Over the last 40 years or so I have traveled extensively around Canada. Eventually I was able to visit all ten provinces and 2 of the 3 territories (Yukon, Northwest). Of course I bring my scanner every time.
Scanning in Canada is pretty similar to the USA for the most part. While some of the frequencies don’t line up and assignments are often different, the overall modes and uses are pretty much the same. These days there are a lot of P25 trunking systems for public safety, both local and regional. There are still a lot of legacy analog simplex and repeater traffic. A lot of DMR and some NXDN and LTR is in use for business, utilities and even some public safety.
FRS/GMRS is common in Canada, but there are different rules. There are no GMRS repeaters allowed in Canada, it is strictly a simplex authorization. That said, there are some GMRS repeaters there, used much in the same way as in the USA but they are not legally authorized. Most FRS radios sold in the USA are legal in Canada as well but even if yours isn’t you probably won’t be put in radio jail unless you are doing something monumentally stupid.
Ham radio is also very similar to the USA and when I have been there I have checked into many nets with my US callsign. The same frequency ranges are authorized in both countries although I am not sure about how Canada’s hams are licensed and what kind of license they need to operate on specific bands or band segments. While in the US some portions of HF bands are restricted to higher license classes I don’t know if there are similar restrictions for Canadian hams.
On one trip the wife and I toured the Maritimes. I stopped in at Durham Radio and bought a copy of the Haruteq Radio Guides for Quebec and Ontario. I had had an older copy of the Ontario book, so this was a nice update. We then toured Quebec City then headed to New Brunswick.
At the time I had an Icom 706 in my Ford Expedition. I also had a couple scanners in the car, BCT15/996 types at the time or perhaps one may have still been a BC780XLT. I had a couple Spectras (VHF and UHF) but they were pretty much useless as they were programmed mostly for my work channels, so I just left them on 146.520 and 446.000 the whole trip.
During the drive from QC to Moncton we followed the St. Lawrence Seaway for a while, so I listened to the marine band on the scanner. That was pretty interesting listening for sure. I caught some sort of regatta chatting amongst themselves coordinating a fuel and provisions stop, and they all spoke Canadian English so I suspect they were from Ontario.
My CloseCall scanner (Opto Scout connected to an AOR AR8000 at the time) was pretty active during this trip as well, mostly hitting on pagers and other data signals. These seemed to be more prevalent in Canada than I was used to in the US, but it could have been that I had most of the common US channels locked oout. I did get some interesting hits along the way, apparently there are some VHF trucking channels active out east similar to the British Columbia and Alberta networks.
As we were touring New Brunswick, I happened to come across a 6-meter contest going on. I swapped out the Ham-Stick antenna on the truck and tuned in. I put out my callsign and appended “Mobile VE9” and ended up with a pileup. Then they started asking for grid squares. I had no idea so one of the contacts asked my location and gave me the grid square for it. That night at the hotel I was able to download and print a set of maps showing the grid squares along our planned route for the next couple days. I made more 6M contacts that afternoon than I have made in my life since.
The main point of the trip however was Prince Edward Island. This idyllic little paradise was on my bucket list for years. As soon as we crossed the Confederation Bridge we stopped at the visitor’s center. Much of the staff were walking around with small Icom radios on some 463 MHz. channel I found by using my Opto Scout. Soon after I found it and programmed it into my scanner a local security guard comes up to me and asked if I was listening to a scanner. Since it was so obvious I just said yes. He then said that the “Operations Channel” was 463.xxx (which I had just found) but Security was on a different channel, 464.xxx. We chatted about radio stuff for a while, he was studying for a ham license and working part time as a security guard to pay for college classes. Quite a different experience than I expected, I was expecting more Paul Blart than that. He then noticed that my wife was deaf, and he started speaking to her in sign language, turned out his sister was deaf. He provided me with some good scanner freqs for the island, and we corresponded a few times in the following year or two. Last I heard he had graduated from university with a degree in physics.
During our 4 days in PEI we visited all over, taking the circle tour around the island, spending the day in the harbor area in Charlottetown, spending a day in Summerside and more. We went to dinner one night at what is reported to be the best lobster place on the island, in a little town called New Glasgow. The place was simply called “Lobster Suppers” and was pretty much a barn with picnic style benches. We had no idea how to crack open a lobster (we don’t get many in Chicago) but by the time we left we had dozens of new friends and full bellies.
