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Episode 15 - Tommy Douglas Did Television Better Too
45 Plays1 month ago
After having conquered the Atlantic, we now set our sights on getting radio signals across the country towards the Pacific. In this episode, we review "Le Reséau", a story about Canada's first microwave relay network which enabled Canadians to have wireless signals traverse the country, enabling us to see hockey players disappoint us nationally as opposed to locally. This system would eventually lead to an explosion in Canadian media and is likely the reason for why this podcast exists today.
Heritage Minute:
https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes/le-reseau
We now have a Patreon!
https://patreon.com/shawiniganmoments
Shawinigan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Stó:lō (Stolo), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) first nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.
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Transcript
Controversy Over New Catholic Church Mascot
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, the reason why I wanted to interrupt you is because I was reading r slash Catholicism. Always a good time. So are you familiar with Luce?
00:00:12
Speaker
Luce? No. Okay. So let me pull up Luce real quick for you. Cause I need you to show you the new mascot for the Catholic church as done by ah Italian outfits. Tokidoki. Oh.
00:00:27
Speaker
Okay, they're pretty cute though. So let me read this post from Archithalsism entitled, I am considering can sorry i'm considering to cancel my trip to Rome over Luce. I need advice. What? Over this?
00:00:46
Speaker
it's It's kind of fucked up. like the The rosary they're wearing has some racist origins and you know they have an angel friend and all that sort of thing. It's it's really fucked up. But anyway, let me read this post. Luche broke me. I always detest at anime and consider it somewhat a degenerate childish form of foreign media. It was always forbidden in my house when I was a kid and I still have that block.
00:01:10
Speaker
I cannot fathom being able to walk in the streets and seeing that thing associated with the Holy See and the paths of the pilgrims in Rome. You're putting this in an episode, right? Oh, yeah. but these These are not anime figures. They're just cartoons.
00:01:27
Speaker
They're actually kind of an aggressively western-style cartoon. It really destroyed the Holy Year for me. I get that this might seem a tad excessive, but the church was Rome, successor of Rome, on the seat of Rome, founded by Christ that was born in the Roman Empire, bastion of the West, universal by means of stretch, authority, and influence. Adoption of something so foreign and childish shakes my foundations.
00:01:55
Speaker
on top of that. but But the Catholic Church is the one true church for all mankind's salvation. ah So like, yeah, weaves need salvation too. We're not going to let the weaves go to hell.
00:02:11
Speaker
On top of that, my best friend is considering to become orthodox because of it. And this is also influencing our relationship ed he as he is definitely no longer coming to Rome with me this year. Now I basically, sorry, now I basically- This is a shitpost.
00:02:28
Speaker
This has to be. I don't have met enough tradcast to kind of wonder. and Now I basically can go alone facing my disgust for that thing, risking a dreadful experience, or cancel my trip entirely. First off, if you're, if you're, if you're a believer, which I used to be, like, you don't, you don't, Catholic. Yeah. No, I'm sorry.
00:02:53
Speaker
I feel i so like for you. I retained faith a lot longer than you would think. I was kind of the the queer Christian, well, the queer Catholic, because i I kept that specific faith for way too long. Anyway, like you don't you don't. Yes, you don't jump from the Catholic Church to the Orthodox Church because like, OK, first off, nobody converts to Catholicism except for J.D. Vance, apparently.
00:03:24
Speaker
admit let's I've met actual Catholic converts. when i Let me finish. okay Nobody converts to Catholicism. Absolutely nobody converts to Orthodox Christianity.
00:03:40
Speaker
like like like that i Just supposition that somebody would, for any reason who is actually like a believer in like a believer in Christ, believe like ah particularly of Catholic denomination, would change denominations is so insane.
00:04:00
Speaker
Okay, so like having rap been raised in the Catholic Church, I should say that like I do find Catholicism and this dogma incredibly fascinating. um I want to make it clear that ah I don't shit on people for being Catholic. I do shit on the Catholic Church. Okay, so just to make this clear.
Hosts' Personal Journeys with Catholicism
00:04:16
Speaker
Yeah, as an organization, it is a it is a deep and long-running evil basically since inception. But the ritual practice of worship is fine. yeah It's good. it It makes you feel like you are part of something and makes you feel like there's something that's part of you.
00:04:35
Speaker
which is Which is good. like Hell, i I incorporate a lot of ritual into kind of my beliefs now, largely rooted in the fact that I i grew up like around Catholicism.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, like I like to, like even though I'm like a religious, like I'll just, I use agnostic as a simple way of describing myself, but like I still kind of somewhat gravitate sometimes towards the term cultural Catholicism, because there are aspects of Catholicism that don't really bother me. But I will say this, Luce has made me shitpost about the Catholic Church so fucking hard.
00:05:13
Speaker
It's a decent quality mascot. Like, i I don't know. I don't know what people want. It's it's fine. Well, I cannot wait to get my purse branded with Luce over like my Tokidoki purse is branded of Luce everywhere.
Stuffed Animals in Saanich Wall Incident
00:05:28
Speaker
Shall we start the show? Oh, we're we're doing this. Well, I'm going to keep that in the track. Yes. OK, yeah. All right, let's start. One, two, three.
00:05:44
Speaker
What's up fellow Pope lovers? My name is Heather and welcome to She Winnegan Moments. I use she they pronouns. And my name is Tamarack and I use they them or it it's pronouns. We're not Pope lovers. I don't think anyone here who listens to the show is a Pope lover. There is that one cool Pope who was elected and basically died immediately. Oh, I thought you're going to talk about the Pope that lives in Spain that run like the anti Pope.
00:06:10
Speaker
actually they okay the anti-pope and the like like 50 french popes those i can get behind we have you mean the avenue on popes yes okay well yeah welcome to swinegate moments um we want to provide you as a surely about Catholicism and Catholicism shitposting yeah as opposed to like you know talking about the doom and gloom of the world as of late because they're recording this on November 11th we know what happened So yeah yeah i hey, actually, I want to I want to offer an official Shewinigan moments. Congratulations to the like clear and undisputed winner of the ah the 2024 presidential election. Didn't vote. We look forward to your future administration. President didn't vote.
00:07:00
Speaker
OK, well, I think I think we should do the news. Sure.
00:07:11
Speaker
Uh, this is the part where I actually didn't have the news open one second. Of course, you know, I could just go into Discord. Hey, thanks Gertrude for scooping, uh, scooping me. Uh, I got scooped by, by one of our own, uh, by one of our own, uh, Patreon or patrons. The news I have for you, uh, is more BC news out of Saanich. I know you hate that I keep posting BC news, but that's what I have subscribed, subscriptions to.
00:07:41
Speaker
It's like British Columbia is like the Florida. No, it's not I can't say it. I can't finish that sentence Yeah, no, i just I mean, I can frame it like that, because the title is, BC Matton discovers 115 stuffed animals hidden behind a wall. And he's been donating them to people like around like around the world. What's the R rating on on stuffed animals? Actually, it's probably pretty good. It's not as good as like fiberglass insulation, but I mean, cotton batting's like been used before as insulation. It's not terrible.
00:08:15
Speaker
I was like trying to figure out like the R rating of of this stuff earlier because like there's like, you have like, how does it work for R values? It's like the higher the number, the warmer, it it's like the more heat keeps in or something like that.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. Actually, I, Oh, maybe there's, there is an hour. There, there definitely is. All right. Uh, 3.7 per inch. So it looks like our values actually, you know what? That's actually, that's not bad. That's actually not bad. Our value, our value of a little over seven, it looks like okay based upon the the density of them. Uh, so like, you know what? But, but there is one problem with using that for insulation.
