History
Annex E - The Khaki Telco
COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN CORPS OF SIGNALS 1923 - 1959
INTRODUCTION
ARMIES - SOLDIERS - SIGNAL CORPS!
These words conjure up of images of battlefields, of gallant soldiers fighting to get the message through or, more recently, of technocrats controlling complex computer terminals. For many, they also invoke images of young Canadians in United Nations blue berets standing between adversaries in some godforsaken part of the world and doing their best to make the world safe for humanity. Depending upon your political stance the images may even be from a much less generous viewpoint! But
- the local telco?
- the regional communications carrier?
- the weather man?
- the commercial link to the outside world?
These are areas where you would least expect to find soldiers involved and yet, in Canada, that is exactly what they did. For thirty five years the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals was a highly successful and profitable commercial operation serving the needs of Canadians in an area almost as large as the continental United States.
BACKGROUND
How did this come about? To comprehend just what was done we must consider the effect terrain has on Canadian development, events at the time and the unique Canadian political psyche.
First, the terrain. Canada, the second largest country in the world, is a nation in many ways controlled and directed by the realities of its geography. 90% of Canadians have always lived within 100 miles of the American border. The remainder of Canada is sparsely populated and largely undeveloped. The North West Territories and Yukon Territory consists of mineral rich tundra and woodlands. There are extensive river systems many of which are navigable only during the short arctic summer. There were no roads worthy of the name and even today most of the region is dependant upon aircraft or a marginal summer boat system. Extremes of weather affect every aspect of northern life.
Until the advent of modern technology and a viable market there were no commercial communications in Canada's north. Nineteenth century communications, where they existed at all, consisted of word of mouth, courier or, for the fortunate few, mail delivery during annual resupply trips to the few trading centres. In 1897 though, the Klondike Gold Rush provided the catalyst to open up the North. This sudden boom was, in typical Canadian fashion, lawful, organized and very much under Canadian Government control. Along with the prospectors, merchants, speculators, gamblers, investors and others that a gold rush attracts came a large government infrastructure, police and justice systems, bureaucrats, land use controls and survey offices. 50,000 people flooded into the Yukon in the next two years. In 1898 the military was added when the Yukon Field Force was despatched to the Klondike to assist police in maintaining law and order. All these agencies were expected to operate effectively throughout a territory where, as late as the 1930s, twice annual mail delivery was considered "excellent service".
Even the gold rush had failed to generate a sufficient demand to support any commercial communications services. Isolated local telephone systems appeared but telegraph links between communities simply did not exist. Something more was needed and the Canadian Government was forced to create its own communications infrastructure, a Department of Public Works built and operated land line telegraph service.
Although the gold rush had faded by 1900 newly populated northern areas still required communications and the "operators" of the Yukon Telegraph Service remained to provide those services. Some YTS stations were still in place and serving the needs of some northern communities as late as 1945.
By 1922, a new problem appeared however, the Canadian Government, still struggling to pay for its share of the "War To End All Wars" had become strapped for cash. To the bureaucrats in Ottawa, the operating costs of the Yukon Telegraph Service had become excessive and, it must be admitted, their conclusion was justified, for example: the 1000 mile line from Hazelton British Columbia through Yellowknife to Dawson City alone cost $200,000 annually to maintain. The original 1890s "plant" was deteriorating, the iron and copper transmission lines, still in use, ran through wilderness where even animal migrations created special hazards. Add to this the harshest weather in the world, from summer heat with its swamps, muskeg and soft going to minus 50 degree winter storms which could snap the locally cut poles by frost action alone. By this time many lines were maintained by the expedient of stationing a lineman every 10 miles along the lines. These linemen did daily foot patrol inspections and made repairs as required. They often bridged gaps in the line by carrying written messages to the next transmission point. Many linemen fell victims to bears or weather. Other simply went "bush crazy". Simply put, another, more economical means of communications had to be found.
ENTER THE SIGNAL CORPS
The Royal Canadian Corps of Signals (RCCS) was, at that time ten years old and the senior signal Corps within the British Empire (later the Commonwealth). Its skills had been recently honed through four long years of conflict in Europe. It had even had arctic communications experience thanks to its participation in the 1919 Siberian Expeditionary Force, a multinational effort to stem the advance of Bolshevism. The Corps had just won a very close political victory which enabled it remain a part of the post World War I regular army and had then consolidated its control over all army communications, responsibility previously shared with the Royal Canadian Engineers. It had a well trained body of military communicators and a surplus of equipment. Now it needed a job to justify its existence!