What does all this have to do with scanning you might ask? Well, Lobster Suppers staff all had portable radios. Interestingly they were on the Marine band! I noticed the radios, again all Icom’s, when we were being seated. I first thought they were just business band radios but when I was able to get a better view of them, I noticed they had 2-digit displays and a WX button. When we finished eating and left, I listened to the scanner in the parking lot for a few minutes and sure enough heard the hostess talking to the waitress on a marine channel.
We later took the ferry across to Nova Scotia and spent the next few days touring it before heading back to New Brunswick and then back into the US and Maine. I found many more instances of Marine Band use for non-marine uses all over the Maritimes. Perhaps I hadn’t paid that much attention before then to the marine band, but it was almost like CB in the 70’s; everyone had it and everyone used it.
A few years before that I had toured the north side of the Seaway in Quebec and then Newfoundland. I was invited to ride a Cartier Railway train from Port Cartier for a few miles after having sent in some nice prints from a visit a couple years prior. I took them up on that offer of course, as any good railfan would. Luckily, I drew an engineer who spoke passable English as my French is worse than my Latin, and I know nothing of either.
All the radio chatter was in French of course so I had no idea what they were saying but all of a sudden, a pickup truck appeared at a siding north of town, he was there to drive me back to Port Cartier, otherwise I would be a few days on the rails as they were headed up to the mine.
I visited a couple other ore roads in the area. One of them did not use the AAR channels but my memory is fuzzy on this now. I think it was the Arnaud but cannot recall for sure.
Out in Ontario I also traveled extensively. I spent a lot of time in the Burlington, Hamilton and Mississauga area. I met with a large group of railfans who would spend the evenings at the old Burlington CN depot and became a member of the Burlington Area Railfans (BARF). This was a loose group of men, women and children from the area. They would bring lawn chairs and hang out at the old depot where two subdivisions joined up. It was a great spot to watch trains as you had CN, CP, Via and GO trains, and lots of them. This was well tolerated by the station agents, I suspect he was happy to have the company and share in the food and beverages shared by the railfans. For years I would visit the depot until one year it was boarded up and fenced off.
Of course, most of the BARF people had scanners. Interestingly at the time the Burlington Fire Department used the same frequency as the small department I was on in Illinois; 154.205 Since I had my Minitor with me most trips I would put it in Monitor mode and listen in.
The first time I was in Ontario by myself I had left the Burlington depot about 10PM and headed down Brant Street (the main drag thru downtown at the time) headed back to my hotel. I was the only car on the road and stopped at a red light. This was a single signal head with 4 faces, one for each direction. After the intersecting lane turned red my side turned flashing green. I had never seen a flashing green before and had no idea what to do. Do I go? Do I wait? Do I floor it (Steady green = Go, flashing green = go fast?)? After a few seconds it went steady green and since the other street was red I figured it was safe. The next day as I waited in line at Tim Horton’s for breakfast, I asked a Halton Regional Police officer there what it meant and he said “Oh, you must be an American!” He explained it was an Advance Green, meaning the same thing as a left turn arrow. I then gave him a patch for the police department I was with, and we chatted over breakfast. He had no idea about the “radio stuff” other than the dispatcher usually answered when he called. He had been on the Burlington Police Service before it was absorbed by the regional police some 10 or 12 years earlier. All he really knew was that the radios worked better than they had before.
One trip had the wife and I head north thru Wisconsin and the UP and spend a couple days in Sault Ste. Marie. I loved hanging out at the locks there, and of course there was a lot of scanner traffic. We then headed east and then to Manitoulin. Driving down the road across Manitoulin Island I came across another regatta of pleasure boats that were apparently island hopping across Georgian Bay and other bays and inlets of Lake Huron. They were using marine band channels to coordinate their stops for food, fuel and lodging. While not as organized as the regatta in Quebec, they were much more interesting and casual in conversation.
On the ferry to Tobermory the on-board crew had UHF portables. I had left my scanner in the car but eventually I was able to find them on the Scout on a couple 457 MHz. channels. Back on land I was hearing the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) still using the 142 MHz. system with the status tones. I was really missing my old BC220 scanner that had a filter for this!
In the past I enjoyed listening to the OPP on their old 42 MHz. system when skip was in or I was in Ontario. I had done a ride-along with an OPP guy back in the 42 MHz. days and he said he used to listen to the Missouri Highway Patrol all the time. The OPP bosses frowned on trying to converse with them, so he never tried. Later, after they switched to 142 MHz. in southern Ontario I was up in far northern Ontario railfanning Hearst Junction. The OPP still used 42 MHz. up north then, I assume they hadn’t built up the infrastructure that far yet.
