CBC Tower (Mont-Carmel)

The CBC Tower, also known as the WesTower Transmission Tower,[1] was a 371-metre-high (1,217 ft) guyed mast for FM- and TV-transmission located atop Mont-Carmel near Shawinigan, Quebec, Canada. The tower was built in 1972 and it served for several decades as Quebec's primary CBC transmission point and also served several radio and television stations for the Trois-Rivières market.

CBC Tower (Mont-Carmel) (1st)
General information
StatusDestroyed
TypeTV Mast
LocationNotre-Dame-du-Mont-Carmel, Quebec, Canada
Coordinates46°29′33.26″N 72°39′5.63″W
Completed1972
Destroyed2001
Height371 m (1,217.19 ft)

2001 Incident

On April 22, 2001 a lone pilot, Gilbert Paquette, flew his Cessna 150 into the tower and was killed. The fuselage of the plane remained wedged in the upper part of the tower, with the pilot's body inside. The crash also knocked the tower several metres off balance. It was decided that due to the structural damage and the need to recover the pilot's body the mast would have to be demolished. Several days later a controlled implosion brought the tower down, not damaging the several buildings nearby. It was the tallest structure to have ever been implosively demolished.

In July 2003, a new mast broadcasting with over double the effective radiated power of the original mast (from 4,386 watts to 9,300 watts) was built about 1.9 km northeast of the original site. Though its height is not known with certainty, it is visually similar to the original. [2][3]

See also
  • List of masts

References
  1. Broadcasting Decision CRTC 2003-203, July 2, 2003.
  2. Government of Canada, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (2007-09-20). "ARCHIVED - CBVE-FM Québec and its transmitter CBMZ-FM Trois-Rivières - Technical changes". crtc.gc.ca. Retrieved 2019-09-16.
  3. fybush.com Tower Site of the Week: Quebec City and Trois-Rivieres, Quebec
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