The Government of Canada, looking to save money and to gainfully employ its "idle" army turned to the Signal Corps for a cost effective alternative to its expensive Yukon Telegraph Service land lines. High frequency radio was identified as the solution, no lines to break and, despite the difficulties of northern radio communications, superior circuit availability.
In the Summer of 1923 Major W.A. Steele and eight signalmen left Vancouver aboard the SS Princess Louise. From the Alaskan port of Skagway the proceeded via the White Pass and Yukon Railway to Whitehorse then by river boat to Dawson City and Mayo to set up the first North West Territories and Yukon Radio System (NWT&Y) stations. Sergeant Bill Lockhart was chief operator at Mayo and Sergeant Heath was his counterpart at Dawson. The stations used 120 watt transmitters which were set up in rented accommodation. For days the crews tried, unsuccessfully, to establish communications. Whether signals were blocked by Northern lights or arctic interference, equipment break down, who knows? For weeks no contact was made. Suddenly the squeal of morse code erupted from the receiver in Mayo. Sergeant Lockhart immediately replied. Dawson failed to acknowledge, its crew was too busy dancing for joy.
On Saturday, 20 October 1923 Dawson City and Mayo Land-ing stations opened for business. The North West Territories and Yukon Radio System (NWT&Y) was in business. It cost $1.50 to send a ten word day message or fifty word night message between the two communities. Fifty messages were sent the first day alone.
In October 1924 Fort Simpson went on the air and a terminal radio station opened in Edmonton. Telegrams from the north could now travel by radio to Edmonton where they were switched to the Canadian National or Canadian Pacific Telegraph Systems. With this added capability the radio system rapidly replaced the Yukon Telegraph Service land line as Dawson City's main link to the world.
Signals' NWT&Y commercial services began to generate revenues which made the Corps one of the few military financial successes. In 1924 profits amounted to $4,861.70, this after the costs of transporting men and materiel, renting accommodation, installing equipment and paying the men. Pay included a northern allowance of one hundred dollars a month, a princely sum at a time when the basic pay of a signalman was only twenty eight dollars a month.
In the summer of 1924 a need was identified to provide a station to support the whaling activities in the Beaufort Sea. Signalmen under Lieutenant H.A. Young (later a major-general and Canada's Minister of Public Works) travelled via the MacKenzie River to Herschel Island to set up a NWT&Y radio station. Their equipment was despatched separately via Vancouver in the Hudson's Bay Company ship, the LADY KINDERSLEY, which sank enroute in early August (this was unknown to the Herschel Island crew until they were advised by Inuit travellers in late December). A relief shipment sent from Edmonton in August 1924 also met with disaster on Great Slave Lake and was lost. The crew finally arrived in Aklavik in April 1925 to discover the "official" news of both disasters in their winter mail. Herschel Island finally opened as a summer station in 1926.
In late summer 1925 Fort Smith opened after considerable delays. The equipment destined for Fort Smith had been diverted to the Hudson's Bay Company SS DISTRIBUTOR to provide floating communications for the Governor General, Lord Byng, during his tour of the MacKenzie River that summer.
On 6 October 1925 Aklavik opened. It provided the only direct communication between the MacKenzie Delta and Southern Canada for the next 35 years.
In 1925 profits amounted to $18,993.93, in 1926 a whopping $25,649.60. In 1928 profits were up to $36,051.44. By then there were eight radio stations in operation (Edmonton, Fort Smith, Fort Resolution, Fort Simpson, Aklavik, Herschel Island, Dawson City and Mayo).
In 1929 Signals participated in an extensive aerial search for the lost McAlpine party of the North American Mineral Exploration Company. All were eventually rescued from the Cambridge Bay area.
By the end of the 1920s Fort Resolution, Fort Norman, Fort Chipewyan, Fort Rae, Cameron Bay, Camsell River had been added to the system.
By 1930 Signals had its own navy, the motorized schooner "VELOX" and a boat variously described as a barge or scow were supplied to provide transportation to and from Herschel Island, to haul wood into the settlement in the spring and for fall fishing. During this period Herschel Island was a summer station supported out of Aklavik. During its first season the Velox logged 1661 miles (using 442 gallons of gasoline) in some of the most difficult boating conditions possible. Early crew members included Sergeants Earl Hersey and Frank Riddle of "Mad Trapper" fame, and Staff Sergeant Cooke. When not in harbour meals were cooked on a coal burning stove installed on the barge. The Velox served the station until 1940 when it was transferred to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
In 1931 Signals provided weather reporting and ground - air communications services for the Lindburgh's polar flight. They also supported the Russian polar flights of 1933 and 1937.