00:09:02
Speaker
And that is? It's flammable. Okay, to be fair. So is everything in your fucking house. Like, your furniture is made of plastic and glue. Yes, so but your insulation will slow, like, it's not to stop your house from burning down, like, because your insulation won't do, but it will prevent the flames from wicking in faster, and that's kind of something you want to have happen. ah For insulation, it doesn't matter. It was covered in drywall. Drywall is your primary fire retardant in your home.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. you just just It's always extra layers. That that said, like I would hate to find this. like what led Actually, wait, why did this happen? Is there any background behind this? Because you have the news piece in front of you. Yeah, I have the news piece in front of me. This is ah normal renovation stuff. I think it was a shed. It wasn't actually a house. Yeah, it was because of some like mold and rodent intrusion, he was basically like pulling down this wall.
00:10:04
Speaker
ah to kind and kind of redo it, and he found basically ah some vapor barrier was put up, which is good, ah and stuffed animals were just shoved between two studs. It is an interior wall as well, but it looks like an interior wall to a garage or a shed, so... And how long did the does he suspect they've been in there? Because, like, I'm looking at this, and some of these plushies look fairly old. Like, how did they get their hands on all these plushies?
00:10:30
Speaker
probably from a time where Valley Village had those like big bags of stuffies for like five bucks. That makes sense. It's okay, so I will say this. I'm in the midst of um sorting out some new housing arrangements and that involves me going into my storage and you know figuring out what's done down there because I want to pair some stuff down. And I got a box full of stuffed animals from when I was a child. And the thing is, I do have attachment to them.
00:10:59
Speaker
Um, they're not in my home because I don't need them in my home, but I also cannot bear to just bring them to a value village or some random thrift store. Like what do you do with them? Like it's like, do do you make it into house installation? Like looking at the video too, cause there's a, there's a Tik TOK video in the link. Um, yeah, it was originally posted on Tik TOK cause that's a side note. That's a sign of the times where news is coming from Tik TOK, not Twitter.
00:11:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's how you know that that that Twitter is actually dying now. The thing that kind of terrifies me a little bit is like he's giving them away. And I noticed at the bottom of this, there's like insulation down there. And it's like, oh, I hope he cleaned it because like insulation on your skin is awful. Yeah, the those those those fibers in the fiberglass, the stuffed animals, though, were floor to ceiling and contained within the vapor barrier. So they're fine. Oh, yeah, they're dry. I imagine. Yeah.
00:11:56
Speaker
The uncovered insulation batting within the drywall, that's that's normal for the time. I will promise you all that I will get rid of my plushies, my stuffed animals in the most humane way possible. um I will say, though, I have found out that neither my ah neither of my siblings wish to give them to their kids, which is fine. um So I imagine I may have to do the sort of depressing thing and say goodbye to them. Although I may keep one in particular because I do have a little bit of attachment. I have an Expo Ernie stuffed plushie on that note.
00:12:28
Speaker
Oh, neat. I have a stuffed deer and a stuffed dog that I've kept since I was a kid. The stuffed dog is in remarkable, remarkably good condition because I was too scared to snuggle it. I have one stuffed plushie, stuffed animal or whatever, that I'm holding on to um because I really like it and has a connection to an upcoming ah episode that will come out around Christmas time. So stay tuned for that.
00:12:57
Speaker
Can I guess what it is? Uh, after the show. Okay. Yeah. You got anything further on that one there? No, it's just really fucking adorable that this guy basically like had some, had some mold in his garage and some roting intrusion and pulled down this wall and found these stuffies and was like, yeah, I'm just going to start mailing these to folks. I think by now, cause this, the story is a few, I think it's ah over a week old. Probably a lot of them are gone. There was like 115 of them.
00:13:26
Speaker
Oh, that's cute. One thing I just realized is that I left a note in the fall ceiling of my parents old old house. I'm curious if somebody ever read it. I don't think I left contact details in it because um I've since changed email addresses anyway. But yeah, probably lots of things stuffed in your walls and you'll never know about it unless you ever wrote an infestation.
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah, one of one of the places I grew up in, um we left a ah couple bottles of wine, a substance I will not say on air, and and other other other things for a future future owner demolishing walls to have a fun evening with.
00:14:12
Speaker
Well, I guess that is the news. So Tamarack, in our last free episode, what did we talk about? Oh, oh, yeah, we talked we talked about fucking macaroni guy and how much he sucks.
00:14:27
Speaker
Yeah, so just to give you a small recap on the last episode, I do recommend you listen to it before. um It's not necessary for understanding the context of this episode, but I'll paint to a picture of what we're talking about here. We ended up talking about signals being sent across the Atlantic using radio. So we're talking about telegraphic messages and so forth. I am going to play a little clip here from another episode that's related to this.
00:14:54
Speaker
And then we're just going to give a little bit of a history of radio in Canada. So I'm going to roll the clip. Our telephone, teletype and national television from one end of the country to the other like that. 4000 miles of microwave links instead of thousands of tons of copper wire. Yes, but 50 million dollars, Mr. Dee Dee. Oh, my.
00:15:21
Speaker
They also laughed at my experimental TV 20 years ago. and Maybe they were right. But a single system for television and for telephones. That's the future. We're with you, Tony.
00:15:33
Speaker
So that is from Historica Canada's Les Rizzo, which is an episode about trent the TransCanada microwave network. Sorry, I just realized I completely slipped on this here. This is the microwave network that used to link the entire country and it depicts Thomas Edie, that of Bell Canada, and Alphonse Wime, the current or was president of Radio Canada or CBC.
00:15:58
Speaker
I'm going to give you a little bit of a brief rundown of communications in Canada leading into radio. I'm i'm going to bounce around a lot about this because we're not talking about radio in particular, but the first telegraph company to be established in Canada was in 1846. It was called the Toronto Hamilton and Niagara Electromagnetic Telegraph Company.
00:16:20
Speaker
I miss old timey company names. They were so good. There's some great names out there today. It's just like one name companies with the bike with Helvetica as their logo. And that's it. However, it would end up being dominated by the Montreal Telegraph Company, which itself formed a year later, initially under Orin S. Wood, the brother in law of Ezra Cornell, co-founder of Cornell University and one of Samuel Morris's assistants in the construction of a telegraph line from Washington to Baltimore.
00:16:49
Speaker
He too found himself at the center of telegraph expansion in North America when he was recruited to head the MTC, that being the Montreal Telegraph Company, which saw links between Toronto and Quebec. He would stay with the company until 1866, but his tenure as president of the company was ended and in his place Hugh Allen would take. An entire episode could be dedicated to Hugh Allen, but in short, he too had his hand in the construction of telegraph lines and railways in Canada.
Canadian Telegraph History
00:17:15
Speaker
and was responsible for the downfall of John A. Macdonald's first government when the Pacific scandal broke, a scheme where Allen and others were caught bribing the Prime Minister and his Conservative Party to sway influence over railway contracts, something that will never happen repeatedly in Canadian history.
00:17:31
Speaker
constantly. Yeah, it's not a topic we're going to be having in an upcoming episode series sometime early next year. I am i'm sure we'll talk about um ah this for sure when we get to the railways and talk about the man responsible for why the Indian Act is the way it is. Oh, that's gonna be a massive racist eugenicist. Yeah, I also cannot confirm whether Wood was an anti Catholic and or pro savory just for the record.
