Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Canada's electronic skyway

Jun 28, 2011 9:44 AM

July 1, 1958 marked a major milestone for CBC as the completion of the microwave network made Canada the country with the longest television network in the world.

Just 31 years after a radio broadcast was heard across the country, the technological wonder - known as the "electronic skyway" - was sending television signals from coast-to-coast in just a 1/50th of a second.

Microwave technology was developed during the Second World War as an off-shoot to radar and could carry television, radio and telephone signals over long distances.

CBC initially established a small microwave network to connect stations in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. But it wanted to be able to transmit programs across the country simultaneously, rather than sending out video recordings known as kinescopes.

In the 1950s, the Trans-Canada Telephone System (TCTS) was also looking to build a microwave network to expand its long-distance phone service. Canada had quickly become a nation of telephone-talkers and the demands on the system needed improvements beyond more cable and wire. But establishing a microwave network was a costly proposition and it had become held up by bureaucracy and questions of competition, monopoly and ownership among the telecommunication companies.

The TCTS, however, was able to cash in on CBC's desire to expand its broadcasting range.

"Microwave was important for CBC and, in some ways, the entire communications system," said Dwayne Winseck, a professor at Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication.

Beyond being telephone-talkers, in a period of just three years, Canadians had turned the nation into the No. 1 TV country in the world, based on population.

CBC put out a call for tenders for a nationwide system for television transmission in 1952 and two years later the TCTS began to build the network at the cost of $50 million. It was a whooping amount of money for a nation still struggling with debt from the Second World War.

But the system had the prospect of being a really cheap alternative as a distribution technology, Winseck said.

The microwave system would take images from the TV camera and break them up into electronic pieces that could be sent onward and mixed by electronic equipment, Tom Eadie, chairman of the TCTS, explained in a 1958 interview.

"Then they're on their way," he said, "up to the roof, where the huge antennae beam the microwaves over the relay networks at the speeds of light - 186,000 miles per second."

The 139 tower-system spanned 6,275 kilometres from Sydney, N.S., all the way to Victoria, B.C.



A map shows the span of the microwave network by July 1, 1958. (CBC Times/CBC)

Microwaves follow a straight line, not the curvature of the Earth. So towers had to be visible to each other - about 48 km apart. It meant some towers were nine metres tall while others were 100 m tall.

The construction wasn't without its challenges. Roads often had to be constructed into remote sites and trees downed to make space for the towers and buildings. In Rockies, engineers also had to blast off the top of one mountain to be able to build a platform for a tower. On Dog Mountain, a cable car had to be constructed to transport men and heavy equipment up to the tower site.

As the network worked its way across the country, more stations were added, with Manitoba joining in 1956 and Alberta in 1957. By the time of its first broadcast across the network, six CBC stations and 40 private affiliates were connected. The network was later extended to Newfoundland in 1959.

The advancement put Canada at the forefront of communications technology.

Watch a segment on Scan talking about the microwave network and the first coast-to-coast broadcast:


Homes separated by thousands of kilometres were now joined into the fabric of one nation, said CBC general manager Alphonse Ouimet at the time.

In the 1950s, "nationalism was a much more vibrant notion that had a grip on the public imagination," Winseck said. The completion of the system allowed for a "real nation realized in simultaneous time", which is a moment Canada had been waiting achieve while it was something smaller countries would've already achieved, he said.

"This is one story, the story of Canada drawn closer together then has ever been possible before," Ouimet said at a press conference just days before the first national broadcast. "The story of a nation, which for the first time, can see itself at once in, sort of a giant full-length mirror."

The achievement was marked with a live national broadcast of Memo to Champlain from coast-to-coast on Dominion Day in 1958. The 90-minute bilingual transmission was co-hosted by Joyce Davidson and Reve Levesque. Prime Minister John Diefenbaker appeared live on the program, which looked at Canada's development since 1608 and the landing of Samuel de Champlain in Quebec - capping it off with the microwave network.

Despite the new ability to broadcast TV signals across the nation, Winseck said, the microwave system represents an "an incremental move to a new plateau, not a consolidation of national imagination."

Canadians had already been amazed by the advent of a national post system, the telegraph, the national railway and radio broadcasting, he said.

"Those were all nation-building enterprises. This wouldn't have walloped anyone over the head," he said. "The national imagination had already been captured."

Hear Canadians talk about their expectations for the microwave network:


It would now only be a matter of time before CBC moved onto its next broadcasting development - satellite, which would then include television transmissions to the northern territories.

Keep checking the 75th anniversary blog to learn more about CBC's move into the realm of satellite.

Copyright © CBC 2012