 1
I guess it was a CNR station because it was in.
00:28:56 Speaker 1
That period is in 33 to 36. You opened the station in Windsor.
00:29:02 Speaker 1
The NRW and I was trying to remember the other day when I read about this, because I grew up in Windsor, say roughly from.
00:29:11 Speaker 1
Middle 30s to the middle 40s and.
00:29:13 Speaker 1
I don’t remember.
00:29:16 Speaker 1
CBC or CRBC station in Windsor didn’t close down fairly soon.
00:29:21 Speaker 2
Well, I would CBE and I went there as manager.
00:29:24 Speaker 1
Well, it is now a season again.
00:29:27 Speaker 2
I managed that station.
00:29:29 Speaker 2
Just for a few months and then they decided to close it.
00:29:33 Speaker 2
And at that time I mentioned to them that I thought they were silly because we had a tremendous audience in Detroit and Michigan, you see.
00:29:41
Right.
00:29:46 Speaker 2
It wasn’t long after about a year or so after they decided to open up again, and they’ve got CBW then.
00:29:55 Speaker 2
Because you’d be went to another station, but.
00:29:59 Speaker 2
Yeah, we used to have the our studios was I was in the hotel there just by the.
00:30:05 Speaker 2
Entrance to the subway, you know, and the.
00:30:08 Speaker 2
Street is it?
00:30:09 Speaker 1
You know the Norton Palmer, Norton Palmer, the Prince Edward wanted to.
00:30:15 Speaker 2
The one on the street.
00:30:16 Speaker 1
Yeah, I think that was the Norton.
00:30:18 Speaker 2
Yeah, I think, yeah, that’s I think that on the, yeah, we we had our offices there then, but I was there for a short while and then I came down to Toronto.
00:30:30 Speaker 2
Became involved in the traffic then.
00:30:34 Speaker 1
Was very good.
00:30:35 Speaker 1
There was with lane connections.
00:30:37 Speaker 2
Yes, we our department had to order all the lines wherever they wanted.
00:30:41 Speaker 2
The line we had to get it if they wanted something from England.
00:30:45 Speaker 2
We had to arrange with the overseas companies to get.
00:30:49 Speaker 1
It we get out before they got their satellites.
00:30:55 Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s an.
00:30:57 Speaker 1
It’s an interesting operation.
00:30:58 Speaker 1
To have though.
00:31:01 Speaker 2
But I don’t know what’s going to happen when they they’ll they must have a way, but.
00:31:08 Speaker 2
You see, your station didn’t want your.
00:31:11 Speaker 2
Suppose you have a station on the network.
00:31:15 Speaker 2
They want to get 9 to 10 and then the program, the program that they had scheduled locally failed.
00:31:22 Speaker 2
They could.
00:31:22 Speaker 2
They can’t come in on the network because.
00:31:26 Speaker 2
Telephone company or the?
Part 2
Transcript
00:00:07 Speaker 1
She wanted to get their own receiver.
00:00:11 Speaker 1
They could pull anything they wanted from that satellite, couldn’t they?
00:00:14 Speaker 1
Know I’m just I’m.
00:00:15 Speaker 2
I would, I think technically it’s quite possible.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
I I’m not.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
I’m not sure.
00:00:20
You. You.
00:00:20 Speaker 1
I don’t know.
00:00:21 Speaker 2
You mean you were you talking about stations that are all that?
00:00:24 Speaker 2
Are all connected.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
Not authorized to carry the program.
00:00:27 Speaker 1
Could steal the program from the satellite.
00:00:29 Speaker 2
I suppose they could, but I would think there’d be a number of surprises around and about.
00:00:33 Speaker 2
They would notice this rather quickly.
00:00:37 Speaker 2
Now I think what’s going to sell with me suffering there is when you come to the home we home antenna.
00:00:43 Speaker 2
How are you going to enforce Canadian content regulations when you can simply pull a program down from a satellite from, you know, heaven knows where?
00:00:53 Speaker 2
Would be really difficult, but he’s seen a lot of changes in equipment.
00:00:58 Speaker 1
From the believe, now CBL.
00:01:04 Speaker 1
Master control is computerized now, I think.
00:01:07 Speaker 2
So they just, they could affect people, hold these, move grams and just let the computer run it without.
00:01:12 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:01:16 Speaker 2
Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be doing that.
00:01:21 Speaker 1
Well, that’s a great question.
00:01:26 Speaker 2
Who are some of the some of the performers that you worked with with some of the people in the business that?
00:01:32 Speaker 2
You work with.
00:01:32 Speaker 1
We’re talking about Windsor.
00:01:34 Speaker 1
I remember when being Whittaker was.
00:01:36 Speaker 1
He was when I was a manager at Windsor, being Whitaker was chief announcer.
00:01:42 Speaker 1
And we had the stars of tomorrow.
00:01:44 Speaker 1
And this girl, who was a good singer, she was with the hit parade for a long memory years.
00:01:49 Speaker 1
She was just a little girl in what’s your name?