On 31 December 1931 the man hunt for the "Mad Trapper of Rat River" began. On 16 January 1932 Sgt R.F. (Frank) Riddell and Sgt H.F. Hersey of NWT&Y Station Aklavik joined the RCMP "posse". After 48 days the incident ended on 17 February 1932 when the fugitive, presumed to be Albert Johnson, was spotted by Hersey. Hersey was seriously wounded by the fugitive before he, in turn, was shot and killed. Hersey was evacuated 160 kilometres to hospital in Aklavik by bush plane flown by "Wop" May, a famous bush pilot and World War I flying ace. In this case the Signals had got the Mounties man for them.
By 1933 the NWT&Y had twelve full time radio stations and one summer station. Settlements grew around these early stations and many of today's northern communities owe their existence to the early presence of a NWT&Y station.
Life in the Northern communities was not confined to assigned duties. Men of the system were often the sole government representatives in their communities and frequently the only source of first aid and medical support. They and their families became the real community leaders. The soldiers' wives, and those of the royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), were often the sole non native females for miles around. They frequently assisted their husbands and, in a desire to hear another feminine "voice", many became very proficient morse operators. It has been said that the radio net occasionally took on the aspects of a rural telephone line with everyone chatting, sharing the news and listening in. And occasionally this bonhomie broke down as emergency postings had to be arranged due to the inability of wives to get along. It was even necessary, at one station, to send an officer to restore order following a wifely inspired major breakdown of relations between the Signal and the RCMP detachments.
In 1934 Signals provided weather reporting and ground - air communications services for the ill-fated round world flight of Wiley Post and Will Rogers.
In 1937 the NWT&Y System provided communications support for the northern tour of the Governor General, Lord Tweedsmuir. Asked to book hotel accommodation for a famous American woman photographer covering the tour the Aklavik station arranged for her to have a newly decorated suite already occupied by a just-married Innuit couple. The hotel successfully relocated the bride before the photographer's arrival however, when the groom arrived after heavy celebrating with his buddies and let himself into the now reoccupied room, there was a major commotion. On hearing her scream signalmen at the hotel came to the woman's rescue and resolved the matter.
In August 1937 NWT&Y Station Fort Rae moved to Yellowknife.
As war clouds loomed on the horizon the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals came to the end of a period unique in Canadian military history. With the many services it had provided to the country the Corps was in the unique position of being the only branch of the Armed Forces that continued to expand during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was also in the rather unique position of being the one military activity which provided the Canadian Government with a net profit!
Stations were maintained in place throughout World War II and continued to provide commercial and weather services as well as taking on increased military responsibilities. Unfortunately information regarding the wartime period is very scare since stations were ordered to discontinue their diaries for the duration. In most cases this direction was complied with.
In December 1946 radio station "CHAK" went on the air at Aklavik. Built and initially operated by WO2 R.A. (Red) McLeod the station was a voluntary operation serving the MacKenzie River Delta. It initially had 30 watts of power, later upgraded to 100 watts, and operated on 1,290 Kilohertz. It received its licence in 1947. For many years there were no commercials and its sole source of income was a 25 cents contribution to broadcast personal messages.
Corporal Bud White of Fort Chipawayan, NWT&Y System, dove into a whirlpool in Lake Athabaska to rescue a carpenter, Nick Purves in 1949. He was awarded the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct for his actions.
During the winter of 1949- 50 the NWT&Y signal detachment at Ennadai Lake arranged the airlift of the Kazan River Inuit community. The group was in danger of starvation after the migrant caribou herds by-passed the area. The nomads returned the next year and were frequent recipients of the detachment's medical aid until the detachment closed three years later.
In May 1950 Signalman Mike Carter of Hay River, NWT&Y System, repeatedly risked his live crossing the ice-jammed Hay River to rescue a seriously ill Indian woman. He was awarded the King's Commendation for Brave Conduct for his actions.
