Star-Phoenix from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada • 71

Saturday, July 21, 197.9 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Star-Phoenix 3 Doug Squires, a technician from the early days, surveys the pier-cury vapor tubes in the original transmitter. Present-daif announcer Dave Watson brpad-casts the Radio Noon show from the old Watrous studio. milter would produce the greatest radio coverage, and it did not disappoint. Punshon remembers postcards that came from New Zealand and Australia informing the small staff that their signal, in those days of low interference from other radio and television sources, had been picked up down under. Punshon also remembers when John Fisher, who earned the sobriquet Mr.

Canada during his career as a CBC broadcaster from 1939 to 1949. publicized the reason' for the CBK transmitter's amazing area of coverage. It was in the summer of 1944. "He lay in (Manitou) lake smoking a cigar and reading the Manitou newspaper, Punshon says, chuckling still over the stunt. The high salt content of Manitou' Lake, six kilometres from Watrous, permitted Fisher to float and loaf at the same time.

The salt lake is touted as an arthritis cure, and continues to provide, along with the salt marshes and flat terrain of the area, excellent ground conductivity for CBK's sigpal. CBK had the greatest area coverage of any transmitter in North America in 1939, and the crew there was told it would take four times CBK's 50-kilowatt power to broadcast over the same area in Toronto. The new stations transmission was so wide because of the terrain and because of its frequency. The lower the frequency, the greater the theoretical distance a signal will travel, and CBK. under the North American Regional Broadcast Agreement, was the first radio station to ever use the 540 kilohertz frequency at the low end of the AM band.

The 540 spot had previously been kept clear because it was so close to the marine band, which was used for ship and airplane communication at sea and went as high as 535 kilohertz. Until 15 years ago. when the agreement as revised, CBK had exclusive use of the 540 frequency. "You just had to go travelling to the States with a Saskatchewan license plate and people would say. Are you from CBK? Punshon says.

To test the coverage, he recalls, the station offered a game similar to snakes and ladders for sale for 10 cents. They received 80,000 requests from as far away as San Fransisco, and had to hire six stenographers to handle the mail. Another sale of road maps for 25 cents each drew almost 40,000 responses. CBKs coverage is still great. But its new transmitting tower, which replaced the old one knocked down in a 1976 storm, is 90 metres instead of 140 metres high.

Orin McIntosh, 21-year supervising technician at CBK, whips two blue felt pens from his shirt pocket to demonstrate how the old tower was ruined by a wind storm. The tower which served from 1939 to 1976 weighed 60 tons and was supported by just three husky guy-wires, each 3.25 centimetres in diameter. The guys left the top 30.5 metres of the tower free. McIntosh places one pen on top of the other and describes a circle with the point where they join: Id often seen the tower do a shake dance on a windy day. I think that weakened the centre point.

Finally, in the storm, the ceramic insulator at the base of the tower shattered, and the tower dropped five metres straight down. It sheered off at the middle and fell like this McIntosh drops the pens and they make an like the last pieces in a giant game of pick-up-sticks. You know, the guy wires never let go. The new tower is lightweight six i 4 i I i I that we forgot about lowering the power. The Guard Caper is still a matter of contention.

Punshon says Doug Squires, Watrous technician from 1943 to 1974, did it, and Squires claims it was someone else. There were four guards, Squires says. One guy had his chair propped up outside where the air came out of the building, and he went to sleep and left his double-barrelled shotgun leaning against the wall. Well, the supervisor stole his gun." That was the end of the war-time patrol. The guards were fired, and CBK was left on its own to survive the risk of sabotage for the last year of the war.

Punshon retained the swiped shotgun, nicknamed it Sir Walter Raleigh. and used it for hunting until a few years ago. In 1954, CBK closed its Watrous broadcasting studio and opened three new studios in Regina. The transmitter remains in Watrous, by virtue of its coverage capabilities, but it is not the place of activity is once was. Two men now maintain the transmitter and tower, and the two bunk beds in the basement do not see the use they did during the last days of the Second World War, when broadcasts were extended from 17 hours a day to 24, and everyone worked double shifts.

Regina, meanwhile, has become a centre of activity: the staff has grown from 21 in 1954 to more than 90. Studios were opened in Saskatoon last year and recently in La Ronge. The interior of the CBK building in Watrous has changed only a little. There is the same matchbox-sized studio; an old CBC logo, with twin lightning bolts converging over a map Continued on Page 4. The insulator was cushioned with sand and four guards were hired older men, volunteers who wore medals from the Great War on their chests as they patrolled around the tower every hour.

The guards confiscated photographic film from memento-seekers who tried to take pictures of the tower. On one occasion, the power of the transmitter was radically reduced for security reasons. We reduced power for one day to 1,000 watts, Punshon recalls. We thought CBK might be acting as a -homing signal for Japanese submarines in the Pacific. But the listeners wanted the news, and there were so many complaints i i X' V.

or seven tons and firmly secured every 10 metres by 24 wires, each about the thickness of McIntoshs little finger. It was a funny, unexpected way to go for a tower that was considered so vulnerable that it was put under armed guard and closed to visitors for six years during the Second World War. Radio's importance as a link in the communications system during the war made the CBC fearful of sabotage. The major fear was that saboteurs would shatter the insulator at the towers base and bring down the whole transmitter something that weather would accomplish three decades later. 1 1 i i i.