00:01:54 Speaker 1
Oh, I’m terrible to remember names.
00:01:55 Speaker 1
It was under my tongue end.
00:01:59 Speaker 1
She’s a well known singer.
00:02:00 Speaker 1
She was.
00:02:00 Speaker 1
On the hit parade for years, Dorothy.
00:02:03 Speaker 1
Dorothy Collins.
00:02:05 Speaker 1
Well, Dorothy was just a little girl, and, well, we used to have this date being used to run this show every week.
00:02:07 Speaker 2
I’m beginning to show my age when I can pull that name.
00:02:14 Speaker 1
Stars tomorrow.
00:02:17 Speaker 2
I didn’t realize you’re going windy.
00:02:19 Speaker 1
Yeah. Oh, yes.
00:02:27 Speaker 2
Were you involved with the northern service of the CBC at?
00:02:30 Speaker 1
All not outside of the fact that I ran the northern messenger for a while.
00:02:38 Speaker 1
There was messages to the people on the North Country and all the people would send them in and I’d take them all up and they cut them and.
00:02:48 Speaker 1
Put them right. And sometimes I announce some too. You know, Christmas. We have 500 messages. Well, three of us would do the announcing. 20 each you see, give you a.
00:02:59 Speaker 1
Chance to rush through.
00:03:05 Speaker 1
That is, it’s still going, but it’s not nearly the same now, because every time that a telephone company or or a radio station got up there, you couldn’t send anymore messages.
00:03:16 Speaker 1
You see, there’s.
00:03:18 Speaker 1
Government regulations, the Radio Act, and doesn’t allow it.
00:03:22 Speaker 1
That’s how I wonder how the some of the.
00:03:24 Speaker 1
And see for me here.
00:03:26 Speaker 1
He’s always talking about.
00:03:28 Speaker 1
Wishing this a happy birthday and then how he gets away with it, I don’t know.
00:03:32 Speaker 2
Well, CBC is CBO here.
00:03:34 Speaker 2
It does the same thing on their fresh air program on Sundays.
00:03:38 Speaker 2
They have happy 80th with these and things like this.
00:03:43 Speaker 1
I guess it’s changed now, you know, but Thursdays are very strict.
00:03:48 Speaker 1
As soon as they got a telephone or.
00:03:52 Speaker 1
Indoor place up north you can.
00:03:55 Speaker 2
Choose your idea was you didn’t want to compete for.
00:03:57 Speaker 1
The big compete with the commercial business, you see, I mean.
00:04:02 Speaker 1
You can understand the Telegraph companies lose a lot of business if you send.
00:04:08 Speaker 1
Well, as I said, Christmas 500 messages we sent and then it at.
00:04:15 Speaker 1
Just recent and then at at Christmas time too, we in Montreal, we used to.
00:04:22 Speaker 1
Get some of the relatives of the people and let them talk to them.
00:04:28 Speaker 1
Up north, that was called the northern messenger.
00:04:34 Speaker 2
It was a fascinating year with the live talent and the live announcing that it had just gone.
00:04:40 Speaker 2
You almost.
00:04:44 Speaker 1
And the the goochi makers you know.
00:04:48 Speaker 1
They can be cut out now.
00:04:51 Speaker 2
I take some of the photos.
00:04:55 Speaker 1
And you know, sometimes you make a mistake and you don’t know it.
00:04:58 Speaker 1
I got home one night in Ottawa.
00:05:01 Speaker 1
And my wife told me she said you made an awful mistake.
00:05:04 Speaker 1
I said.
00:05:04 Speaker 1
I I don’t remember anything.
00:05:08 Speaker 1
She said they were talking, but just before I left to the Regent Theatre announcement, I said the Regent Theatre, the corner spank and Bark St.
00:05:19 Speaker 1
I didn’t believe her.
00:05:20 Speaker 1
I phoned the transmitter.
00:05:21 Speaker 1
You said. You sure did.
00:05:23 Speaker 1
I didn’t get the corner spanking bark.
00:05:29 Speaker 2
That’d be easy enough to do.
00:05:30 Speaker 2
That’s probably one of the milder things get set.
00:05:32 Speaker 1
Yeah, yes, yeah.
00:05:38 Speaker 2
Well, you would have been in when the CBC was getting into television.
00:05:42 Speaker 2
You would have been around there.
00:05:43 Speaker 2
We were involved much with that.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
Which was just on the line, just on the line thing and getting the line set up and.
00:05:53 Speaker 1
No, I didn’t have very much to do with television outside of ordering lines.
00:06:01 Speaker 2
Loadside of television.
00:06:02 Speaker 2
What do you think is the biggest change that’s happened in broadcasting over the span you watched it?
00:06:13 Speaker 1
It’s hard.
00:06:17 Speaker 2
Probably does the improvement in the.
00:06:19 Speaker 1
Equipment improvement in equipment and the quality of the program.
00:06:24 Speaker 1
And then now you’ve got the FM you see, which is better quality than stereo?
00:06:35 Speaker 2
First meeting business.
00:06:37 Speaker 1
With his, it’s fascinating.
