White Lake ‘Godfather’ proud of observatory
EDITOR’S NOTE: In recognition of Canada’s 150th anniversary, The Herald is reprinting historic stories from the South Okanagan focusing on the biggest news story of each year.
June 21, 1960 – A 50-knot wind whistled down the White Lake Valley yesterday but failed to wipe cheerful smiles from he faces of Canada’s top scientists,
Principal speaker at yesterday’s gathering of top scientific brains was the Hon. Paul Comtois, minister of mines and technical surveys, who travelled from Ottawa to officially open the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory.
While the 150 special guests sat in the sand-whipped open Mr. Comtois said he came “not as a politician or a statesman, but as the godfather of this scientific project.”
Obviously proud of Canada’s latest tool for the exploration of outer space the minister said: “Man’s behaviour and achievements in the search for scientific truth are abortive search for peaceful coexistence among and within the nations of the world.”
Mr. Comtois said pride, prejudice, ambition and lust for power, and what they have engendered, have too often marred the history of man since his appearance on the earth.
“Science, on the other hand, possesses the happy faculty of not breeding prejudices. Would that all man’s endeavors were as peaceful, forward looking and rewarding as the type of project we are here to launch and witness this afternoon.” COMMON EFFORT Speaking of the five branches of his department Mr. Comtois said the Dominion observatories, the surveys and mapping branch, the geological survey, the mines branch and the geographical branch each had its own field of endeavor but “each has something in common with the other.”
Mr. Comtois told the audience his department now had some 2,500 full-time employees “working together as a team and with a sense of pride in the knowledge that the tasks they are performing as the kind that no young nation like Canada can afford to neglect without danger to its physical and economic well being.” Emphasizing that the White Lake project was no small segment of a large department Mr. Comtois said that radio-telescope was “A jewel added to the crown of the Canadian science endeavour.”
Referring briefly in the first great telescope on the North American continent, the optical telescope at Mount Wilson erected in 1904, Mr. Comtois said: “within five years of that telescope going into operation I am told it enlarged man’s conception of the universe a million-fold.”
“I feel it can be safely assumed that the studies in radio cosmology such as those that will he undertaken here will bring about some of the greatest contributions to man’s knowledge of the universe.”
Prior to the minister’s speech the gathering was addressed by E. W. R. Steacle, president of the national research council of Canada. GOOD HUMOUR Spicing his wind-tossed speech with good humor Dr. Steacle said as a chemist he often envied earth scientists and astronomers for the way in which they carry out their work in such beautiful surroundings.
“It may not be as windy in a laboratory, but neither is it so beautiful as this.” Dr. Steacle said the Canadian nation was rapidly coming into its own in all spheres of science. “In universities, governments and industry. The whole trend since the last war has been an encouraging one, and the opening of this laboratory today is another step along the road.”
Pointing to the complete revolution in science during the past 50 years, Dr. Steacle said that prior to that time science was “a game performed by amateurs for their own intellectual satisfaction. Invention, on the other hand, was performed by practical men steeped in the traditions of their crafts, and the crafts advanced empirically and exceedingly slowly.”
With the increasing importance of science to technology, Dr. Steacle said research had for the first time impinged on government policy. DIFFICULT PROBLEM “The fact that science, especially in international matters, is becoming increasingly bound with political decisions is raising many difficult questions. The fact is, however, that in all countries there has been a very great expansion of government effort in the past 20 years.”
At the conclusion of the speeches Mr. Comtois pressed a small button to set the massive parabolic antenna in motion.