Locals reflect on moon landing a half-century on

The moon mission bled into many facets of life, seen in cartoons and column inches of papers of the day. They described the astronauts as “tourists before a TV audience”

In the Battlefords News-Optimist, Irwin McIntosh wrote how “the only good news in July had come from the moon” as the world wheat crisis worsed each day.

In Prince Albert, the historic moment spawned impromptu house parties, according to the Daily Herald. Groups of relatives or friends, the paper said, congregated at the homes of those fortunate enough to have colour television – though the actual moon walk was in black and white.

Marg Jasper wrote (after understandably misquoting Armstrong’s famous words) that “the unsophisticated and those who had failed to do their homework – and there were many of us – hardly knew what to expect. One young lady had probably read too many science fiction stories and during the moon walk, kept seeing figures that weren’t there.”

Volunteer archivist with the Prince Albert Historical Society Ken Guido looks at the front page of the P.A. Herald the day after the lunar landing. He was at a work camp in Manitoba that day and remembers listening to events on the radio while drinking a few cold ones with workmates.

One man who well remembers watching the lunar landing as it was part of his job is Jim Scarrow, the famous long-time broadcaster and former mayor of Prince Albert.

He was a technical director in the summer of 1969 working for CKBI’s TV station on 10th Street West. He drove back from a family holiday in Waskesiu to be part of something special. He worked with an engineer that Sunday to ensure there were no technical glitches while receiving the international television feed.

“But I also just wanted to watch and be part of such a momentous occasion,” he said. “There were ample opportunities for glory [for the NASA crew] but also for tragedy. These were very early days; the computer knowledge at that time was insignificant and the stories go that the astronauts were still doing calculations by hand.”

Prince Albert’s Jim Scarrow was a technical director at the CKBI TV station in 1969 and came to work that Sunday to be part of the momentous occasion. (submitted photo/Jim Scarrow)

Scarrow remembers the reaction from the first people in the community he encountered following the extraordinary ‘giant leap for mankind’ made by Neil Armstrong. He went to the old Avenue Hotel to buy a pack of cigarettes as it was one of the only places open on a Sunday.

“There was a group of old codgers sitting around a black and white TV set during one of the lags in transmission because the orbiter had gone to the far side of the moon. One of them said ‘you know, the darn thing was probably put together in Hollywood.’”

Scarrow said the man was merely expressing the thought of many at that time.

“This was unbelievable, it just seemed like science fiction. It was just beyond the reach of our minds.”

Cartoons in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix following the moon landing in 1969. (City of North Battleford Historic Archives)

For 1050 CJNB midday announcer Jack Ross, working in industry at the time and witnessing man go to the moon was simply unbelievable.

“There was a sense of optimism. They placed a plaque on the moon that said we came in peace for all mankind and that resonates through the years,” he said.

While his memory was shaky on any special programming for the event, Ross jokingly maintained CJNB was routinely producing “out of this world programming, especially in the super summer of 69.”

“It was a great time,” he said. “Being in media was a lifelong ambition and it was so exciting and particularly the fact that wow this is happening in the world we are going to the moon and here we are telling you the news and bringing it to you.”

He watched the landing on TV along with around 530 million people, or one-third of the world’s population at that time.

That summer, he said, was also a big time in his life. While NASA planned to sail into space and land in the Sea of Tranquility, he and some colleagues were reading to make their own journey across the pond for a six-month trek in Europe.

Transcripts of Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and the team back on Earth were printed in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix. (City of North Battleford Historic Archives)

Norm Horne lives in La Ronge but was based in Prince Albert that July as a chemistry teacher at the then technical high school, a precursor to Carlton Comprehensive.

“My family and the neighborhood, probably about 10 of us, were huddled around our 20-inch TV to watch what I can only describe as an unbelievable thing,“ he recalled. “It was just amazing to see them step off that lunar module [onto the moon].”

Horne reflects on how everything in our modern, everyday lives, such as personal computers and calculators, are an off-shoot from the NASA space program and the monumental Apollo 11 mission.

While he agrees the exploits of the astronauts were an inspiration to his young students, he also remembers the euphoria wearing off pretty quickly. It was mid-summer after all and kids had other distractions. He figured the amazing rescue mission of the ill-fated Apollo 13 space flight nine months later engaged the public even more than that first landing on the moon.

And he remembers, with some humour, that the scientific enormity of July 1969 clearly didn’t resonate with every student.

“Sometime later I had a quiz in class, and one of the questions was ‘What was the significance of Apollo 11?’” Someone wrote: ‘He was a Pope in Rome.’”

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tyler.marr@jpbg.ca, glenn.hicks@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @JournoMarr, @panow

by Tyler Marr and Glenn Hicks

Locals reflect on moon landing a half-century on

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