00:06:41 Speaker 1
And you get into it.
00:06:41 Speaker 1
You know, you’re just.
00:06:45 Speaker 1
It’s your whole life.
00:06:46 Speaker 1
You can’t.
00:06:51 Speaker 2
How did you people stand working the hours you worked on?
00:06:57 Speaker 2
We would.
00:06:57 Speaker 1
I don’t know when you’re over hold.
00:07:00 Speaker 1
You gotta 7:00 o’clock in the morning and get in and open up the.
00:07:04 Speaker 1
And open the station.
00:07:06 Speaker 1
Then you’d work from at 9:00 to 5:00 in the office, and then you go home to supper and then you start announcing.
00:07:14 Speaker 1
Anywhere from, well, you may get home at 8:00.
00:07:17 Speaker 1
You may not.
00:07:18 Speaker 1
Mostly 12:00 o’clock being at home.
00:07:21 Speaker 2
Where you go to remote, right down to the studio.
00:07:23 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:07:27 Speaker 1
And then we we had a nice little thing going for the staff in Ottawa. We used to write to the True Detective magazine, the states, and they sent it up a script and the staff we put on an hour show after the regulars at, you know, 11:30 till 12:30 at night.
00:07:47 Speaker 1
And this week, you might be the star.
00:07:49 Speaker 1
Next week you’re the sound man, and the next week you’re something else you know needs to switch around.
00:07:55 Speaker 2
Well, who knows?
00:07:56 Speaker 2
Did you get away with that?
00:07:58 Speaker 1
Oh, it was it was fun.
00:08:00 Speaker 1
We will be putting on ourselves that people seem to like it.
00:08:03 Speaker 2
I would think we would, but I would have thought either the bosses or the Department of Weed and Fisheries or somebody wouldn’t complain.
00:08:09 Speaker 1
Oh no, it was it.
00:08:10 Speaker 1
Was it a real traumatic and dramatic show, you know?
00:08:13 Speaker 1
And it was.
00:08:15 Speaker 1
We had a fellow, the katalepsy.
00:08:17 Speaker 1
His name was great, big man.
00:08:20 Speaker 1
And big, big hands.
00:08:21 Speaker 1
And he was a clever magician and as well as a musician pianist.
00:08:27 Speaker 1
And he’d taken part in this night.
00:08:29 Speaker 1
I was the strongman, and I went over to the police station.
00:08:32 Speaker 1
I borrowed the revolver, some flags.
00:08:36 Speaker 1
And we had a studio lined with heavy drapes store stage, you know, and it was on the second floor.
00:08:42 Speaker 1
Of the shadow.
00:08:43 Speaker 1
Laurier and the other part was the paint shop where they used to repair the furniture and all that.
00:08:49 Speaker 1
There’s the door so.
00:08:51 Speaker 1
I during the rehearsal you see, I fired the shot.
00:08:54 Speaker 1
Just put my hand on the door and fire the shot into these empty.
00:08:58 Speaker 1
Big workshop.
00:09:00 Speaker 1
I was fine come the actual broadcast, this big George, and he’s supposed to get shot, you see?
00:09:06 Speaker 1
And I pulled the trick and go.
00:09:11 Speaker 1
Not everybody laughing.
00:09:13 Speaker 2
We’re waiting to go ping.
00:09:14
With it.
00:09:14 Speaker 1
It’s something went wrong, bullet or something, and blank shot.
00:09:19 Speaker 1
It just went.
00:09:22 Speaker 1
And this great big fella and all that.
00:09:25 Speaker 1
Made it all the funniest.
00:09:28 Speaker 2
What other sorts of sounds of sound effects and use again, you had to create these, they they didn’t exist.
00:09:33 Speaker 1
Or some things you could you can’t.
00:09:38 Speaker 1
No, actually, if fencing soars, you know when new fencing the actual fencing isn’t like it at all.
00:09:44 Speaker 1
You’ve got to fake it.
00:09:46 Speaker 1
And then of course, from the crickets we used to just push your finger on a comb, you know, down the come and get the cricket sound.
00:09:54 Speaker 2
What did you do with the fencing?
00:09:55 Speaker 1
So I I I forget what we did with that now we it, but it didn’t sound like fencing at all.
00:10:03 Speaker 1
But then of course.
00:10:05 Speaker 1
Very soon when broadcasting started, you had professionals doing the sounds.
00:10:10 Speaker 1
You know it.
00:10:13 Speaker 1
It got to the stage where they used to.
00:10:16 Speaker 1
These men studied it and carried on.
00:10:18 Speaker 1
They had recordings, a lot of recordings so.
00:10:20 Speaker 2
Well, you know eventually which you got the recording.
00:10:24 Speaker 1
Doors opening and closing and squeaky hinges and all that was done with the actual doors, you know.
00:10:34 Speaker 2
How long did your dramatic, serious romance?
00:10:36 Speaker 2
It’s an interesting way to get.
00:10:38 Speaker 1
A whole winter winter.
