50 YEARS AND OUT
Communications officer ends 50-year career with coast guard.
“And roger, Sydney Coast Guard Radio, out.”
With that final farewell followed by a standing ovation from his fellow workers, Blair Duhamel ended his 50-year career with the Canadian Coast Guard as a marine communications and traffic services officer on Friday.
Wearing a sports jacket instead of his usual uniform, Duhamel came in from vacation days (he’s not officially retired until July but is working through his vacation hours) to receive a cake and a special plaque signed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to commemorate a rare 50-year career in the service.
“If I can sum up my job in one sentence it was that no call for help will go unanswered. We are there for you,” Duhamel told his peers at his retirement reception. “And I was glad to do that for the last 50 years.”
But he couldn’t resist a quip before doing his final signoff.
“I could say that I was going to miss it but the last few weeks have shown me, nope, I don’t miss it at all,” he joked, while everyone laughed.
Duhamel’s career path began in 1967 when the Glace Bay native needed a job.
“I was fresh out of high school and I was applying for anything I saw in the newspaper so I applied at this job, not knowing what it was, but very glad I did. So for some reason, I came first in this competition that they put out for the whole Atlantic region so this was November of ’67 and they said in March of ’68 you’re going on a course and that’s where it all started.
He was hired as a radio operator, working in Morse code. It’s been said Duhamel thinks in Morse code and appropriately, he received and acknowledged the last message received on 500 kHz from a Cuban fishing vessel in 1999.
But some of the memories from the job are not so pleasant. On Dec. 8, 1989, he was working the night shift when a horrific storm went on a killing spree off northern Cape Breton.
“We had three vessels that went down that night,” Duhamel recalled. “It was a storm we had never seen in the Cabot Strait before — 30-foot waves and gale force or hurricane force winds.
“Three vessels got into trouble. We never heard from the fishing vessel, Johnny and Sisters — it just went down. And we had the Johanna B in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Capitaine Torres heading for Aspy Bay in Cape Breton trying to seek some shelter. But he (captain of the Capitaine Torres) was going back and forth, back and forth, listing from one side to the other and I spoke with him from the time I arrived on shift until about 3 in the morning I think it was when you didn’t hear from him at all after that.
“The coast guard boat was only about two miles away when suddenly the boat disappeared on the radar, it was just that rough out there. And even if they had come across survivors, which they did — they saw a lifeboat on the crest of a wave with people in it and then the next time they saw that lifeboat, there was no one in it. I spoke with the captain until the end. And his voice didn’t crack until we found out we had lost the other vessel, the Johanna B and then he thought ‘oh’ — he held up his hope, thinking ‘OK, if the other ship survives this storm, perhaps I can as well.’
“But it didn’t happen that way.”
Eventually Duhamel lost communication with the captain of the Capitaine Torres, which sank about 60 km north of Cape Breton. No one aboard any of the three vessels survived that night; an estimated 48 people died.
Duhamel says he was trained not to become emotionally involved when doing the job and that it’s necessary to be that way to get the work done.
“You have to remove yourself which I do when I go to work — I’m not me — I’m the radio operator on duty,” he says. “Outside the job, I’m another person altogether.”
And he’s looking forward to leaving the serious on-the-job personality behind as he begins his retirement years. He’s planning on spending time with his family and playing darts with friends.