00:18:01
Speaker
It was quite clear how vital telegraphs were for sending immediate messages because it would ease ease the flow of commerce and trade. As mentioned in the previous episode where the British were able to save 50,000 pounds in and 1860s money to avoid having additional ships sent over from Canada, the general public themselves were able to wire money to all over the world using services such as Western Union, who themselves were able to build a telegraph service across the continental United States in 1861.
00:18:27
Speaker
Canada itself would not have a telegraph service as transcontinental until 1882 upon the completion of the CPR, rather the Canadian Pacific Railway. I really need to stop. What's that? To be fair, until 1885, we weren't a transcontinental ah country.
00:18:45
Speaker
in general. so This telegraph service would find its use with various news agencies as well as um be a competing service to Western Union who until that time had a monopoly over sending even in Canada. Further competition would be had when Canadian Northern canadian northern Railway, I should be clear, purchased the bankrupt Great Northwestern Telegraph.
00:19:08
Speaker
Canadian Northern, not to be confused with Canadian National, but would be engulfed by them in 1923, was at its peak a competing railway to the Canadian Pacific and it too would run telegraph services from coast to coast. Annoying side note, if you are looking into Canadian railway history,
00:19:28
Speaker
different sources will abbreviate Canadian Northern and Canadian National as CN and they won't clarify ah very often which they're talking about. CNOR is this the whole railways are gonna be fun and when I write the episode for the ah railway series or rather write the script I should say It's going to be fun to avoid talking about the other railways unless I need to. However, by 1932, telephone service would exist across the country. Major developments in telecommunications in the country, however, would be sporadic until after the Second World War. Well, let's jump a little bit further ahead and talk about the CBC.
CBC's Role in Canadian Telecommunications
00:20:05
Speaker
Boo state media. According to my right wing family members, I don't mind the CBC, but they have there they're liberal.
00:20:15
Speaker
um they're they're The one of the only like not billionaire owned publications in Canada. Yes, it's owned by the King. Post media. Because post media has ah has bought up literally everything else. In 1952, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then under the helm of President Alphonse Wime, a name that will be important for later, issued a request for purple. Sorry, what? Yes. Put pin. Put pin in.
00:20:40
Speaker
It's due to request for proposals in RFP to build a nationwide system to send both television and radio signals across the country. The ah RFP itself was sent to Bell Canada, which at the time was a subsidiary of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, or AT&T, n t and CNCP Communications, of which we mentioned earlier. However,
00:21:00
Speaker
The Department of Transport, now Transport Canada, which at the time was responsible for radio frequency and bandwidth allocations, now handled by Industry Canada, wanted to have both of these telecommunication behemoths work on this system jointly. And one thing I realized I didn't make clear, when I say cp sorry CNCP communications, that is the outfit that ended up being jointly run by both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific.
00:21:25
Speaker
Right. I, you know, I totally forgot that they like collaborated on a bunch of weird shit. Well, the CBC used to be, um, the Canadian national radio service or something like that. And then, yeah. And then it became the Canadian, um, the Canadian broadcasting radio, something I can't remember what it became, but, or Canadian national rail radio, excuse me. Um,
00:21:50
Speaker
There's been all sorts of iterations. But anyway, that's how the CBC came to be, is through the railways. Everything is the fucking railways in this country. We nationalized their radio broadcaster. We should have nationalized all of them. So going back to the whole creation of this ah system, Cabinet, then under the control of Prime Minister Louis Saint Laurent, wanted this, namely because they didn't want a single company controlling an entire interconnect system that it would ultimately become.
00:22:18
Speaker
I have to wonder if this attitude would persist today seeing that Rogers gobbled up Shaw like one will tell us and Bell become one entity and you know like it's just there's there's no appetite to create competition in this country other than like small gestures and then you know saying oh we can't have any foreign companies come in which is why Freedom Mobile ended up like being gobbled up by Shaw at some point. It got spun off into its own company, but yeah. Yeah, like consumer choice for ah for Canadian phone providers is basically which subsidiary of Rogers, Telus, or Bell do you want to to pay money to? Well, like if you are if you want to get Fido, that's Rogers. If you want to get Virgin Mobile, that's Bell. If you want to get, um what's the Telus one that's out there? It's like Chatter. Kudo?
00:23:06
Speaker
yeah chatter on mobile I think no chatter is Rogers um ku Kudo and then there's public mobile and Then the course is not publicly owned. No, and then there's freedom. Yeah And then I think freedom bought up, no, Rogers bought up mobility. That's right. And then there was, it used to be mobility in this country. Yeah. Now there's just four players on the market. So, or if you happen to be blessed or cursed and live in Saskatchewan, you have SaskTel. Yeah. We're going to talk about SaskTel. So CNCP agreed to it, but Bell did not surprising. The project went forward anyway, and plans were drafted to build links largely in Southern Ontario and Southwestern Quebec.
00:23:48
Speaker
This was all being done by Bell, I should make clear. This is also a recurring theme in Canadian telecommunications infrastructure. Oh, we're going to be talking about that. The government will be like, hey, we need to build out this thing. Put a pin in it. Put a pin in it. Private companies, we need you to build this. Goddamn it. They're like, no. Pin it. Just pin it.
00:24:13
Speaker
um This would also include a link to Buffalo, New York permitting US television to broadcast integrated Toronto. mistake That was a big mistake. Buffalo is basically Ontario. yeah it's it's sorry it's It's where our best friend best friend Nicholas Pickles lives.
00:24:30
Speaker
um Yeah, that's true. On January 15th, 1953, the first microwave link between Toronto and Buffalo went live and within five months was extended all the way out to Montreal. Now I'm going to talk a little bit about how this all works because we're going to be talking a little bit about directional audio or sorry, excuse me, directional radio, which is something that Marconi didn't do. And yeah, anyway, the system that was employed was of skill issues.
00:24:57
Speaker
Well, and nobody really knew how to do this then, and I i won't lay blame on that fascist. so Again, skill issues. so The system employed was a Bell Labs TD-2 system, which operated at a frequency of 4 GHz. Now, when I say the term microwave, this means radio signals broadcasting any like traditionally 300 MHz to 300 GHz, but realistically, most people just say one to 100 gigahertz in actual radio frequency engineering. I'm going to talk about radio in the like once again, in the most difficult way, like radio is hard to talk about, like there is an entire PhDs around radio, and I'm not going to scratch the surface on this. You have a squiggly line of of energy going through the air.
00:25:41
Speaker
And sometimes it delivers you signals and sometimes it cooks you to death. Yes. Actually, it just depends on how much. I'll tell you how safe this is in a moment. So this is a frequency range that many of our modern devices rely on, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 5G, and of course, your microwave oven. What's your microwave oven? Sorry, what? what's the What's the frequency of the of the microchips to the vaccine? Oh, that's 5G.
00:26:08
Speaker
Okay, right, right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. So your microwave oven broadcasts a radio signal at roughly the same frequency as most wireless routers, which is why whenever you turn it on, and sometimes the internet speed just drops, like not necessarily all the time, but it's a common thing. But what it does is Bluetooth disconnects because you're wearing wireless headphones. And yeah, I never noticed that with my AirPods at all.
00:26:31
Speaker
So, what happens is the radio signals just bounce around inside of the microwave and interacts with water thus heating it all up. That's that's all that's happening here. That's why your water boils in there. It's also why you should never boil pure water because it'll heat up the water faster than it gets to the boiling point.
00:26:46
Speaker
It's safe to do this because it's non-ionizing, which means it won't give you some form of cancer. And also because you can't fit in the microwave itself, generally. The only thing I can say is if you played Metal Gear Solid 4, I guess you might disagree with me, but then you really aren't going to come across environments that are just shooting microwaves all over the place all the time.
