Canada and Radio

Radio Record, Volume I, Issue 52, 13 July 1928, Page 2

Canada and Radio

THE BOON OF WIRELESS ns DRYNESS FAVOURS DX WORK ey no country more than Canais nas wireless broadcasting revolutionised the life of a large section of the om munity. To the lonely farmer, trapper, and prospector in the vast praixies ang northlands, wireless has meant 2 link vith the outside world. There ig searcely « farmhouse from coast to ecast without the magie little cabinet that sets the miles at naught. Musie and entertainment from the great «ities during the long winter evenings-max-ket reports, weather report, and the like during the day, are eagerly locked. for by the thousands who in former years made the annual trip tc town merely to renew old contacts, Undoubted blessing that it is, wiveless, so far as Canada is concerned, hag brought with it its share of prublems, Canada’s great southern neighbour, the United States, has established broadcasting stations at strategie points between the Pacifie and the Atlantie, th large majority of which can he heard by Canadian listeners. Thus ¢‘anadian stations have been foreed to improye the quality of theiz programme to attract listeners, bunt with the wireless enthusiasts there is always the lure of distance, To many, the qui ality of the programme is but a secondary eonsideration, the primary «onsiderstion being the distance from which it is heard, In Canada long-distance reception is possible with amazing «larity -perhaps due to the dry, cald air in winter, A POWERFUL chain of broadeusting ~ stations is maintained hy the Canadian National Railway, stretching from Moncton, New Bruuswick, in the east, to Ottawa; thence across the Great Lakes to Winnipeg; and finally to Vancouver. Wireless has become an integral part of Canadian national Hfe. Political speeches from both sides are broadeast during election campaigns, particular care being taken to give each side a fair hearing. So far, the question of broadcasting Parliamentary debates has not been . seriously mooted, but even that may come. Of the practical uses of wireless in Can.da there dre many. Ottawa is kept in daily communication with the far-flung northern police outposts situated in Canada’s Polar domain-one Within a few hundred miles of the Pole itself. Men of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who return from a year’s vigil in these solitary northern wastes, where winter is perpetual night, are unanimous in saying that. wireless has in recent years been the one factor that makes life worth living for them. At Christmas powerful broadeasting stations send them xeasonable wishes and messages from their loved ones, sometimes in the form of actual verbal greetings. One of the grimmer uses to which wireless has been put, has been ‘in aiding the police ix. the capture of criminals, To-day, the mounted policeman, no less than last century, "gets his man," for with a chain of wireless stations scattered strategically over the northland there is small chance of escave for the eviloer,