Whitehorse Daily Star from Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada • 21

Opinion 21 The Whitehorse STAR Friday June 20 2008 CBC Radio marks a presence Gertie Tom and later Bob Charlie were playing favourite songs and keeping the communities up to date with a program called Kla-howya The first location of CFWH as a CBC station was in an old airforce building across the Alaska Highway from the airport Then the station moved into a brand-new building on Third Avenue next to what was then the bus depot As new as the building was it was never meant to be a radio station Sound-proofing was non-existent and hallway conversations could be heard during local station breaks The daily 6:30 departure of the bus parked in a laneway between the bus depot and the radio station coincided with the broadcast of the local 6:30 newscast which was written and prepared by the Whitehorse Star' I could always distinguish the bus drivers who liked the CBC from those who did not Friendly drivers calmly let the engine idle Unfriendly drivers revved the engine at maximum torque until the newscast was over In April 1966 the CBC moved to its present location on the comer of Third Avenue and Elliott Street The building was state-of-the-art for its time It was sound-proof If a bus went by or a hallway conversation became heated the noise be picked up by the vintage Northern Electric microphones we still used and which predated the coming of the CBC to the Yukon Perhaps they were the same microphones which Andrew Cowan the first northern director used in his war-time reports from Europe The writer a retired broadcaster lives in Ottawa dio in 1978 12 years after the network moved to its current premises in Whitehorse ByLES McLaughlin Special to the Star This year marks the 50th year of broadcasting by CBC Radio in the Yukon The service officially began on CFWH on Nov 10 1958 and a week later on CFYT in Dawson City Andrew Cowan earned countrywide acclaim during the Second World War as one of the few Cana-dian reporters covering the war from the front lines in Europe When he returned to Canada he stayed with the CBC and worked his way up the ladder to a top management position In the he began the long bureaucratic process of bringing network radio to the North Before Cowan radio in the Yukon apart from the volunteer activities at CFWH consisted of American private radio when reception was good on cold crisp nights or Radio Moscow on shortwave It took a lot of arm-twisting to convince the aloof brass in Ottawa and Toronto that the silent outposts in the North deserved the network radio service Cowan was firmly committed to public broadcasting and was determined to see that the North would be served by the CBC On Nov 10 1 958 his hard work paid off Whitehorse radio station CFWH became the first in a series of net-work-linked radio stations owned and operated by the CBC to broadcast across the North Andrew Cowan was the first director of CBC Northern Service and helped build a system which today offers radio and television service to communities across the entire country CFWH standing for Canadian Forces Whitehorse went on the air By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN TORONTO The problem with Liberal Leader Stephane 48-page plan starts with its third sentence where Dion says: need to make polluters pay and put every single penny back into the hands of Stop right there misleading and intellectually dishonest First off we are the polluters We buy the goods and services that cause the whether talking about greenhouse gases or smog For Dion to claim invented a new tax system capable of chaig-ing and transferring that money to is quake of Easter 1964 By the the legendary Wee Willie Anderson was a fixture at the station and known throughout the Yukon for yelling at the top of his voice to open his popular daily western roundup show Cal Waddington was producing timeless Yukon historical radio programs Delaney was calling local hockey games and Ted North was sending news reports to the network first on-air employees in the North Craig had been the morning man on CFWH as a volunteer and retained that role with the CBC Terry Delaney became the voice of sports in the Yukon and went on to cover many memorable events such as US Senator Robert famous climb of Mt Kennedy in the St Elias Mountains in the Delaney was on the scene reporting to the world the devastation caused by the Alaska earth in the mid-MOs as a military-run but volunteer-staffed radio station My first stint there as a volunteer was in 1 956 when as a Grade 9 student I was assigned the Saturday night shift and hosted a rock record show called Night-Train Elvis and the Everlys got their first big break in the Yukon on that radio show! When the CBC took over I lost myjob Four other Yukoners Terry Delaney Tom Homy Earl Stephan-son and Joe Craig became the Of course no more nonsensical than Environment Minister John Baird mocking plan while promising to make big industrial emitters pay for polluting through tougher government regulation If big emitters face increased costs to produce their goods because of tougher environmental regulations they pay We will Or is Prime Minister Stephen Harper planning to pass a law preventing companies from passing along increased costs to consumers? In a delicious display of irony given the usual attitude toward the private sector Jack Layton while also criticizing carbon tax touts and as a solu tion to global warming Oh please! Againwe have this ridiculous suggestion by a politician that a magical way Canadians can escape when government starts charging industry for carbon emissions- Look at the three-year-old European cap-and-trade Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) The ETS lowered carbon emissions but it has led to skyrocketing electricity bills for consumers And that is what will lower carbon emissions over time In other words by creating a carbon market that they assured their citizens would use the power of capitalism to insert hysterical laughter here cool the planet what governments actually created was a new playground for speculators Its only link to reducing greenhouse gases is that sideswiped ordinary citizens by sending Electricity prices skyrocketing the reality With renewable energy decades away from practicality and affordability and with no technology yet available to remove carbon emissions when fossil fuels are burned no free lunch The only way politicians can reduce emissions is to charge us more for energy meaning for everything so that forced to use less it the plan The final insult is that politi-: dans our employees are now punishing us for doing exactly what they always told us to do before climate hysteria fried their brains: Work long hours earn more spend more and consume more to grow the economy and fatten government coffers with taxes If you think taxes and the cost of living are outrageous now wait until you see coming Politicians have us right where they want us naively believing if we can replace enough incandescent light bulbs with fluores-cents in our homes and hang enough laundry outside to dry we can save the planet This was never about saving the planet This is about taking even more money from our pockets and transferring it to governments and big business And working 2008 Sun Media Corp.