00:10:41 Speaker 2
We didn’t undertake it again after that.
00:10:47 Speaker 1
And then we we did a program well, it was originally with the.
00:10:54 Speaker 1
Freemans in Ottawa store and then at Canada Bread took it over.
00:11:01 Speaker 1
That alpha and Ambien Santa Claus just at Christmas 15 broadcasts.
00:11:07 Speaker 1
He put it on. It wasn’t on our station then, was on Doctor Gilded’s station CKC own.
00:11:13 Speaker 1
And the what we got $150.00 for the 15 broadcast, but we used to Alfie and Andy.
00:11:21 Speaker 1
I was right this I used to write the script and I was and Alfie see and Andy Ryan, who was with the Department of Agriculture, used to do the stock market.
00:11:31 Speaker 1
Reports he was in in another film over Santa Claus.
00:11:35 Speaker 1
We used to drive this poor filler crazy.
00:11:36 Speaker 1
You know, Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus.
00:11:39 Speaker 1
And he’d be reading the letters when he came to say wife wife forgot.
00:11:42 Speaker 1
We stepped off.
00:11:44 Speaker 1
Well, we.
00:11:45 Speaker 1
We’re standing.
00:11:45 Speaker 1
We’re coming down.
00:11:46 Speaker 1
We’ll start off the North Pole.
00:11:48 Speaker 1
We come down the sea and we got into Ottawa.
00:11:52 Speaker 1
And there’s a circle out the West End.
00:11:55 Speaker 1
And we were we got mixed Santa Claus fell asleep.
00:11:58 Speaker 1
So we started driving the reindeer, you see.
00:12:01 Speaker 1
And they’re on the circle.
00:12:03 Speaker 1
And then we come into the manage.
00:12:06 Speaker 1
He woke up and we got into.
00:12:08 Speaker 1
The studio all right.
00:12:10 Speaker 1
Well, there was hundreds of kids went out the next day to see the circle.
00:12:15 Speaker 1
That’s just how popular the fold that was.
00:12:19 Speaker 2
I guess back in those days, the audience loyalty was absolutely furious.
00:12:22 Speaker 1
Oh, this is terrific.
00:12:27 Speaker 2
There’s the truth that they used to, of course, here in the early sets, again, you either had a horn or you had more likely in your.
00:12:33 Speaker 2
Phone on and they used to put.
00:12:36 Speaker 2
Bowl when they wanted the family here, and I think it would, it would reflect the.
00:12:40 Speaker 1
Cell and the early crystal sets.
00:12:43 Speaker 1
You get it all set and you’re getting somebody walk across the floor and it should slip off and it’s gone.
00:12:48 Speaker 1
And you another 10 minutes trying to pick.
00:12:50 Speaker 1
It up well, that was half.
00:12:55 Speaker 2
Take all the paper.
00:12:56 Speaker 1
Now you just push a button and you get color and everything.
00:12:58 Speaker 1
It’s it’s amazing, you know, it’s fantastic.
00:13:04 Speaker 2
We had a very short period of time.
00:13:08 Speaker 1
One of the.
00:13:10 Speaker 1
Fascinating things we did in the early days, too, was we had the choir in.
00:13:24 Speaker 1
Toronto, Winnipeg.
00:13:27 Speaker 1
Edmonton and Vancouver.
00:13:30 Speaker 1
And the orchestra play and.
00:13:33 Speaker 1
We’d we’d bring in.
00:13:38 Speaker 1
And then we cut them off and bring in we’ll all start the same time.
00:13:42 Speaker 1
We bring in Vancouver.
00:13:45 Speaker 1
And then we bring in.
00:13:47 Speaker 1
You see, we take what the extremes first, Halifax and Vancouver, and then Moncton and Calgary and.
00:13:56 Speaker 1
It was fantastic.
00:13:59 Speaker 2
Must have been quite something to listen to.
00:14:01 Speaker 2
It must be quite an experience to listen to.
00:14:03 Speaker 1
Actually listening to it, you you would say well it it’s fake, you know.
00:14:07 Speaker 1
You know what I mean?
00:14:08 Speaker 1
You you say oh, well, you know, there’s so many fake things today, but we actually did that and it was really, really smart.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
Well, so many people that were, you know, sort of barely been out of their hometown and and to all of a sudden.
00:14:23 Speaker 2
Hear these voices from the other end of the country.
00:14:27 Speaker 2
It must have.
00:14:27 Speaker 2
It must have been frightening in some ways.
00:14:29 Speaker 1
Oh no.
00:14:34 Speaker 2
If you’re so used to it.
00:14:38 Speaker 2
With the getting us to getting those people in the studio and getting the microphones bad as they were in those days, getting the microphones properly placed must have been a bit.
00:14:46 Speaker 2
Of a problem.
00:14:47 Speaker 1
Oh yes, it took it quite a while before you could get lined up now and you’d have for an artist, you’d have a have a mic under the piano.
00:14:55 Speaker 1
You know, and one on top of the piano.
00:14:59 Speaker 1
Two or three around the room.