00:27:07
Speaker
So if you do see one of these towers, which, oh, Tamara, are you able to see how you're able to see this? Yeah. If you're if you stand in front of these towers and they're active, it will probably give you a headache, but it won't do anything to you. But like, if you were like tied down to it, I guess it could burn your flesh third. not the there's a concentration issue where these are these are shooting off like they're not they're not the same kind of wave or at least not the same same ah frequency and intensity that's used to cook you this would cook you this would like bake you really slowly.
00:27:39
Speaker
Yeah, you, you have to be tied down and kept in place. Like you would for a long time, probably a couple hours. I imagine you can start noticing the effects of it, but like it will hurt. Like you don't want to, you don't want to just be tied down in front of these things. It will just be painful. It'd be an uncomfortable experience, but your body might actually be able to shed the heat generated by how much the water in your body is being heated up fast enough.
00:28:06
Speaker
Yeah, um my my advice is just don't mess around with these things. so There's a lot of voltage high voltage going into them in the first place. Yeah, the electrical infrastructure next to one of these things is much more likely to kill you. That's fair. I will give you that. Radio towers are also scary. I am radio towers. I've seen videos of people like taking like metal rods to them. And like you can just see the the energy coming off those poles. Yeah, don't play around radio towers. They do have a lot of power coming out of them.
00:28:35
Speaker
So a dangerous a dangerous radio tower is fenced off with Chainlink. A deadly radio tower is fenced off in wood. Yeah, that's fair. That's pretty true. So back to the TD2 system, you have to be pretty clever of how you allocate bandwidth when it comes to sending data. I won't get into the details, but like,
00:28:54
Speaker
you're given at like a certain frequency and like a range. And so what they did is they chopped it up into 12 10 megahertz links. So you had 1.2 gigahertz available of bandwidth available, sorry, 120 megahertz of bandwidth given to you. And you would then just split them off. And what you would then do is you would give six channels in each direction, because you have to have a channel you listen on and a channel that you receive on.
00:29:19
Speaker
Excuse me. I just said the same thing twice, didn't I? That's what I mean, is you have a channel to send on and a channel to receive on. Yeah, you have a TX and RX channel. Yeah, that's how you'd refer to it. If you've opened up your router's configuration panel or whatever, and there's under Wi-Fi settings, there's a channel selection. That's what this is. It's just what sub-band within the overall 2.5 or 2.4 or 5 gigahertz spectrum that you're on.
00:29:49
Speaker
Like and another way to look at it is if you have channels on your TV, you have channel three. And so channel three would be like seven hundred megahertz and then channel four would be seven hundred and ten megahertz. Like that's not the exact and frequency, but, you know, that's the idea. Or for our ah for our under ah twenty five audience of zoomers who've never had cable.
00:30:10
Speaker
ah
00:30:13
Speaker
It's, ah I don't know, it's like a different, what's even the fucking analog? There isn't anyone because it's all obfuscated now with software and everything. Yeah. So using some clever electronics, they could do some really funny things where like they can carry one ten television channel or 600 telephone conversations on a single channel. So like the 10 megahertz that's allocated for a TV channel is actually big enough bandwidth wise that they can throw 600 telephone calls through that.
00:30:41
Speaker
So like an average station, you can handle like six TV channels or 3,600 phone calls without wires. That's why this was a big deal because you didn't need to run copper. Spoilers, we ended up running copper. No, actually, we we ended up running glass, but we'll put it in there. We run glass now, but before glass, we had copper.
00:31:01
Speaker
So a year later, a link was built all the way up to Quebec City with additional links to Barrie, Peterborough, and Kingston, thus getting most of the Toronto-Quebec City corridor connected with just microwave towers. And if only they could do that with high-speed rail. um Yeah, because again, that's like more than half of the country. All of these links were initially handled by Bell Canada and were all stuck in Ontario and Quebec.
00:31:23
Speaker
But what about the rest of the country?
SaskTel and Government Ownership
00:31:25
Speaker
Let's introduce ourselves to the TransCanada telephone system, which comprises of the following companies. Alberta Government Telephones or AGT, BCTEL, Bell Canada, die in a fire Island Telephone Company, no opinion Maritime Telephone and Telegraph Company, also no opinion and BTEL.
00:31:47
Speaker
I think rest in peace. I'm going to explain this in a moment. Newfoundland telephone, Northwest tell, Quebec telephone, Saskatchewan telecommunications or SaskTel. A herald of what could be. As Tam has been alluding to, of all of these, the only one aside from Bell to have survived having been sold off by their governments or emerged Something else is SaskTel. Which is the baby of former Saskatchewan Premier Tommy Douglas. Greatest Canadian. Which in 2016 was almost privatized by Premier Brad Wall, a tremendous asshole I must note, but did not happen because the idea of laying off thousands of people in Regina, the provincial capital, in a city with only 250,000 residents is very unpopular.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, like um kind of the like prairie provinces like to complain that ah a lot of can't like the the vision of Canada like governmentally is like there's Vancouver there's the Toronto to Quebec corridor and then like everybody else is kind of given the short end of the stick but also the everybody else is like a bunch of towns of like less than a hundred thousand people with the odd Regina So one thing I'll say about SaskTel and um that makes them really interesting because there's some other things they've done is they were involved in the channel project or the channel tunnel project. Really? Yeah. So what they were involved in is the signaling system. They provided the telecommunications that ran it.
00:33:17
Speaker
And this meant that um Canada has once again been involved twice in that project because the leg of high-speed rail that goes between the Channel Tunnel and um St. Pancras, which is known as High Speed 1 or HS1, is I believe partly owned by the Ontario teachers pension.
00:33:38
Speaker
ah So is half the planet. That's fair. like That pension fund, the Quebec one is just as intense too. is just yeah But anyways, let's not get too derailed here because we can talk about ah the pension fund forever. yeah i just I just want to say, i Occasionally, Premier Doug Ford likes to have it out for the Teachers Union, not realizing that the Teachers Union pension fund, like their war chest to fight him on anything, is larger than the actual GDP of his province. GDP's are fake. like like the The Ontario Teachers Union ah is is an unstoppable monster and we salute them.
00:34:23
Speaker
so and We go back many episodes ago, because we're now approaching the point where I can say back in the day, uh, we talked about the, uh, we need to make more, we need to be like at, at 20 episodes or actually not 50
Building Microwave Relay Stations
00:34:38
Speaker
episodes. We can call it back in the day.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, well, back when we were talking about the Avro Aero, we were talking about having airports every 50 kilometers. Well, on March 8, 1955, construction of a proper multi-provincial network from Nova Scotia to British Columbia began. The system called for 139 relay stations spread out every 40 kilometers, so something that makes a lot more sense in airports every 50 kilometers.
00:35:04
Speaker
Yes. So construction of the system was relatively easy to come by in the east and in the prairies. Northern Ontario was a bit of a headache because it's the Canadian shield. Everything west of the British Columbia and Alberta border was destined to be a nightmare. And there's like One story was in the city of Fernie, which is about 15 kilometers east of the border of Alberta, there's a ridge called Morrissey just to the south and it was chosen for a relay. And mountains are great for this because you can just see the damn things. So it's about 10 kilometers to the south of Fernie and the closest road to said ridge is two kilometers away. Yeah. The elevation change from the road to this site that they chose for the microwave tower is just 600 meters. OK.
00:35:49
Speaker
It took them about, let's see here, two months to build it, a road up to it. Okay. I'm guessing it's flat, flat, flat, flat steep cliff. um I went and looked at it and it didn't look too bad, but like the thing is, is that Fernie is sitting in the middle or but rather on the west side of the Canadian Rockies.
