Oh, the extemporaneous joys of live-event production. Where Murphy’s Law generally applies to these sorts of projects, when you take the show to an incredibly remote location where even the basic infrastructure for broadcast production is non-existent, that law becomes survival of the fittest, the luckiest and the bravest.

Here, Howard Rosen, head of Toronto’s Roadhouse Productions, recounts how the company added the role of Host Broadcaster to its cv the hard way; pulling together a broadcast which would be seen by an estimated 1 billion people around the world using the wits of production personnel, an Air Force base, 60,000 pounds of gear, and the talents of the crew and various other contributors.

Toronto, March 8, 6:30 p.m.: Receive a call regarding our interest in staging, producing and being Host Broadcaster for Nunavut Protocol on April 1 (23 days away!).

7 p.m.: Meet to discuss the Event with (cbc) Indian Affairs rep on project. Event involved working with the pmo, Governor General and Indian Affairs and Northern Development Office in Iqaluit, Baffin Island regarding staging and broadcasting the ceremony establishing and celebrating the start of the new territory on April 1.

cbc was to provide production services but was unable to because of the technicians’ strike.

I was told there were ‘some’ logistical issues, including that in three weeks a soundstage and broadcast facility had to be built in the C-18 air force hangars, that all equipment and personnel had to come from the ‘south,’ and that we were to set up a media centre for 250 international media and broadcast live via satellite to the international broadcasters.

I appreciated being asked. When I asked why, I was told we were recommended as a result of past event work, knowledge of productions, experience with crews and atypical situations (and, we suspect, they thought we were dumb enough to accept this task). So, of course, I said yes.

Toronto, March 8, 10:00 p.m.: Call to make sure Michael Watt, cohead of our live event division, is available to direct and help put it together.

Toronto, March 9, 8 a.m.: Start rearranging my schedule to clear out the month of March to deal with the production and call some key crew for availability that day.

10 a.m.: I’m presented with six binders of the ‘summary information’ previously put together on the project.

I get my first glimpse of the logistical issues: Department of Works has started building, but there are no approved plans…this is the start of many calls each day for the next 22 days.

Second logistical issue: most key crew we have used before are working on the Juno Awards, the rest are working on the Mike Bullard show.

Operation Borrow Crew begins (to the credit of every single person, when told the nature of the project, all crew who were working at the time agreed to work with us and make alternate arrangements for their ‘day’ job).

Toronto, March 10: Find a line producer, Dee Quinn, who was invaluable and obviously had the same lobotomy as Michael and I.

Production issues are quickly mounting: we need a set of plans for the soundstage and broadcast facility (there is a cad/cam color still of a set, and some rough blueprints, but no dimensions whatsoever). It is clear we need to immediately go to Iqaluit and scout it out and bring key crew

Toronto, March 11: Find out there is only one airline that flies to Iqaluit, out of Ottawa, and materials (cargo) can take up to seven days to get up there, depending on weather and priority situations.

Figuring the mathematics of the event occurring on April 1, and needing at least some rehearsal and needing to build the set and set up lights, etc., we realize that we have nine days to get designs/plans approved and built for shipment to Iqaluit.

Somewhere over Hudson’s Bay, March 12, 10:30 a.m.: I am sitting on a direct flight to Iqaluit with 10 key crew, deep-cold parkas, battery-heated mittens, and not a deal memo or agreement in sight (although we had no time to put this together, we were still working on government time on the contracting side, so I didn’t have any written agreement, therefore, I couldn’t have any deal memos signed). These people are working on good faith, a sense of adventure and, most importantly, a strong sense of humor.

Iqaluit, March 12, 12:00 p.m.: We land in the coldest, most desolate part of the world that I have ever seen. As I walk down the stairs to the outside from the back of the plane to the one-gate terminal building, it is quite evident that there is absolutely nothing here in terms of requirements for this kind of operation.

Sans doute, everything does have to come from the south and if it isn’t planned and shipped several days in advance, we just won’t have it.

Crew issue: we need to bring engineers who, in a crunch, have the ability to make a camera out of a fork and caribou bone.

Iqaluit, March 13: Tour the town (about the size of Cabbagetown in Toronto) and the airforce base. The base is comprised of a maintenance garage (later to become the media centre) and six CF-18 jet fighter hangars (Hangar #1 is for the dignitary entrance and the Governor General’s review of the Northern Rangers, dignitary overflow seating and craft service; Hangar #2 is to become the soundstage; Hangar #3 is to become the broadcast centre; Hangar #4 is more overflow, and Hangars # 5 & #6 are for other celebratory events).

The first things we are shown are the emergency foam tanks that were designed to fill each hangar with fire retardant foam (20 feet deep) within five seconds of exposure to heat from as small a source as a match. We suggest these be turned off. We are also shown the ‘scramble doors,’ which are 60 feet wide by 30 feet high, weigh 12 tons, and can open in 7.5 seconds for the jets to ‘scramble’ out to the runway; I decide not to sit on that side of the hangars.