00:15:02 Speaker 1
We are one now hanging from a room.
00:15:06 Speaker 2
Or one the size of this, it won’t won’t pick up an orchestra.
00:15:11 Speaker 2
But probably better than they did in those days as well.
00:15:17
OK.
00:15:19 Speaker 2
That simple.
00:15:21 Speaker 2
Quickly, but just with the time to see an error was getting out of the business would be what the time when transcriptions of big disks were coming in.
00:15:29 Speaker 1
In the we had the 1st in auto or we had the first tape recording of the steel tape, the wire, the phone.
00:15:41 Speaker 1
If you didn’t see it, if you haven’t seen it, seen a picture?
00:15:42 Speaker 2
I haven’t actually 1 yet.
00:15:45 Speaker 1
Well, I remember one time there they were rather large.
00:15:48 Speaker 1
No, the wheels were about that big the wheels.
00:15:52 Speaker 1
But I think there was a mile on each.
00:15:54 Speaker 2
Of each wheel.
00:15:56 Speaker 1
Wheel for an hour and then you could wipe out it and record and playback.
00:16:01 Speaker 1
And the one operation you see, I remember one time in the shadow, something happened.
00:16:06 Speaker 1
I don’t know.
00:16:07 Speaker 1
They dropped the reel or something in the wire all came up.
00:16:10 Speaker 1
And we were on the 7th floor and we had to put it down the stairwell and get it all straightened up.
00:16:16 Speaker 1
That’s the way they got it done.
00:16:18 Speaker 2
Not quite as convenient as the teacher here.
00:16:22 Speaker 2
How is the?
00:16:22 Speaker 2
Sound quality in the old wire recorders.
00:16:26 Speaker 2
Very good.
00:16:28 Speaker 1
Very good.
00:16:31 Speaker 1
They still have the blatina formed in Toronto and the archives, you know.
00:16:37 Speaker 1
But there’s a huge machine.
00:16:41 Speaker 2
What it would be at that size would be for studio use.
00:16:44 Speaker 2
So you would you would.
00:16:44 Speaker 1
Oh, yes.
00:16:45 Speaker 1
Well, you had to have a spectral groom take up this size.
00:16:51 Speaker 1
You’d have three machines, you know, size.
00:16:57 Speaker 2
Then you got those 16 inch transcription disks.
00:17:02 Speaker 2
That’s the tape and glass base disks.
00:17:02 Speaker 1
Oh yes.
00:17:03 Speaker 1
Yeah. Yes.
00:17:08 Speaker 2
Some of the fun must have begun to go out of broadcasting when it became taped and it became possible.
00:17:13 Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah.
00:17:15 Speaker 2
So that you didn’t get your Spanx and bark St.
00:17:21 Speaker 1
Yes, big changes.
00:17:30 Speaker 2
It’s still going.
00:17:33 Speaker 2
Well, I guess the person BBC, you people in the CNR would probably be most certainly North America.
00:17:40 Speaker 2
The biggest network of your of your time.
00:17:47 Speaker 2
BBC had such relatively such a small distance to cover would hardly seem like anything.
00:17:54 Speaker 2
Everybody, I I suspect most people in North America think the CBS or NBC must have been the First Coast to Coast network in the country and they weren’t.
00:18:02 Speaker 1
No, no.
00:18:03 Speaker 2
They were well behind you people.
00:18:06 Speaker 1
And then there was the old NBC and the red and Blue Network, and the blue went to the ABC’s.
00:18:16 Speaker 1
Matter of fact, my fellow had the same job as I did.
00:18:20 Speaker 1
We still correspond.
00:18:21 Speaker 1
He’s from ABC now and.
00:18:24 Speaker 1
Because I used to.
00:18:25 Speaker 1
Go down to New York quite often.
00:18:26 Speaker 1
To see to see them.
00:18:33 Speaker 1
We still write to each other.
00:18:37 Speaker 2
Let’s turn this off.
Part 3
Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
He didn’t want to compete for the big.
00:00:04 Speaker 2
For a commercial business, you mean?
00:00:07 Speaker 2
You can understand the Telegraph companies lose a lot of business if you send.
00:00:13 Speaker 2
Well, as I say at Christmas 500 messages we sent and then that at Christmas time too, we in Montreal, we used to.
00:00:22 Speaker 2
Get some of the relatives of the people and let them talk to them.
00:00:28 Speaker 2
OK, alright.
00:00:30 Speaker 2
That was called the northern messenger.
00:00:35 Speaker 1
It was a fascinating era with the live talent and the live announcing that it had just gone from where you almost home.
00:00:45 Speaker 2
And the goofs you makers, you know.
00:00:49 Speaker 2
They can be cut off now.
00:00:52 Speaker 1
I take some of the fun of it.
00:00:55 Speaker 2
You know, sometimes you make a mistake and you don’t know it.
00:00:59 Speaker 2
I got home one night and.
00:01:02 Speaker 2
And my wife told me she said you made an awful mistake.
00:01:04 Speaker 2
I said I I don’t remember anything.
