CBR Talks to the World

[cart_machine]

Our Tower of Babel
Broadcasts from Vancouver go in 14 languages around world
By Gil Clark
“Hello, Toronto and Montreal. This is Marce Munro in Vancouver. We have six stories for you tonight. . .”
The polished professional voice of CBR’s chief announcer goes out over 3200 miles of leased wires to the east, cuing up another bi-weekly “feed” of stories from British Columbia, stories which will be broadcast in one or more of 14 languages to the four corners of the world.
“First, for News Roundup in Toronto, a report from Bill Herbert in Tokyo and a story by Pat Keatley on a record herring catch on the Pacific coast. Then we’ll feed four stories to Montreal; Joan Lowndes with a story on hospital insurance for La Revue de l’Actualite; Matt Linfors reports on Vancouver’s traffic problem for the Swedish section of the International Service; Renate Kay has a story in German on the Victoria Community Chest; and finally, Mariella Marino talks about B.C. summer camps for the Italian Section.” In a cramped studio at CBR Vancouver the free-lance reporters sit tense and nervous, like patients in a dentist’s office. First Bill Herbert’s report, recorded earlier on tape, is fed. Then Pat Keatley sits down opposite Marce Munro and after preliminary cues, reads his two-minute Roundup.
Then the feed is switched to Montreal. The reports in Swedish, French, German and Italian will not be heard in Canada. From the Radio Canada building in Montreal they go by land-line to Sackville, N.B., thence are beamed by shortwave in prescribed directions. They are heard almost everywhere, as 50,000 letters a year testify, many of them from faraway points such as Japan and Patagonia.
Joan Lowndes’ story in French, which goes first to a Quebec network, then goes into the IS [International Service] pool, and may eventually turn up as a Swedish, Spanish or Portuguese transmission. It may even go over the air in Russian, the most recent language to be added to the Voice of Canada.
At one time and another Vancouver has contributed stories in 12 languages. Chief difficulty at CBR is to find suitable people to broadcast. Payment sounds high at first—$15 for three minutes—but there’s a catch. A good story may require hours, if not days, of researching, writing and checking. Then there is the actual time of rehearsal and broadcast.
There’s not even the consolation of hearing the broadcast of your own script either. Only a cheque, and once in a long while the thrill of seeing some of the IS fan mail. “Two languages,” writes Jose Ramos Carvalho of Brazil, “but only one heart—that is the Canadian people! You are winning more and more new friends and admirers for Canada. . .”
Vancouver Sun Magazine, Saturday, July 5, 1951
Also contains photos of various CBC freelancers and Marce Munro

filtched and transcribed by cArtie.