At Heritage Park, the Morse Telegraph Club's junior members are keeping the code alive

CTV News

4 days ago

Arianne Aubin,14, and Sienna Wright, 15, are members of Heritage Park's Morse Telegraph Club, sharing the craft of Morse code.
It's a series of dots and dashes that, to the trained ear, spell words.
Morse code is used at Heritage Park by the Morse Telegraph Club, whose members volunteer and teach visitors how it works today and, more importantly, how it worked in the past.
'It's a dying art,' said Marilyn Maguire, head of the club.
'People who did it as a job are in their late 80s, some of them in their 90s; there are a few that have picked it up and learned in their 70s, but this is the only club internationally that has been working with young people.'
While the club has members who are retired and volunteer at the park, it also has teens who've signed up and want to learn the craft.
'I'm fascinated by the past,' said Sienna Wright, 15.
'I really like learning how things were done and dressing up like the past, so I really enjoy doing this.'
She says the dots and dashes come easy to her, and she will decode a message by writing out those characters and then translating them to letters.
'Hearing it is a little bit more difficult than sending it because you know what you're saying; you know how to send it easier,' she said.
'But listening to it, you don't know what the other person is saying, so it's harder to understand.
'But with practice, it gets easier.'
Arianne Aubin, 14, enjoys interacting with the public at the park and showing them what their names look like in Morse code.
'We'll write their names in Morse code, and we will demonstrate and then they can try it themselves,' she said.
'We do a lot of that with the kids' summer camps or sort of just anyone that shows up—adults, too.'
Aubin's sister is also a member, and the two enjoy sharing messages at home or school that no one else can understand.
'It's kind of fun. I've texted my sister in Morse code before. I've also tapped between our walls at home. So, it's sort of like our own little thing that no one else really understands,' she said.
Aubin says Morse code was invented in the 1840s and was one of the only jobs then where men and women were paid the same wage.
She sees value in keeping the craft alive.
'I think it's pretty important to sort of keep the history going and pass it down,' she said.
'We have people come in that say their grandparents used to do it, and it's sort of nice for a newer generation to continue a bit of the history.'
Volunteer Ken Ashmead says the club started in 2019 and visitors to the park were keen to see them communicate.
'We call it American Morse code to differentiate it from international or radio Morse code,' said Ashmead.
'The railroads primarily used it to transmit trade orders from a dispatcher; that was the chief reason, and they weren't using it all the time, so any extra capacity in the system was for telegrams.'
Ashmead says it's a challenge to listen to and decode a message containing important information.
'You do not want to have to get orders repeated because you didn't (understand) it,' he said.
'So most operators got really good at it pretty quick or you didn't last; you had to be able to receive and send with reasonable accuracy. That meant few to no errors and 15 words a minute.'
Maguire is also on the board for the Morse Telegraphy Club and says other chapters are desperate to learn how she's been able to get young people involved.
'When I come to the meetings, they say, 'Marilyn, how do you get those kids involved? What are you doing? We need to do the same,'' she said.
'But it hasn't happened yet anywhere else.'
To learn more about upcoming events for the Morse Telegraph Club, you can sign up for the Heritage Park newsletter.