APTED o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-12-26 published
He was the voice of the land
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcaster oversaw radio programming
that connected the country's isolated agricultural and fishing
communities
By Carol COOPER,
Special to The Globe and Mail Friday, December
26, 2003 - Page R15
It wasn't a great beginning. Racked with nerves during his first
on-air stint for a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-Winnipeg
radio agricultural show in 1944, Bob
KNOWLES gabbled the market
reports in a record three minutes, instead of the scheduled 10,
with the result that his boss had to spend the next seven minutes
rereading them.
"I don't suppose anyone made any sense out of anything I'd read,"
Mr. KNOWLES told the Regina Leader Post in 1981.
Many voice and elocution lessons later, Mr.
KNOWLES became an
accomplished and well-loved farm broadcaster, who won the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation farm department's Cowhide Trophy for
proficiency in broadcasting in 1951 and then rose through the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ranks to become the national
supervisor of farm and fisheries broadcasts.
Mr. KNOWLES, who in that capacity, oversaw programs such as Country
Calendar, Country Magazine, Summer Fallow and the daily agricultural
noon-hour shows, died in his sleep recently. He was 83.
Farm shows on radio and television offer up-to-date market information,
advice on growing crops and raising animals, and news on the
latest agricultural research from the universities to their busy
and isolated rural audience. In days gone by, when many more
Canadians made their living from the land without modern communication
methods, radio farm shows were particularly important.
As national supervisor of farm and fisheries broadcasts, and
chair of National Farm Radio Forum's executive committee for
a number of years, Mr.
KNOWLES contributed to one ground-breaking
Canadian show. Launched in the early forties as an adult-education
program for farmers, Farm Radio Forum brought farmers, their
wives and often their children together in an early version of
interactive radio. Gathering weekly throughout the winter in
living rooms, kitchens and community halls across the country,
they listened to the show's broadcasts.
After hearing a panel discussion, the group discussed questions
presented in study guides. A secretary recorded answers, which
were sent back to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, some
to be aired the following week. Their responses helped shape
agricultural policy across the country and initiated several
projects, said Rodger Schwass, a former national secretary of
Farm Radio Forum and professor emeritus from York University.
As its chair during the late fifties and early sixties, Mr.
KNOWLES
helped choose show topics and panelists and became involved in
one of its projects, Radios for India.
Forums across Canada raised money to help start a radio forum
in India, one of several countries, including Jamaica, Belize,
Ghana and Nigeria that adopted the Canadian idea. When the head
of Indian radio came to Canada for three months to study radio
forums, Mr.
KNOWLES shepherded him around the country. In turn,
Mr. KNOWLES participated in a training program in India. Radio
forums became the chief means of disseminating information during
India's Green Revolution, which ended up doubling the country's
food production.
Robert Gordon
KNOWLES was born on February 5, 1920 to Gordon
and Catherine Finn
KNOWLES on the family's homestead in Rutland,
Saskatchewan. The family had settled there from Ontario in 1907,
in the town that no longer exists, roughly 160 kilometres west
of Saskatoon. Affected by mild cerebral palsy resulting from
a difficult birth, Mr.
KNOWLES walked with a mild limp and was
unable to use his right hand.
Although Mr.
KNOWLES wanted nothing more than to become a farmer,
his father feared his son's disability would make that difficult.
Instead, he encouraged Mr.
KNOWLES to continue his education.
Upon completing his B.Sc. in agriculture at the University of
Saskatchewan in 1942, and with a low service rating because of
his disability, Mr.
KNOWLES did not enlist during the Second
World War. Instead, he completed his master's degree in agriculture
at the university in 1944, where he had met Pat
APTED, an honours
graduate in arts and biology, whom he married in 1943.
With so many men overseas, Mr.
KNOWLES had three job offers upon
graduation: as a district agriculturalist in Alberta, as a land
inspector for the Canadian Pacific Railway, or as a western farm
commentator with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. He chose
the people's network. "At that time, the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation was only eight-years-old and it seemed like a very
glamorous position," Mr.
KNOWLES told the Vernon Daily News in
After his first position in Winnipeg, he transferred to Edmonton
for a similar job, staying nine months, before returning to Winnipeg
as regional farm-broadcast commentator in 1950.
Of his early days in broadcasting, Mr.
KNOWLES told the Vernon
paper, "I made my work pass the following test: Is it of interest
and value to the farmer to know about this and why? I think I
did all right because I've been criticized equally by all farm
organizations at one time or another."
In 1954, Mr.
KNOWLES and his family packed up and moved to Toronto,
where he became the assistant supervisor of farm and fisheries
broadcasts and 19 months later, the supervisor.
Not only did he manage the section's budget, set its policy and
advise regional announcers across the country, but at least once
provided the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation with a breaking
story.
In 1963, Mr.
KNOWLES and most of the network's farm department
were on a flight that crashed during landing at Toronto International
Airport.
Uninjured, Mr.
KNOWLES left the plane to be put into a holding
room with fellow passengers. Once there, he demanded to call
home to reassure his wife and young family. Granted the privilege,
he immediately called the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
newsroom.
In 1967, with a major network restructuring under way, Mr.
KNOWLES
took a three-year leave of absence to work for the Food and Agriculture
Organization in Rome on the development of farm broadcasts.
Upon returning to Canada, he found his job had disappeared. Mr.
KNOWLES took the only Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-Radio
farm commentator's job available, where he reported, wrote and
delivered approximately 6,000 broadcasts for Radio Noon in Regina,
until his retirement in 1980.
Said Bonnie
DONISON, producer of Radio Noon. "Because he was
so friendly and warm, people really liked to talk to him and
And he held some interesting interviews, once with a trouserless
federal minister of agriculture, Otto
LANG.
Mr.
LANG had ripped
his pants getting out of a taxi, so he removed them, sent them
aside for mending and carried on, recalled Gerry
WADE, a fellow
farm-broadcaster who worked with Mr.
KNOWLES in Regina.
Of his broadcasting career, Mr.
KNOWLES told the Vernon Daily
News, "I can honestly say that during all of my time as a journalist,
there never was a day I didn't want to go into work."
Mr. KNOWLES also helped create the Canadian Farm Writers Federation
and was inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame
in 1990.
He died on November 5 in Ottawa. His first wife Pat, predeceased
him in 1997. He leaves his second wife Marney, children Tony,
Laura, Alan and Janet, seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
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