00:36:09
Speaker
Oh, wait a second. This is 1955, Fernie. They probably had to build a road out to the... They had to probably massively like beef up the road to the place where they were going to build a road. Well, here's the thing. The Trans-Canada Highway hadn't been built yet. It doesn't go through Fernie, I should make clear, it because ah that's the crow's nest. But yeah, at that point, there was no... like Highway infrastructure in Canada was pretty... like It was relying on railways.
00:36:37
Speaker
yeah So this proved to be a problem. because it be again this This proved to be a problem for other parts of the network as it would produce far too many delays. So what they did instead is using two-way radios and mirrors, they were able to to like test much of the network and build it all up just using line of sight and radios to confirm placement. so like can you This is entirely doable, but it still fucks with me to think about is you can see 40 kilometers in any direction if you don't have anything and in your path. This is entirely doable if you have flat surface. Now, when you get into mountains, obviously that changes quite a bit. There are some really wild situations where if you go to the top of, I want to say like any of the North Shore Mountains and on the perfect, most perfect day, you can in theory see
00:37:26
Speaker
like the very tip of Mount Rainier, which is about 200 kilometers away. Yeah. And if you're, if you're like a microwave, a clear day doesn't really matter much. It doesn't reduce your range substantially. So clouds do affect microwave signals, but it's not as, but if you got a good line of sight and you put enough power through it, it's not a big deal.
00:37:51
Speaker
Mm-hmm, but I'm not gonna get too much into that, but yeah. So Tommy Douglas's SaskTel was the first to complete its assigned portion of the system, which went live in 1957, with the rest of the system following suit on June 18th, 1958. On Dominion Day of that year, July 1st,
00:38:11
Speaker
That's what we used to call Canada Day until 1983. The first coastto coast-to-coast 6,500-kilometer-wide broadcast was made on the CBC with a memo to Champlain, C. Champlain-Vivet, and I'm going to play a clip.
00:38:49
Speaker
likewise night today another mile cup to murder the next hour to have what you willll see is but little your what my live code hand can can go the microwave network is I'm hearing two things at once. That's fine. You know what I'm going to say? we got We've got a problem here.
00:39:08
Speaker
fact ah continue comes up i know i miss about all them and catas We're a bilingual nation, and we've always suspected it was a mixed blessing, but now we know. But even you, Renee, can't speak both languages at the same time. No, we just tried that one, do it again. No, don't know. I guess we better do them in succession. Try that anyway. is is this yeah good news Yes, they were speaking over each other because that was the whole point. Okay, to show off the the two the the the TX and RX was independent, and so you could hit multiple channels. No, actually, it was more just kind of a play. um So the whole intention was to show that we could broadcast across the whole entire country. and Oh, so they played both the English and French version at the same time as a sort of symbolic symbolic linguistic unity?
00:39:58
Speaker
Well, they were these two individuals were in this. This is a TV broadcast. They were actually on the same stage at the same time, just speaking opposite of each other. So they had cameras pointed at each other and they were just talking um over each other at the same time. It was intended to be a bit. I wish I had the whole recording of a memo of Champlain, but I suspect it's actually a reference to ah Champlain of New France when he was writing back to about new findings in Canada.
00:40:25
Speaker
um Well, I didn't do too much research into this, but this one's fun because this was hosted by Joyce Davidson. I'm going to talk about the other person in a moment. A woman who two years later during a visit by the Queen to Canada would say on the American show today, hosted on NBC, stating, like most Canadians, I am indifferent to the visit of the Queen and then would later say, we're a little annoyed at being independent.
00:40:49
Speaker
She died in May 2020 when she and 37 other residents of a care facility in Toronto died from contracting COVID-19. God fucking damn it. Yeah. Well, she was also like 87 and was suffering from Parkinson's. So like she definitely was ah in a rough state, but you know, she was I'm still going to call this social murder because that's what it was. like You can thank Premier Doug Ford for that one. Yeah. Anyway. Notable piece of shit.
00:41:15
Speaker
Not to be outdone. Sorry, it was also hosted by Rene Lavec. Oh. A man who would later become pretty... I thought it recognized that other place. It would not only pound the party Quebecois, but would also be responsible for Bill 101 and holding Quebec's first of two referendums on sovereignty. Why couldn't he be the one to die in long-term care?
00:41:39
Speaker
He's the wild thing is like they picked the like these two but they were like two years out from causing all sorts of shenanigans in Canada. Like a Rene Lavec was like a little bit off from doing that. But but Davidson, like, you know, she was all remembered when she passed as having said she was indifferent. But like yeah it' it's not lost on me and how amazing these two would be made the face of unity after a unified communication systems came to be.
00:42:07
Speaker
And then immediately, like, one would go on to slag the queen, which is base. And honestly, a lot of like, she's right. Most Canadians are kind of indifferent to the queen. Well, you should be. She's dead. Yeah, I mean, yeah. So the human reaction time in most cases is 250 milliseconds, meaning in that time, a signal could go across 12 times before we'd react. And where else in Canada is a good reaction time other than?
00:42:47
Speaker
I'm not going to lie, the hockey night in Canada theme is the only thing that I liked about watching hockey when I think about it. It goes so hard. It's so it goes so hard. Yeah, it's it's got it's got so much. ah It's just very peppy. It gets you fired up. Any opportunity is that drop.
00:43:04
Speaker
Now NHL broadcasts were not new to the CBC as it broadcasted on radio when it was the CNR network in 1931, so it's actually a long, long history. They stopped broadcasting um radio or sorry hockey on the radio sometime in the 1970s. However, Hockey Night in Canada made its debut on CBC television in 1952.
00:43:25
Speaker
As a side note, instant replays are a CBC invention from 1955. Hell yeah. But what changed in 1958 was that someone in Victoria, British Columbia could watch a live broadcast of a Montreal, Toronto hockey game and react no later than someone watching simultaneously in Barrie, Ontario. We had the technology for people across the country to live tweet a game before Twitter's invention. Yeah, I guess so. Earlier we mentioned CNCP having been left out of the picture because The TransCanada system was ah purely built built by the telephone companies. Well, in 1964, they had completed their network of their own, going from Vancouver to Montreal. ah This network was, of course, not without protestation from Bell Canada, who in 1962 argued that having a second network would lead to wasteful overcapacity. The Federal Cup. Also known as ah getting in the way of our monopoly.
00:44:23
Speaker
Oh, I have. This is Canadian television. What a pain in this because I'm about to talk about that one. Canadian media companies are all fucking like this. The federal cabinet, now under the control of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, had to step in and tell Bell Canada to buzz off and gave a green light to its construction.
00:44:43
Speaker
ah Maybe one of the best things that he did. It's really, really low bar to clear for this fucker. Kind of give you an idea of how like much of a pissing match was made between Bell Canada and CNCP plus um the Trans Canada telephone system. I keep screwing up how to talk about it. Is that they would continually have squabbles throughout the 70s and 80s, which by sometime, I think in 1976, was no longer really cabinet's problem, but it was Now the problem for the newly formed Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission, or the CRTC. like i some like i'm I know that there's other reasons why the CRTC exists, but just based on like these squabbles, one has to wonder if they got sick and tired of hearing from ah Bell Canada, that they just said, like here's a commission, you can just go talk to them.
