CANADIAN TOUR

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27427, 13 August 1954, Page 11

CANADIAN TOUR

Duke Realises Ambition (Rec. 7 p.m.) YELLOWKNIFE, August 11. Ever since he was a boy, the Duke of Edinburgh has wanted to see the Canadian North, as he is doing now. The authority for that statement is the Duke himself. He broadcast last night from Yellowknife, 600 miles north of Edmonton, to the amateur radio stations scattered throughout the 1,000,000 square mile North-west Territories. He told his listeners: “Like many other boys, I read stories about Canada’s North-west and I have long had the ambition to see what it looked like.”

And there was a second reasons the 1951 Royal tour. “When the Queen and I were in Canada,” he added, “we heard a great deal about the new development in this vast area.” After a luncheon, featuring cold roast caribou and Arctic char, the Duke inspected a gold bullion furnace. Later, at a lake-shore resort about a mile from the town, a crowd of 1500 saw him join a queue to be served potato salad and “buffalo-bur-ger” at a community barbecue. Then he talked over the north’s “ham” network, starting with one of the most unusual introductions in the history of broadcasting by Royalty: “I am speaking to you from Yellowknife in the Great Slave Lake, in the Northwest Territories.”

His northernmost destination was Coppermine on the Arctic coast. There, as the first member of the Royal family to cross the Arctic Circle, he and more than 100 Eskimos grinned their way through the language barrier and parted the best of friends. The Duke flew the 700 miles across the northern Canadian wilderness to Churchill, on Hudson Bay, this even-, ing. His plane took off six minutes ahead of schedule and reached Churchill three minutes ahead of time, racing a fog which was forecast for the Churchill area.