Tárogató, 1950 (13. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)
1950-11-01 / 5. szám
16 TÁROGATÓ have more pianos to tune than they can handle. They concentrate on the town business, and rural musicians go begging for service. It’s a dying trade. No youngsters seem interested in taking it up, and yet Sir Charles Lindsay made a million dollars at it. Today the future is even brighter. Piano tuners are getting four dollars for each tuning, and making as much more on repairs. With an average of three pianos a day, it’s a good living wage. Many of the tuners are elderly and have been taught in factories where they began by chipping—a trade word that means plucking the strings laid on the new harp. They know of no better method of learning the trade, and have np time to spend in training an apprentice. By devising a means of tuning electronically, Masin & Risch in Toronto tried to compensate for the lack of trained men, but found such a mechanical method not thoroughly satisfactory. It could be used with success in the factory where pianos are brought to philharmonic pitch or four hundred and forty vibrations of the strings per minute, but in the home it was a different matter. Old pianos would be ruined if raised to such a pitch, and most home musicians don’t care for the high tuning. Pianos have often been looked upon as merely pieces of furniture, but radio has made us music conscious and education has taught us the joys of selfexpression. We are not going to let our pianos degenerate again to pieces of furniture. Someone in vocational guidance will stimulate the interest of students in such a remunerative trade, and our pianos will continue to charm us with their music. ON THE GASPE COAST At Riviere-aux-Renards, on the Gaspe coast, this veteran fiserman is mending herring nets. He also fishes for cod, which supplies not only much needed food supplies but the vital cod liver oil so valuable today in a world fighting the diseases which come from undernourishment. The war years and their aftermath have brought the Candian fishing industry to a new world-wide importance. Never perhaps since Norman and Breton fishermen first came to these shores, long before Gaspe had been permanently settled, has the fishing trade been faced with such great opportunities for advancement and service to mankind. Most of the first Gaspe settlers were fishermen who, after making the annual trip yearly across the Atlantic in little sailing vessels, finally dicided to make this their permanet home. Next came Acadians from Nova Scotia, driven out at the time of the expulsion. After the British took Canada, Channel Islanders came, then Royalists from the American colonies, and Scots and Irish settlers. Finally, Canadian Habitants from the older settlements worked their way eastward, and introduced farming in the fishing country. For long generations each settlement was largely isolated from its neighbours except by sea. Now modern motor roads have brought a new industry to the Gaspe—the tourist trade. Covered bridges; ox and dog carts; roadside shrines and the outdoor ovens of the scattered farmhouses; indeed, all the charms of rustic French Canada are present along with some of the world’s finest marine scenery to bring enthusiastic summer visitors back to the peninsula again and again. The Avro Canada Jetliner, America’s first jet transport, flew its first passengers on April 18th from Toronto to New York in about half the time taken by scheduled airliners flying the same 359 mile route. The Jetliner left Malton Airport at 9.30.04 A.M. and arrived at the New York Innternational Airport at 10.30 A.M. less than one hour later. Time taken by present-day propellordriven airliners is one hour and fifty minutes. * ❖ * Continued heavy demand for business and residential telephone service boosted telephone instalations in 1948 in Canada to an all-time high of 221,271 as compared with the previous peak of 204,- 479 in 1947. This raised the total of telephones in us in Canada to 2,451,868, a gain of nearly 10% over 1947 and an increase of 80% in the last ten years.