00:01:08 Speaker 2
She said, yeah, I returned.
00:01:10 Speaker 2
But just before I left to do the Regent Theatre announcement, I said the Regent Theatre, the Cornish Bank and Bark St.
00:01:16
Bank and.
00:01:19 Speaker 2
I didn’t believe that I found the transmitter.
00:01:21 Speaker 2
You said.
00:01:21 Speaker 2
You sure did.
00:01:23 Speaker 2
I didn’t know why.
00:01:24 Speaker 2
Spanking dark just.
00:01:29 Speaker 1
That’d be easy enough to do.
00:01:30 Speaker 1
That’s probably one of the milder things get sent.
00:01:32 Speaker 2
Yeah, yes, yeah.
00:01:38 Speaker 1
Well, you would have been in when the CBC was getting into television.
00:01:42 Speaker 1
You would have been around there.
00:01:43 Speaker 1
Were you involved much with that?
00:01:44 Speaker 2
Just on the line and just on the line thing and getting the line set up and.
00:01:53 Speaker 2
No, I didn’t have very much to do with television, like outside.
00:01:56 Speaker 2
Of ordering line.
00:02:01 Speaker 1
Look, sort of television.
00:02:02 Speaker 1
What do you think is the biggest change that’s happened in broadcasting over the span you watched it?
00:02:13 Speaker 2
How much hard?
00:02:17 Speaker 1
Probably does the improvement in the.
00:02:18 Speaker 2
Equipment improvement in equipment and the quality of the program.
00:02:23 Speaker 2
And now, now you’ve got the FM, you see you it’s a better quality than stereo.
00:02:35 Speaker 1
Fascinating business.
00:02:36 Speaker 2
Oh, it is. It’s fascinating.
00:02:40 Speaker 2
You can get into it.
00:02:41 Speaker 2
You know, you just.
00:02:44 Speaker 2
It’s your whole life.
00:02:45 Speaker 2
You can’t.
00:02:51 Speaker 1
How did you people stand working the hours you worked on?
00:02:58 Speaker 2
Home you get at 7:00 o’clock in the morning to get in and open up the.
00:03:04 Speaker 2
And open the station.
00:03:05 Speaker 2
Then you work from 9 to 5 in the office and then you go home to supper and then you start announcing.
00:03:13 Speaker 2
Anywhere from, well, you may get home at 8:00.
00:03:17 Speaker 2
You may not.
00:03:17 Speaker 2
Mostly 12:00 o’clock being at home.
00:03:20 Speaker 1
Where you go to remote with you right down in the studio.
00:03:26 Speaker 2
And then we we had a nicely thing going for the staff in Ottawa. We used to write to the True Detective magazine in the States and they send it up a script and the staff we put on an hour show after the regulars at the, you know, 11:30 at.
00:03:44 Speaker 2
Until 12:30 at night.
00:03:46 Speaker 2
And this week, you might be the star.
00:03:48 Speaker 2
Next week you’re the Psalm man, and the next week, or something else, you know, use the switch around.
00:03:55 Speaker 1
To get away with.
00:03:57 Speaker 2
Oh, it was it was fun.
00:03:58 Speaker 2
We will be putting on ourselves that people seem to like.
00:04:01 Speaker 1
It would think they would, but I would have thought either the bosses or the Department of Marine and Fisheries or somebody wouldn’t complain.
00:04:08 Speaker 2
Oh no, it was a dramatic show, you know?
00:04:12 Speaker 2
And it was good.
00:04:14 Speaker 2
We had a fellow.
00:04:15 Speaker 2
Catalepsy and then was great, big man.
00:04:19 Speaker 2
And big, big hands.
00:04:20 Speaker 2
And he was.
00:04:20 Speaker 2
A. A clever.
00:04:21 Speaker 2
Magician and as well as a musician pianist.
00:04:26 Speaker 2
And he taking part this night, I was a strong man and I went over to the police station.
00:04:31 Speaker 2
I borrowed a revolver, some flags.
00:04:35 Speaker 2
And there we had a studio lined with heavy grapes store stage, you know, and was on the second floor.
00:04:41 Speaker 2
Of the shadow Laurier.
00:04:42 Speaker 2
And the other part was the paint shop where they used to repair the furniture and all that.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
There’s the door.
00:04:48 Speaker 2
So I during the rehearsal you see, I fired the shot.
00:04:52 Speaker 2
Just put my hand on the door and fire the shot into these.
00:04:55 Speaker 2
Thinking big.
00:04:58 Speaker 2
I was fine come the actual broadcast is Big George, and he’s supposed to get shot, you see?
00:05:04 Speaker 2
And I pulled the trigger.
00:05:09 Speaker 2
Not everybody laughs.
00:05:11 Speaker 1
Waiting to go ping.
00:05:13 Speaker 2
Something went wrong, bullet or something, and blank shot.
00:05:18 Speaker 2
It just went this great big fella and all that made it all the funnier.
00:05:26 Speaker 1
What other sorts of sounds sound effects and use?
