A memoir of the CPR Telegraph office.(Gazette)

In 1942, the Winnipeg office of Canadian Pacific Telegraphs was a combination of vast space, strange noises, and a high level of human activity. It was located immediately above the CPR ticket office on the corner of Portage and Main. To the insiders this was known as a "commercial" office involved mainly with telegrams, cables, and dispatches for Canadian Press. It had little to do with the operations of the trains.

I reported for duty at 5:30 each afternoon and worked until one a.m. As soon as I had punched in on the time clock, I reported to the evening wire chief, Jack Greenway. Most evenings this friendly fellow just pointed to a far corner of the Morse section and said "The usual."

My usual assignment was distressing in the extreme. It was known as the 'casualty wire' for a stated reason; it dealt only with casualty messages reporting on sailors, soldiers, or airmen who had been killed, wounded, missing, shot down, or otherwise brutalized in the war in Europe.

This office, known as "WN," was a major transfer office. It received all the bad-news wartime telegrams for Manitoba and Saskatchewan and then re-transmitted them to their destinations.

I had been the subject of one of those casualty messages. When I was 18, I worked in WN as a Morse operator. I joined the navy as soon as war was declared. My naval career was cut shot in September of 1940 when the sub-chaser on which I was the "sparker" was involved in a mishap. The injuries I suffered caused me to spend 11 months in hospital in Halifax. I was one of the early "returned men" of WW2. I was now a student by day and a Morse man by evening.

For my entire shift, barring a 30-minute lunch break, I would copy telegrams on the identical format:

 
   Ottawa, Ontario, October 23, 1942. 
 
   MRS. HAZEL MONCRIEFF, 
   SPIRITWOOD, SASKATCHEWAN. 
 
   THE MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEFENCE 
   REGRETS TO ADVISE YOU THAT YOUR 
   SON, ABLE SEAMAN LESLIE MONCRIEFF, IS 
   MISSING, AND PRESUMED DEAD, FOLLOWING 
   THE SINKING OF HMCS WEYBURN ON 
   OCTOBER 19 1942. 
 
   (SIGNED) MINISTER OF NATIONAL 
   DEFENCE.