Chapter Fifteen The Sleepy Town Express Over the past fifty years, we have seen giant steps taken in the technology of industry and business. In the thirties this was just beginning to happen and people like my father realized that in order to take advantage of this burgeoning technology they would have to constantly improve the equipment. In the late thirties, the young engineer who accomplished this for CFCY was Merrill H. F. Young . Born in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia , he eventually joined the technical branch of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation but for a few years, he was Chief Engineer at CFCY. When John Quincy Adams waved a jaunty farewell and left for a new career in Montreal , Merrill came from the Company to fill the position. With nervous, compulsive energy and a tremendous technical knowledge, he first re-built the control room and studio equipment. The most modern microphones were purchased and new turn-tables and recording equipment obtained. Art McDonald describing all these changes in the promotion literature, called it "Equipment as modern as tomorrow". Like a giant heart, the control room regulates the sounds, the pulse of the programs and records the health of the organization. After Merrill was finished rebuilding it, the programs sounded noticeably different. We were now able to record on large sixteen-inch discs, quarter-hour shows or dramatized spot announcements. Back in 1939 we did it "without cost or obligation". Merrill then turned his attention to the transmitter. By now it was 129