00:05:29 Speaker 1
Again, you had to create these, they they didn’t exist.
00:05:31 Speaker 2
Or some things you could.
00:05:34 Speaker 2
You can.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
Well, actually a fencing, storage, normal fencing.
00:05:39 Speaker 2
The actual fencing isn’t like it at all.
00:05:42 Speaker 2
You’ve got to fake it.
00:05:44 Speaker 2
And then of course, from the crickets we used to just push your finger on a comb, you know, down the comb and get the cricket sound.
00:05:52 Speaker 1
What did you do with the fencing?
00:05:53 Speaker 2
So I I’d I forget what we did with that now we it, but it didn’t sound like fencing at all.
00:06:01 Speaker 2
But then, of course, very soon when broadcasting started, you had professionals doing these sounds, you know, it got to the stage where they used to.
00:06:14 Speaker 2
These men studied it and carried on.
00:06:16 Speaker 2
They have recordings, a lot of recordings, so.
00:06:18 Speaker 1
Well, you may eventually, which you got the recording.
00:06:22 Speaker 2
Doors opening and closing and squeaky hinges and all that just done with the actual doors, you know.
00:06:31 Speaker 1
How long did your dramatic series run?
00:06:34 Speaker 1
It’s it’s an interesting way to.
00:06:35 Speaker 1
Get that whole window.
00:06:39 Speaker 1
You didn’t to take it again after that.
00:06:45 Speaker 2
We we did a program well.
00:06:48 Speaker 2
It was originally with the.
00:06:52 Speaker 2
Freemans in Ottawa store and then at Canada Bread.
00:06:56 Speaker 2
Took it over.
00:06:59 Speaker 2
That alphine ambient Santa Claus just at Christmas 15 broadcasts he put it on. It wasn’t on our station then, was on Doctor Gelded’s Station C case he owned.
00:07:10 Speaker 2
And look, we got $150.00 for the 15 broadcast, but the we used to coffee and Andy I was write this. I used to write the script and I.
00:07:21 Speaker 2
And Alfasi and Amy Ryan, who was with the Department of Agriculture, used to do the stock market reports.
00:07:29 Speaker 2
He was Andy and another fellow was Santa Claus.
00:07:32 Speaker 2
We used to drive this poor fella.
00:07:33 Speaker 2
Crazy, you know.
00:07:34 Speaker 2
Santa Claus, Santa Claus, Santa Claus.
00:07:36 Speaker 2
He’d be reading the letters from the kids.
00:07:41 Speaker 2
Well, we it sounded like we were coming down.
00:07:43 Speaker 2
We’ll start off the North Pole and we come down the sea and we.
00:07:46 Speaker 2
Got into Ottawa.
00:07:49 Speaker 2
And there’s a circle at the West End, and we were we got mixed Santa Claus fell asleep.
00:07:55 Speaker 2
So we started driving the reindeer, you see.
00:07:58 Speaker 2
And Noranda circle.
00:08:00 Speaker 2
And then we come into the Manichee woke up and we got into.
00:08:05 Speaker 2
The studio all right.
00:08:07 Speaker 2
Well, there was hundreds of kids went out the next day to see the circle.
00:08:12 Speaker 2
That’s just how popular the program was.
00:08:16 Speaker 1
I guess back in those days, the audience will be with us.
00:08:18 Speaker 2
Or your point is terrific.
00:08:24 Speaker 1
So the truth is they used to, of course, here in the early sets, again, you either had a horn or you had more likely an earphone and.
00:08:32 Speaker 1
They used to put it in a bowl when they wanted the family to hear it and they think it would reflect the sound.
00:08:35 Speaker 2
And then when we meet.
00:08:37 Speaker 2
And they’re the early crystal sets.
00:08:39 Speaker 2
You get it all set and you’re getting somebody right across the floor, and it should slip off and it’s gone.
00:08:45 Speaker 2
And you’re another 10 minutes trying to pick.
00:08:47 Speaker 1
It up well, that was half the following your button.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
OK.
00:08:50 Speaker 1
He takes all the fun.
00:08:52 Speaker 2
Now you just push a button and you get color and everything and it’s amazing, you know, it’s fantastic.
00:09:02 Speaker 1
Very sweet for you.
00:09:04 Speaker 2
One of the fascinating things we did in the early days, too, was we had a choir in Montreal.
00:09:20 Speaker 2
Toronto, Winnipeg.
00:09:23 Speaker 2
Edmonton and Vancouver and the orchestra play and.
00:09:29 Speaker 2
And we’d we would bring in Halifax.
00:09:34 Speaker 2
And then we cut them off and bring in the All Star at the same time.
00:09:38 Speaker 2
We bring in Vancouver, yes.
00:09:39 Speaker 1
You hope they all started.
00:09:41 Speaker 2
And then we bring in and you see we take what the extremes first, Halifax and Vancouver, and then both them and the Calgary and.
00:09:52 Speaker 2
It was fantastic.
00:09:55 Speaker 1
It must have been quite something to listen to.
00:09:57 Speaker 1
It must be quite an experience to listen.