00:45:32
Speaker
They are also the commission responsible for these, all this lovely can con rules that, uh, that we've basically made a podcast about. Well, we should do a bonus episode in the CRTC sometime. So Bell Canada during one of its disputes with CNCP over interconnect. So like, you know, having them networks talk to each other resulted in a 25 day hearing involving six witnesses alone, talking on 11 days and hearings that produced about 4,375 pages of manuscript.
00:46:02
Speaker
ah They never change. They never change. They were always like this. They always will be like this. Bell Canada were real dicks about this, but like alongside the rest of the TCTS. But the decision by the CRTC in 1978 allowed, the interconnect I was talking about here, allowed a certain Edward S. Rogers Jr. to spread his wings nationally and permitted the creation of Rogers Communications, who would slowly take over the new network in order to provide an eventual backbone for Rogers's mobile phone network. Not like the modern mobile phone network, like old old school 80s cell phone. we' We're talking about Cantel. Yeah. Yeah. Like if you know what Cantel is, then that's what we're we're referring to. However, while Bell and CNCP were squabbling on the ground,
00:46:51
Speaker
The federal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau decided to come up with other solutions to cross-country communications, just to put and his solution was just put it all in space. and Let me play a clip.
00:47:04
Speaker
the annex sea will expand our television system and we'll also provide channels to subscribers of a new u s pay tv system whit fraser report Telsat Canada employees and their families were out at a tent this morning near their offices to watch the liftoff. The company has more than 50 million dollars in the space shuttle. It's the Annex C satellite. But more than money, Canada's future in satellite communication is involved in the Challenger. Canada has been a leader in space communication and it's fighting to remain in the forefront.
00:47:36
Speaker
So that was a little bit further in the future here, but this pretty much sealed the deal for this network not really being as important anymore.
Satellite Communication Development in Canada
00:47:44
Speaker
So in 1969, Teleset Canada was formed and as a crown corporation enter an act of parliament to be chaired by Alphonse Wime, the former CBC president. On November 9th, 1972, a Delta 1914 rocket launched into space carrying a Hughes Aircraft HS333 model communication satellite dubbed the ANAK-A-1, or Brother in Anuktit. How do you say Anuktit?
00:48:08
Speaker
Connected. Connected? Okay, KQ. Becoming the world's first domestic communication satellite operated by commercial enterprise. He's a big boy. It's a big boy. I'm looking at this thing and three people can stand stack on stand on top of each other and they still wouldn't be tall enough for this thing. Also, it has the cool ah like horrendously out of date. They don't build them like this anymore. Wrap around solar solar array.
00:48:33
Speaker
Oh, it's highly inefficient. Oh, yeah. it' that They're terrible. They're so bad. But they produce some really goober looking looking satellites. The launch ah of the A1 was a big deal, as often ignored in this country is the existence of the north. And for the first time, the CBC was able to reach out to them. So if you live in Yellowknife, you finally had a way to watch hockey, I guess. I also think some of the some of the some like rural communities in in B.C. were also connected to this thing.
00:49:02
Speaker
I imagine like anywhere that wasn't like that was more like than 200 kilometers from the US border finally got something. so The A1 had plenty of bandwidth for 12 color television channels due to its 12 transponders. Allocation was three to the CBC, two to TransCanada Telephone System, two to CNCP, two to Bell Canada, get fuck and one to Canadian Overseas Telecommunications.
00:49:25
Speaker
Canadian Overseas Telecommunications was a former Crown Company or Crown Corporation, I should say, and they were responsible for interconnects between Overseas Cables and the telephone system here. I think that's what they were for. They also licensed a bunch of like UK and European um and i blake got news channels as well. I think that's how we got like ITV Edmonton and stuff like that.
00:49:50
Speaker
Not at ITV, Edmonton, but ITV in Canada. I don't think we actually ended up with ITV in Canada. I don't think that's actually what was done. um Now you won't make me wonder about that. it's i know i like ah like We have a bunch of licensed news channels, but I think there's some entertainment. Yeah, ITV is a completely different thing ah you're ah you're thinking of. It just has the same moniker, that's all.
00:50:12
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. But like Deutsch Vella and like BBC news and stuff like that. It was probably easier to get some signals over the wire that way, but I i personally don't know much about how that's how that stuff worked. So, but like, that's, that's a completely different side of things. I don't, I don't.
00:50:30
Speaker
I just think that jumped into my jumped into my brain from watching cable as a kid. So like there were actually two that were left um to put on reserve or they were somewhere allocated for future use. So like not all of the channels were used. I imagine they might have been eventually. Future Anik models would follow the eventual 3A models being launched with the B being launched in 1978 to be used by various groups, including the Globe and Mail.
00:50:53
Speaker
The C models would all be launched from space shuttles, which would permit all sorts of television channels to be made available across Canada, creating the concept of paid television nationwide. It's all downhill from there. Well, it includes Super Channel, but also Knowledge Network and TV Ontario. So Knowledge Network was available nationwide after that. Really? It wasn't available all across the country?
00:51:17
Speaker
No, it was originally just locked to British Columbia and because of this it was able to be viewed in, I don't know. I believe this also allowed the creation of much music and when I was at the post office on Saturday or Sunday, I saw they had stamps for much music and I just went, are they trying to like,
00:51:36
Speaker
twist that knife a little bit further because they haven't had music on on much in like, I don't know, 15-ish years. Is it just called much now? Yeah, just much. Wow, they've really... they did I don't know if they call it police in on and Quebec, but it's much now for English Canada. Gross. The development of these satellites, all of it took away television traffic from the cross-country network.
00:52:02
Speaker
And there's a couple of reasons for why. um There was no need to have a relay station nearby just a clear line of sight with the sky. Hopefully what you're looking for is not a Cosmos 954. Do you know what that is? Cosmos 954.
00:52:17
Speaker
Maybe the name sounds familiar. Oh, yeah that's something we'll talk about in the future. I'm sure at the same time, fiber optic cables came out to the scene in the 1970s. The initial fiber optic cables need a repeater every five kilometers. So basically the signal would have to be boosted once again every five kilometers. But yeah they used to hardcore suck, but now they're awesome.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yes, the reason why they wanted to use them is because they were able to do speeds of 140 megabits per second. Now put that into context is in the 1970s, they could transfer an entire audio CD in just over a minute. Yeah, it's fast. Tommy Douglas is SaskTel once again, let not only the country but the world by developing one of the world's largest fiber optic networks by January 1984.
00:53:00
Speaker
a whopping 3,268 kilometer network covered the entire province. We at some point need to do an episode about like, there there was a show called Greatest Canadian where we ranked all the CBC thing, I think. We're going to have a hard time finding copies of it. I'm sorry. I i know exactly what you're talking about.
00:53:20
Speaker
ah No, none of the none of the other entrants matter. Tommy Douglas is the only one who mattered because he was obviously the greatest Canadian. This man had a vision for the future that we have not managed to recapture as a country. I like i want us to do a Tommy Douglas episode badly. Yes, we need to do a Tommy Douglas episode so that all everyone outside of Canada and within Canada who's forgotten about him understands like this man had a vision and a dream for this country and almost almost built it single-handedly.
00:53:50
Speaker
As time progressed, repeaters were only needed every 50 kilometers and 100 kilometers. And as of 2021, over 3000 kilometers are capable of like just 3000 of uninterrupted cable can transfer 319 terabits. Now, I have a hard time working with speed that fast, like terabits per second. But I believe you can transfer an entire 4K movie in less than a second.