From the commencement of operations members of the NWT&Y System reported numerous unidentified flying objects over our Canadian North. There were so many sightings in fact that, at one station, UFOs took second place to indoor plumbing in the station's diary of significant events. On 2 December 1957 the following incident report was sent from Aklavik:
"AK 297 SITREP PF UNOFFICIAL INVESTIGATION CONFIRMS THAT AT 0900Z 27 NOV AKLAVIK EXPERIENCED AN EARTHTREMOR SEVERE ENOUGH TO SHAKE BUILDINGS WHICH IS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN CAUSED BY A LUMINOUS OBJECT OF TWELVE INCH DIAMETER TRAVELLING NORTH AND FALLING TO EARTH PD THE OBJECT WAS SEEN BY TWO NATIVES AND THE YELLOW LIGHT WHICH LUMINATED THE WHOLE AREA FOR TEN SECONDS WAS ALSO SEEN BY A WHITE WOMAN EMPLOYEE OF HBCO PD THE TREMOR WAS FELT BY NUMEROUS WHITE AND NATIVE PEOPLE
STACMDR
CFM ACK 297 0900Z 27"
It should be noted that racism, well deplorable, was a common condition in the early north. In this instance the fact that a white woman saw the object validated an otherwise native report. Even in the Mad Trapper incident described earlier one of the participants commented that the incident was magnified because the RCMP constable "spoke to Johnson as if he was a native rather than a white man".
In 1954 Signals provided communications for the northern tour of HRH the Duke of Edinburgh and, in 1956, for the northern tour of the Governor General, the Right Honourable Vincent Massey.
On 2 August 1956 the transmitter building at Aklavik burned down.
In June 1957 the last station to join the NWT&Y, Aklavik East Three, opened at the future Inuvik site. Inuvik, a planed community, later became the new government seat and communications hub for the entire MacKenzie River delta.
TERMINATION OF THE SYSTEM
In September 1957 The Canadian Government ordered Signals to turn all 28 stations of the NWT&Y Radio System over to the Federal Department of Transport. By this time the NWT&Y had an net paper income of $5 million a year from charges for commercial messages. Fort McMurray went first while Resolution, turned over on 25 March 1959, was the last NWT&Y station to close. At 1700Z, 9 August 1959 the defunct Aklavik site was officially handed over. By the summer of 1960 the Signal corps had withdrawn from all sites. An era had come to an end. For the men of the system it meant return to soldiering, to the drill, discipline and close supervision of a peace time army.
For the Canadian north however it signalled the start of a technological boom, as the Canadian Department of Transport rapidly turned its new responsibilities over to the commercial telcos. In 1960 Canadian National Telecommunications installed a tropospheric scatterwave (troposcatter) system to link up with Distant Early Warning (DEW) line stations in Canada's north and in the process, improved civilian communications. Microwave and satellite soon followed. Technology and the commercial market had finally advanced to the point where the provision of commercial communications for Canada's north had become viable. The closure of the North West Territory and Yukon system marked the milestone where the military went from the provider of communications to become a major customer. Today's services provided by NorthwesTel and Canadian National are, in many ways, the descendants of
The Khaki Telco!
STATION DIARIES
(Original copies held by C & E Museum)
| Station | Period From | To |
|---|---|---|
| Aklavik (includes: Herschel Island, Tuktoyaktuk, Inuvik) |
July 1925 | August 1959 |
| Baker Lake | February 1945 | December 1949 |
| Beaverlodge Lake | July 1945 | December 1959 |
| Brochet | August 1948 | February 1956 |
| Cameron Bay | July 1944 | March 1960 |
| Dawson | Summer 1923 | February 1960 |
| Edmonton | October 1924 | September 1959 |
| Ennadai Lake | Summer 1949 | September 1954 |
| Fort Chipewayan | October 1933 | September 1958 |
| Fort Norman | August 1930 | January 1959 |
| Fort Rae | 1931 | August 1937 |
| Fort Resolution | June 1927 | March 1960 |
| Fort Simpson | October 1924 | September 1958 |
| Fort Smith | Summer 1924 | October 1958 |
| Goldfields | March 1936 | December 1939 |
| Good Hope | July 1944 | 1959 |
| Hay River | November 1944 | December 1958 |
| Mayo | Summer 1923 | February 1960 |
| McMurray | May 1933 | September 1958 |
| Norman Wells | November 1943 | April 1959 |
| Providence | November 1943 | March 1959 |
| Reliance | March 1948 | March 1959 |
| Whitehorse | February 1935 | January 1951 |
| Wrigley | September 1948 | May 1945 |
| Yellowknife | October 1937 | November 1958 |
| Cansell River | No diary held |
Next: Annex F - Post World War II Radar in Defence of Canada
