CBC Tower Near Nelson

CBC Tower Near Nelson

I always remember when television came to Nelson. They put what is called a repeater on the top

of Elephant Mountain, near a popular hiking trail. The repeater resembles the profile of an

elephant, even its tusk. Hikers walk to the top of the mountain, where there is a flag and from

where the hang-gliders took off on many occasions in the past. I was hired to survey the tower

sites, along with some CBC executives who came out from Montreal. They showed up in Nelson

in their business suits and Oxfords ready to climb to the top of the mountain, which was covered

with a foot or two of snow. I could not believe that these people failed to realize they were going

out in the bush. I had to lend them my own winter clothing.

They were flown to the top of the mountain in a helicopter. I did not go with them because the

helicopter would only take two people. They wandered around at the top of the mountain,

covering a great amount of terrain. But anyway, they picked a pretty good spot for the repeater

and designated it with a handkerchief tied to a branch of a tree. That was the only marker they

had.

Here’s a multimillion-dollar tower, important to the whole television service, and that’s how it

was decided where it should go. After the spot was chosen, I went up there with a CBC

technician to look at the site and get ready to survey it out for tenure. The only problem was we

could not find the tree they had marked. Luckily, this fellow had a small television set, and he

picked up a signal in one spot and decided that was where we were going to put the tower. So, it

was decided.

The next week I went up to survey the tower site. The snow was so hard, you could walk on it

like pavement. To get to the ground, a power saw was needed, and the crew had to cut a cube out

of the snow, shovel it out, and cut it small enough that we could shovel it. We did the survey, and

they built the tower. But when they finished building the tower, it did not work. It could not pick

up a signal from the next repeater tower, in Rossland.

We had to survey another site for a repeater about fifteen kilometres west of Nelson in an area

called Bonnington. They had to buy a prefabricated unit to put in there. And it had to be done in

short order. They had a month to do something that normally took six months or a year to do.

Once they had this tower at the top, they had to get power to it. That meant they had to connect

to the powerlines from down at the highway, just on the north edge of Nelson. This powerline

went up a very steep mountainside. I had to locate the position for the powerline.

The survey crew—two chaps—were helicoptered to the top of the mountain. On the first day, the

crew got about halfway down the mountain and ran out of daylight. They hiked out as best they

could. We had to go back up the next day, and they started where they had finished.

The helicopter could not land. It would hover on a steep hillside, staying far enough away from

the mountainside, so the blades would not hit the mountain. The fellows would stand out on the

runner and jump. One fellow jumped and was okay, but the second fellow chickened out. But he

had to be with his partner. The helicopter pilot circled back and told the fellow to jump. I still

remember him saying, “You jump or I'm going to kick you in the teeth.” He bashed at the fellow

somehow and threatened to hit him if he did not jump. The fellow jumped and he did not get

hurt. They finished the survey, but it was quite an experience for them. Once the survey was

done, tenders were called for a contract to build a powerline.

This was not my sole helicopter adventure. We had to land at a peak in the Nelson area, but it

was so small and so sharp that the helicopter guy had to come in close. I did not have to jump

very far, but I had to jump off the runner. I asked the pilot where he was going to land the thing

while I made the measurement. He just pointed out in the air. He just moved off and hovered. He

waited for me to do it, giving me about ten minutes to do my work.

And then he came back and hovered over the peak. I had to jump onto the helicopter, and he took

off again. And I'll tell you when you're up there, thousands of feet in the air, you get a little bit

jittery on occasion. It is not the safest thing to be doing. People are known to get into trouble. A

helicopter pilot at Nelson got himself killed by trying to do something like what the other pilot

had done. He got in too close to the mountainside, and the rotor clipped the mountain and

crashed. The government or the Workers Compensation Board would never have allowed us to

do the type of things we used to do. Nobody does these things anymore. Or at least I hope that is

the case.