Iqaluit, March 13-15: We spend the next few days taking physical measurement of the space and measurement of the town and situation. By the 18th, we need to have everything at First Air for cargo shipment to Iqaluit and from the Iqaluit airport to the base.

What we are talking about is enough lumber to build a stage, elevated camera booths for broadcasters and commentators, enough lumber to build a broadcast centre with three tv control rooms, three radio control rooms, three interpreter booths, dressing rooms, production offices, washrooms (this in a part of the world where bushes don’t even grow), enough curtain to encompass the 60x30x30 soundstage for soundproofing, 35,000 pounds of lights, 20,000 pounds of control room equipment (couldn’t bring up trucks because of the wiring freezing and snapping at night).

These people don’t know what hit them.

Another minor issue is telephones. They have 300 available land lines and 250 cell phone circuits. With 1,500 people (government officials and media) descending on this town, we know telecommunications will not be smooth.

The cell phone issue is simplified rather quickly when we realize none of our phones works, although service had supposedly started one month prior. We are told time and time again that the problem is Bell Canada and not Northwest Telephone.

Panic is setting in. It is only the location scout and we already can’t communicate with each other or the ‘mainland.’

We become suspicious of the real issue when some media representatives from Quebec have no problem with their phones. It is only when a chance scan by a Northwest Tel employee in Yellowknife notices a message pad loaded with messages from one of our production people that fortunes change. It turns out that this employee dated our production person 10 years earlier and called to ‘catch up.’

We then learned the truth: Northwest Tel had ‘lost’ the disc that listed all Bell Canada Ontario cell exchanges and therefore the computer couldn’t let them ‘roam.’

Our newly reacquainted friend in Yellowknife solved our immediate problem by manually inputting all our cell numbers into the system. You could literally see them start working one by one through the increasing cacophony of ringing messages.

All the while, we are slowly putting together the best crew in the country by begging, borrowing and stealing from other productions. What also becomes quite clear very quickly is that as Iqaluit is quite a small town (pop. 4,000) with very limited facilities and accommodation, we need to have someone up here full time immediately just to deal with this – acquainting themselves with the town politics and dealing with the co-ordination issues.

I’m very fortunate to convince (the first three letters being con) Julia Weinstein, who is a line producer, to be my production co-ordinator in Iqaluit. Of a number of miracles she performs, she’s able to upgrade our accommodations from army barracks (20 to a barracks) to living in college dorms (six to a room with the Inuit Elders) to actual motel rooms (two to a room). The town has approximately 200 motel rooms for 1,500 anticipated visitors; it is not a pretty sight.

Then there’s the issue of food. We met a very enterprising fellow up here, Doug Lem, who does a number of things including cater the food to First Air, Nunavut events, sports events and, of course, he’s town councilor.

Doug is the caterer for our band of warriors. Now knowing in advance that conditions are not the best (temperatures bouncing from -40C to +1C and back to -40C) and having limited access to alcoholic beverages, we want the food to be palatable. The best way to describe the result is in comparison with another Nunavut production that was to happen after ours: their production people (who didn’t make a deal with Doug) were sitting on set pieces with boxed peanut butter and jam sandwiches, an apple and a canned drink.

Doug, using dividers and curtains, creates a dining room in the Air Force hangar (#1 for those keeping track) with linen tablecloths, stainless steel cutlery, linen napkins and a choice of fresh salads, at least two meat dishes (i.e. Caribou stew, steak), a seafood dish (i.e. amazing mussels, arctic char (flown in daily from about 500 feet away), fresh fruit plates, and at least one decadent cake/pastry. Two meals of this per day have an amazingly soothing effect, particularly with the events to come.

Toronto, March 15-17: Scramble to have the set built in Toronto then taken apart for transport to Iqaluit.

In the midst of plan approvals for the set and broadcast centre, a lone voice from somewhere is heard when the questions arise regarding having enough electrical power for these two areas.

In a matter of minutes it becomes clear that the dpw people, who we understood were responsible for electrical, had thought we were responsible for electrical.

So, on March 16, Kelly Jones, our extremely able lighting director, collects all the power requirements for staging the event as well as from the various broadcasters which would be using the control rooms we are building. We will be using twice as much power as is available from the Air Force base generators.

Great panic and many calls over the next two days results, with Kelly driving an extra generator from Toronto to Ottawa to get it on a plane to Iqaluit. (It is only when the generator made it up there that we were informed that the base only used the generator if there was a town shortage… That’s right, the base actually had an unlimited supply of power from the town.

In the midst of all this, as we are also host broadcaster, we need to act like a host broadcaster. Now, not having performed this specific function before, there is a pretty serious learning curve in a rather short period of time.