00:54:18
Speaker
I think almost entirely in parallel if you had full access to the entire bandwidth of the cable. I have one gigabit and I can saturate it if I try, but I could not figure out what to do with 319 terabits. I don't even think like I could come up with a reason to have that much of internet. so Let's actually do the math on that. I'm curious. One second. but Okay. Size. The size of a 4k movie in GB. It's about 120 gigs. and That's the maximum size of a 4k Blu-ray. Okay. So 120 gigs. We need to multiply that by eight because we're dealing in bits. You mean to divide by eight. And no, cause we're the terrible. Why am I doing this? Of course it's because it's eight bits to a byte. So you divide the bits by eight.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm going the other way. I'm going bytes to bits. So it's time. Oh, I see. You're converting the, um, the DVD or the Blu-ray 0.04 milliseconds per entire Blu-ray. Yeah. So your copy of Dune that you bought on 4k Blu-ray like I did would take yeah half a second.
00:55:27
Speaker
but No, 0.04 milliseconds to transmit an entire Blu-ray. Oh, okay. Well, that's that's that's absurd. Milliseconds.
Transition from Microwave to Satellite Networks
00:55:38
Speaker
So one of the advantages that these satellites had was that you put them in space and have transponders on the ground to make use of them. No need to set up relays every 40 kilometers, building towers high enough so you can get from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland, which is what they had to do. They had to put like a Uh, to make the link over there, they actually did write it the full link, but at the closest points, but yeah. And then, uh, or fight bears off to go do maintenance. You just kind of set it and forget it. But Tamara, what do you think is a big problem with all this with, uh, with the micro or with the microwave network? No, no, no. if satellites Apart from the eventual, uh, Kessler syndrome.
00:56:15
Speaker
as explored by the hit anime now available in uh in North America again planetes you kind of need clear line of sight to sky you uh they either need to be geostationary and thus can only serve a small area or they need to be or they're not always available so you need a bunch of them yeah let's talk about having a bunch of them i'm gonna play clip but Canada's main broadcast satellite, the Anic E2, is on the fritz. It is spinning through space out of control, and the $300 million dollars satellite may never recover. Television, radio and telephone service have all been affected, and to make things worse, the trouble with Anic E2 came on the heels of a problem with its partner in space, Anic E1. Bill Casey reports.
00:57:03
Speaker
Scientists now think they know why Canada's two anarchy satellites broke down in space within hours of each other. Recent information from an environmental satellite recorded a massive geomagnetic storm at the location of our satellites during the time of the failures.
00:57:21
Speaker
This strange saga began on Thursday, when for eight hours, TV dishes across the country searched the sky, trying to find a wayward satellite, Anik E-1, that didn't want to respond.
00:57:35
Speaker
TV was not the only medium affected by the satellite's drift from orbit. Somebody should talk to Saskatoon and Regina. I talk to Saskatoon. The news gathering services, a Canadian press, were hampered. The Globe and Mail, which feeds its national edition by satellite across the country, was looking for alternatives. Then a Telsat executive announced that Anic E1 was suddenly back in business. And the company's problem appeared solved. This is the longest outage Telsat has ever had.
00:58:02
Speaker
in its 20 years of service. But that record has now been broken as the same control problem suddenly knocked out Aniki 2 and knocked such channels as CBC News World, Much Music and TSN off the air and it appears Aniki 2 could be a complete write-off. If the circuits fail we will not put the satellite back.
00:58:24
Speaker
So that's the other problem. Yeah, this is also where I want to note for listeners that we are currently entering into the peak of solaract of ah ah solar activity. Our sun's kicking a lot more electromagnetic waves at us. So this shit's probably going to happen a lot more.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's happened. So I actually remember this happening, but let me ah recap this for everybody. So on Thursday, January 20th, 1994, Anak E1 and E2 suffered problems due to a solar storm. The E1 failed at 1750 UTC, knocking out satellite television across Canada. But after a few hours, Teleset brought it back online at 015 UTC.
00:59:06
Speaker
However, the E2, its sibling, decided that it wanted attention too and 45 minutes later at 0100 UTC, its gyroscopes failed and was unable to properly point towards Earth. E2 took several months to get sorted so during this time much traffic was diverted to E1 and technicians had to go to places in the far north just to a adjust dishes in order to restore telephone service. Oh boy!
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's this this is a problem. So E2 was restored after some work and continued to operate ah beyond its original 12-year design life at 14 years. However, that's a really short life for a satellite that you can't, you i I mean, you can de-orbit it. Just think about if think of well think of network gear too, right?
00:59:50
Speaker
Yeah, fair. God, invoking planet tests was actually really on the nose for this, wasn't it? However, two years later, E1 would fail catastrophically after one of its solar panels shorted out. It killed half of the operating power, and this happened on March 26, 1996. So I don't remember, I should say, I should clarify, I don't remember the first incident all that well, but I remember the second incident when E1 got killed.
01:00:12
Speaker
because like a number of television channels that I was watching, like as a kid, like I think YTV, for example, was just not available. We've talked about YTV on this, on this podcast before. Much music was taken out. YTV and my grandma raised me. Exactly. And so, yeah, like that's the young and the restless that too. Yes. So yeah, like I just remember this incident quite well, because again, I, I'm a child of the, well, I was born in the eighties and I grew up in the nineties. Right. So Bell Canada would get the last laugh though.
01:00:42
Speaker
It bought Telesat from the federal government in 1998 when the Jean Kretchen government sold it to balance the budget. So so like Kretchen's like ah whole like whole like crusade of privatization really fucked over the media ecosystem in the country in specific. like It's kind of crazy.
01:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's think what Harper did when he sold off by AECL. Well, yeah, but like Harper, Harper sucks. Whereas Jean Chrétien is like getting a little bit of reputation laundering by by liberals in this country. We named our podcast after him.
01:01:22
Speaker
so Yes, i we will when we will not we will not let li we will not let the fucking libs ah whitewash Christian. One day we will do an episode on the origin of the podcast name. One thing I'll note is that this microwave existed before the transcontinental highway. That's something I mentioned.
01:01:38
Speaker
and The TransCanada would not be complete until four years four years later in 1962. And in fact, at the time of the construction of this microwave network, the best option for getting around was still by rail. And and we we can confidently state that the best way to get around, not necessarily most convenient, but the best way to get around the country is still by rail.
01:01:59
Speaker
Oh, we're going to be talking about that next month for those on Patreon. Yes. So sign up to our Patreon at patreon dot.com slash wedding involvement. Yes. So one thing I'll also point out is this podcast owes its existence to these microwave towers as it would lead or lead to the creation of Heritage Minutes. The existence of these towers led to the creation of the Canadian television network or CTV, like I mentioned, which used this microwave network when the CBC was not making use of them cells.
01:02:29
Speaker
That's kind of where I want to leave us at, is that we have a lot of this country, like this kind like a lot of the pop culture that exists in this country is owed in part to this microwave network. This microwave network's power within Canadian society is tremendous, but also very brief. like It really only had a foothold on things for about 10, 15, 20 years at best.
01:02:56
Speaker
and It wouldn't have led to the creation of Telesat and all that. Like I think Telesat, I don't have to kind of look into this a little bit further, but Telesat's existence is owed in part to some of the limitations that were found with running a microwave network.
01:03:13
Speaker
But yeah, putting putting within like the bottom 200 K of the like from the Canadian or American border up 40 kilometer relay stations apart from each other is entirely reasonable because there's enough population to service it within that band. But like every 40 K all the way up to like a colloid is most of those towers are going to serve nobody.
01:03:36
Speaker
Oh, they're also a relay station. So they also have to be powered and they also have to be maintained and all that. Like it's very straightforward to do a line going from west to east and then, you know, up to Newfoundland as well. But it's another story if you want it like a cow. It's not even where I'm thinking like just getting to yellow knife or white horse by this method.