00:09:59 Speaker 2
Actually listening to it, you would say, well, it’s fake, you know, you know what I mean?
00:10:04 Speaker 2
You say?
00:10:05 Speaker 2
Well, you know, there’s so many fake things today, but we actually did that and it was really, really smart.
00:10:12 Speaker 1
Well, so many people that were, you know, sort of barely been out of their hometown and and to all of a sudden.
00:10:19 Speaker 1
Hear these voices from the other end of the country.
00:10:22 Speaker 1
It must have.
00:10:23 Speaker 1
It must have been frightening.
00:10:24 Speaker 1
In some ways.
00:10:30 Speaker 1
There’s we’re so used to it.
00:10:33 Speaker 1
With the getting us getting those people in the studio and getting the microphones bad as they were in those days, getting the microphones properly placed must have been a bit of a problem.
00:10:42 Speaker 2
Oh yes, she took it quite a while before you could get lined up.
00:10:46 Speaker 2
Now you’d have for an orchestra, you’d have to have a mic under the piano, you know, and one on top of the pie.
00:10:55 Speaker 2
Two or three.
00:10:55 Speaker 2
Run the room.
00:10:57 Speaker 2
We’re one now hanging from.
00:11:01 Speaker 1
Or when the side of this, it won’t pick up an orchestra.
00:11:04 Speaker 1
Very no.
00:11:06 Speaker 1
But probably better than they did in those days as it was.
00:11:12 Speaker 2
OK.
00:11:14 Speaker 1
And that’s simple greatly, but just wanted the time to see an error was getting out of the business would be what the time when transcription was.
00:11:22 Speaker 1
The big disks were.
00:11:24 Speaker 1
Coming in into you.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
Yeah, we had the 1st in auto, we had the first tape recording of the steel tape, the phone.
00:11:36 Speaker 2
You didn’t see it.
00:11:37 Speaker 1
I haven’t actually seen one here.
00:11:43 Speaker 2
The wheels are about that big the wheels.
00:11:47 Speaker 2
But I think there was a mile on each.
00:11:49 Speaker 1
Of each meal.
00:11:50 Speaker 2
Meal for an hour and then you could wipe out it and record and playback.
00:11:56 Speaker 2
And the one operation you see, I remember one time in the shadow of something happened.
00:12:01 Speaker 2
I don’t know.
00:12:02 Speaker 2
Dropped a real or something in the wire.
00:12:03 Speaker 2
All came out and we were on the 7th.
00:12:06 Speaker 2
Door and we had to put it down the stairwell and get it all straightened.
00:12:10 Speaker 2
That’s the way they got it done.
00:12:12 Speaker 1
Of course, as convenient as the teacher.
00:12:16 Speaker 1
How is the?
00:12:17 Speaker 1
Sound quality in the old wire recorders.
00:12:20 Speaker 2
Very good.
00:12:22 Speaker 2
Very good.
00:12:25 Speaker 2
They still have the Blattner formed in Toronto, in the archives, you know.
00:12:31 Speaker 2
But there’s a huge machine.
00:12:35 Speaker 1
What it would be at that size would be for studio use only.
00:12:39 Speaker 2
Oh yes, you have to have a separate room.
00:12:39 Speaker 1
You wouldn’t. You would.
00:12:41 Speaker 2
You can take up.
00:12:44 Speaker 2
The size would have three machines, you know, tremendous size.
00:12:52 Speaker 1
Then you got those 16 inch transcription discs that actually Kate and Glass based discs use.
00:12:56 Speaker 2
Oh, yes, yeah, yes.
00:13:02 Speaker 1
Some of the fun must have begun to go out of broadcasting when it became taped and it became possible.
00:13:08 Speaker 1
And everything so that you didn’t get your Spanx and Burke St.
00:13:15 Speaker 2
Yes, big changes.
00:13:23 Speaker 1
It still makes sense.
00:13:27 Speaker 1
Well, I guess the person BBC, you people in the CNR would probably be most certainly North America.
00:13:34 Speaker 1
The biggest network of your of your time.
00:13:41 Speaker 1
BBC had such relatively such a small distance to cover with her you.
00:13:45 Speaker 1
Seem like anything.
00:13:47 Speaker 1
Everybody, I I suspect most people in North America think the CBS or NBC must have been the First Coast to Coast network in the country and they weren’t.
00:13:55 Speaker 2
No, no.
00:13:56 Speaker 1
They were well behind you people.
00:13:59 Speaker 2
And then there was the old NBC and the red and Blue Network, and the blue went to the ABC News.
00:14:10 Speaker 2
Matter of fact, my fellow had the same job as I did.
00:14:13 Speaker 2
We still correspond.
00:14:14 Speaker 2
He’s retired from ABC now and.
00:14:17 Speaker 2
Because I used to.
00:14:18 Speaker 2
Go down New York quite often.
00:14:19 Speaker 2
To see to see them.
00:14:27 Speaker 2
We still write to each.
00:14:28 Speaker 2
Other so let’s turn this off.