To provide support in this area, I call Bob Bleasby at Toronto’s DOME Productions to see if I can borrow a technical producer and engineer or three to help. We not only have to ensure that the broadcast facility is in place, but also that the media have their feeds in the booths and media centre, in the three official languages of Nunavut (English, French and Inuktitut).

We also have to ensure there’s a media centre, that there are camera/commentator positions, and that we get the feed to the main satellites and operating centres.

We are given a crash course in three weeks about uplinks, downlinks, microwave transmission and related insurance. We learn about uplink insurance and downlink insurance. We also learn insurance companies know less than we do about this insurance.

Iqaluit, March 23: Arrive in Iqaluit and the fun begins… The key structures are up and now we have to set up lights and facility hook-up begins. We check and double check all 60,000 pounds of equipment and boxes and all seem to be in order.

Iqaluit, March 24: Crisis #??? Although we have all the lights and related ‘hook-up equipment,’ we don’t have the lighting grid to which everything is attached. It isn’t in any of the other hangars, it isn’t at the airport, and in fact, it isn’t anywhere in the territory. We know it made it to the airport in Ottawa; they confirmed that it had flown, but no one knew where to.

Over the next six hours panic sets in. It gets to the point that all the insurance companies become involved and a second grid is being prepared for a flight from Montreal. Our original grid is found in a terminal building in a small stopover town in Northern Labrador (how it got there is a whole other story) and sent over on the next flight (being Iqaluit that means the next day).

Iqaluit, Hangar #2, March 27: As the lights and grid are being put together, the fire marshal arrives for his many daily inspections and notes that the placement of some of our sound and lighting racks is partially blocking an emergency exit route from the soundstage. This is quickly resolved by moving into a new out-of-sight location behind the stage.

Lights are completed and the next day we’ll begin set building and the programming of the lights.

Iqaluit, Hangar #2, March 28: Now that the grid is up, we commence building the stage. I blithely go for a quick bite in Hangar #1. Within 10 minutes, I see the entire lighting and sound crew having coffee (who, I foolishly thought, should be working the lights and sound check).

Apparently, the spot we had been moving the racks to is in the way of the set building and they have to be dismantled while the set is being built. Therefore, lighting and sound programming cannot happen and so we give them the day off (a lot of Inuit art is bought and poker played that day. . . )

Iqaluit, Hangar #3, March 29: Control rooms are built and tested. All of a sudden there is a quick flash of lights and power surging. Apparently the base was testing its power/generators and no one bothered to let any of us know. Just about blew every piece of equipment we had.

Iqaluit, satellite uplinks/insurance (ongoing issue): The insurance company has a number of concerns about this production. The first one is the safety of the $5-million worth of equipment we are flying up here. It takes a number of discussions for them to accept (believe?) that the location is on an airforce base, in a fairly secluded locale, protected 24 hours per day by 12 Armed Forces personnel.

Once satisfied, they want to know about satellite transmission. More specifically, since we are the host broadcaster, we are responsible for ensuring the signal actually makes it to the satellite and downlinks to land-based telecommunication centres. In this regard, we now have to convince the insurance company that we don’t need the expertise of the physical engineering behind the satellite (to ensure broadcast) just the co-ordinates.

However, it is pointed out that we need a backup transmission means on a separate band, so if one is affected by things such as weather the other hopefully will be less so. This leads us to set up two uplinks – one direct from the ‘base’ and one off the base tied in by microwave.

Three engineers later and several calls across North America, we have our two uplinks (which had to be built on platforms and ‘aimed’ below the horizon as the satellites are in stationary orbit over central North America and not the northern tip).

Iqaluit, ongoing: We are meeting with the various broadcasters who will be using our feed to then rebroadcast to their own stations. They need uplinks or uplink time, etc., leading to a battle for uplinks and space on the hanger roof for microwave units.

Iqaluit, March 29: A new non-production issue: the various governments responsible for the airline terminal building didn’t quite get the paperwork completed for the transfer to the new government of Nunavut, meaning as of 12:01 a.m. on April 1, no one will be responsible for, or available to deal with, things such as landing rights and safety.

As the key officials and press are to fly in the morning of the Protocol Event on April 1, this poses, if nothing else, an interesting side issue. (Needless to say, by April 1, this was resolved. . . actually I believe it was on April 1 that it was resolved.)

Iqaluit, March 30: Rehearsals start and everything kicks into place for the regular crisis and issues of a live production, except we are in an air force base just south of the Arctic Circle with a crew of 57 (including 10 engineers), $5-million worth of equipment, foam tanks, only one scheduled daily flight on or off the island, wonderful Inuit art and some of the best catered food…

Iqaluit, April 1: Thanks to an absolutely incredible team, it goes off without a hitch and is finished on time at 1:30 (however, in future, three weeks for prep and production in remote locations will be considered only in the event of the creation of new provinces or territories south of the 45th parallel).

As we don’t leave until the 2nd, and having solved the accommodation, food and beverage situation, there is time for just a little relaxation and celebration.