01:03:57
Speaker
would have been incredibly difficult. Like if you start looking at the Alaska Highway and the horrors of constructing that whole damn thing during the Second World War, you would realize that trying to run a relay all the way up to the Yukon would be just an absolute shit show in the 1950s. Like it was already a shit show just to build a highway at that point.
01:04:20
Speaker
um I imagine that you would be running across a lot of situations where you have to spend two months building two kilometers of road. Also, don't forget that you have to spend two months every year rebuilding that same two kilometers of road. The the Alaska Highway most most of the year just doesn't exist. I actually wouldn't mind talking about the Alaska Highway at some point, but that's um that's for season two of Swinigan Moments.
01:04:47
Speaker
That's when we should drive. I don't want to drive up to the, like that's, that's a 12 hour, like not even, it's 14 hours just to get to, uh, Fort St. John where you would, the whole thing would start. But we could visit one of my friends in yellow knife and or in, uh, in white horse and it'd be fun. But the highway doesn't go to white horse.
01:05:06
Speaker
No, we'd have to divert. We'd just go through the BC section. We're not going to fricking drive to the States, not through Alaska. Take the goddamn train. There is a, um, weird train that runs, uh, just like a hundred kilometers a south of white horse that goes to Skagway. Yes. Yeah. That's a, that's labor. So we ended up talking about, uh, radio for two main lineup or two mainline episodes in a row. I don't think we have any other radio episodes in the future, but.
01:05:35
Speaker
Tamarek, what did we learn? We learned that satellites are spaces hard, but Canada is actually weirdly good at it. Yeah. And I learned that so much of my life has been influenced by these towers, but they weren't operational and doing their job by the time I was born, which is kind of fascinating.
01:05:53
Speaker
The Canadian media ecosystem was shaped by a very short-lived national construction project and tech project. And SaskTel's, at least then, I don't know about now, but like, legislated self-reliance, where they had to be able to like build and service all of their equipment on their lines, made them kind of a kind of a juggernaut of building out telecommunications infrastructure yeah then and now.
01:06:20
Speaker
Crown corporations are generally good. So just remember that. Also, Tommy Douglas, greatest Canadian. Yeah, I 100% want to do an episode on Tommy Douglas. Like we probably will be a four parter and we're just going to gush for all four parts. We'll figure out if we can. um I don't think he ever got a Heritage Minute, which is unfortunate. While you were writing this, what did you learn that was interesting, whether it made the made the episode or not? I was actually unrelated to this, but the creation of CTV was kind of interesting for me. The thing that came up was that they named themselves Canadian Television, which is what CTV stands for. And then there's the CBC, which is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And the CBC took exception to the name CTV because they said it was too similar to their name, which they're not wrong.
01:07:12
Speaker
No, I don't think they're wrong either. The CTV was interesting because they tried to follow a lot of the footsteps of the CBC in terms of broadcast and that sort of thing. But they it was sort of weird in the initial period of time. Like they did a lot of American shows initially, um like I'm thinking like the Andy Griffith Show came up. And there was also like another like, there was like a British Australian Western, I want to say that was kind of strange. It was called, I have to, um fortunately still have the article. Yeah. Whiplash. And so like you have this strange sort of arrangement here where you just had a lot of imports.
01:07:57
Speaker
um But yeah, like CTC back in the day and I think even still now doesn't import any media the seat the CBC or CTV CBC the CBC Absolutely imports a lot of media. They get a lot of stuff like back then Oh, back then, you know, i would I think if we ever do an episode on the CBC, we can probably I would love I would be able to do research into that. It's like, I want to be so like the one thing that like as a kid growing up, a thing that was always on CBC was what's the name of that TV show that's escaping me at the moment, not the standards. That's the London show, the one that takes place in Manchester, Coronation Street.
01:08:37
Speaker
so Oh, right, yes. Yeah, I'm pretty certain that's Coronation Street, or it's Liverpool, it's one of the two. like I always associated with that, but I'm pretty certain that's been on the CBC for as long as Coronation Street's been a thing. I think a lot of British shows have ended up on the CBC in its early life, but like again, like that's something for the future I think we could talk about. I think yeah the creation of CTV and the creation of the CBC are definitely topics for down the road that I feel are worth talking about.
01:09:04
Speaker
Cause that's definitely a thing I noticed cause I'm, I'm quite a bit younger than you, but like that, that is kind of the thing like CTV seem to have more American shows and CBC would have like the odd British one, but I seem to recall it mostly being Canadian content. Yeah. Like if we ever do an episode where we talk about the power corporation of Canada, which is fuck, that would be a behemoth to talk about, will allow us to talk about the creation of global. Yeah, I know. It's like.
01:09:30
Speaker
the three The three major. Well, there's four major networks in this country because there's global. And then so we mentioned CTV, CBC and global, but there's also city. So like everybody has their own fucking network here. The only difference is I think global never used the microwave network. But don't quote me on that because I think their name never can't comes up in a lot of it. And they just kind of relied on the existence of Telesat, I believe. They were also a little bit later to the game.
01:09:59
Speaker
Yeah. Which I think is where the origin of the name global comes from. But yeah, if that's the thing I learned was just the creation of CTV. Yeah. Cause I think that at least with my episodes has come up as like, there's a bunch of neat things that we learned that just can't make it into the episode for flow or content or just they're, they're a thing or a rabbit hole you came across while you were working on it.
01:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, like occasionally we'll have topics or we'll get into tangents and we don't have them in the recordings just because as I usually go through and it's like, Oh, this breaks the episode big time. Yeah. So I want to, I want to, I want to give us a space for that stuff. Cause yeah, exactly. No. So yeah, creation of CTV was what I learned today. So that was the end of our episode. Feel free to contact us. You can send us whatever you want in an email. Hopefully it's not hate mail. Otherwise we're just going to delete it.
01:10:50
Speaker
to mailbag at SchwinniganMoments.ca. Or if you're interested in supporting the podcast, go to patreon dot.com slash SchwinniganMoments. We have bonus episodes, sometimes bonus content, and also Discord access. That's right. You can talk with us when we are not recording. We do have day jobs, so don't expect us to respond immediately.
01:11:10
Speaker
Or, or at all, in my case, I hate the internet. I barely do social media. I'm terrible with it. In the, um, I guess what I'll ask Tamara is what is our next episode? We have a bonus episode and we have a mainline episode we can mention. For real this time, we are doing the first episode on, uh, North America's first and debatably only democracy. That's the Haudenosaunee and the great law of peace. We're going to talk people, the long house civics, Haudenosaunee civic and history. And our next bonus episode is going to be on guns in Canada, because I'm annoyed at the lack of knowledge on the left about what firearm laws are here, and also kind of the history that guns have taken place, or that firearms have had in the country overall. But most are going to talk about- We'll talk about your Second Amendment rights.
01:12:02
Speaker
uh yeah also also i just i i i wanted to have a space to go through the go through some right-wing talking points about firearms in canada that are just really silly including people who quote the second amendment and dunk on my brothers-in-laws a bit i do not recognize the province of manatoba so i do not recognize the sovereignty of uh of the hudson's bay corporation over northern alberta company. There was no corporation. It was company. Oh yeah, it was company. Yes. Corporate structures were later. So anyway, that's a podcast. Thanks for listening and we'll see you just in a couple of weeks. Goodbye everybody. Bye.
01:12:56
Speaker
Schewinnegan Moments is written and recorded on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, Stolo, and Tsawatuth First Nations in what is otherwise called Vancouver.