As far as western Canada, I have traveled the Trans-Canada Highway several times in each direction, and on each of its several routes. On a couple trips I headed west from Sault Ste. Marie and drove it all the way to Vancouver. On one of these I drove up to Edmonton and then into the NWT. On a different trip I visited the Yukon and stepped into Alaska at Hyder. Once again, I encountered a lot of marine band usage for non-marine related traffic along the way. In British Columbia and Alberta however they have unique VHF radio systems for remote areas used by logging, mining and even recreational travelers. I had them all in a scan bank and they were a lot more active than I expected. I was surprised at how many RV’s and Jeeps had these VHF radios. I stopped at a couple radio shops in BC, and they all sold preprogrammed Icom, TAD and other brands there and had frequency sheets.
I took a daylong coastal tour out of Vancouver and the crew on the ship all used the same 457 MHz. channels I had heard on the ferries out east. Of course, the captain used the VHF marine channels while en-route, especially in the harbor. There were a couple chit-chat channels I found along the way, apparently these captains are a social bunch and love to chat away.
In 2011 we had driven out to Oregon and then Seattle and were planning on visiting Vancouver. The night before we were to leave Seattle and head north however, the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup and Vancouver was engulfed in unrest, including riots. We decided to forgo Vancouver this trip and diverted to Abbotsford. I did hear a lot of chatter on various channels in Abbotsford (40 miles east of Vancouver) about the unrest and there was a large police presence there as we drove thru but apparently the Abbotsford locals are better behaved or the large RCMP and Abbotsford PD presence intimidated any rioters from acting up there. There was quite a bit of scanner traffic with plans to block roads from the west if needed. As we were heading east however, we never saw any problems.
Like the USA, many police agencies in Canada have gone encrypted. Legally scanners are kind of a grey area I guess. One is supposed to be required to have a license for digital scanners from what I have read, but Canada doesn’t issue these licenses. Digital scanners are openly sold so I assume this is one of those laws that are on the books but no one cars about. As far as I know there are no other laws regarding scanners. Every time I encountered border control or police no one has said anything untoward about my radios. A couple times a border guard on either side asked what they were but were likely more curious and didn’t suspect me of being a threat. Once, coming into Ontario from the tunnel at Windsor the border control office saw my radios and my FOP sticker and asked where my gun was. I truthfully told him I left it at home since I knew I was coming into Canada. He seemed surprised that I would drive thru Detroit without a gun and I told him I was from Chicago, our gang-bangers eat Detroit’s for breakfast. He laughed and sent me on my way.
I have visited some pretty good radio stores in Canada, two of my favorites were Durham Radio in Oshawa and Lakeshore Electronics in Burlington. Lakeshore used to sell filters for the OPP 142 MHz. pseudo trunking system. While some Uniden scanners already had that filter, others did not. The cool thing was that same filter worked on the old IMTS systems in the USA, blocking out that annoying idle tone. Lakeshore used to have a very extensive selection of Bearcat, Regency and other brand scanners and more crystals than I had ever seen outside of California.
I have always said that Canada is just like the US but different. That goes for radios as well.
Scanning in Canada is pretty similar to the USA for the most part. While some of the frequencies don’t line up and assignments are often different, the overall modes and uses are pretty much the same. These days there are a lot of P25 trunking systems for public safety, both local and regional. There are still a lot of legacy analog simplex and repeater traffic. A lot of DMR and some NXDN and LTR is in use for business, utilities and even some public safety.
FRS/GMRS is common in Canada, but there are different rules. There are no GMRS repeaters allowed in Canada, it is strictly a simplex authorization. That said, there are some GMRS repeaters there, used much in the same way as in the USA but they are not legally authorized. Most FRS radios sold in the USA are legal in Canada as well but even if yours isn’t you probably won’t be put in radio jail unless you are doing something monumentally stupid.
Ham radio is also very similar to the USA and when I have been there I have checked into many nets with my US callsign. The same frequency ranges are authorized in both countries although I am not sure about how Canada’s hams are licensed and what kind of license they need to operate on specific bands or band segments. While in the US some portions of HF bands are restricted to higher license classes I don’t know if there are similar restrictions for Canadian hams.
On one trip the wife and I toured the Maritimes. I stopped in at Durham Radio and bought a copy of the Haruteq Radio Guides for Quebec and Ontario. I had had an older copy of the Ontario book, so this was a nice update. We then toured Quebec City then headed to New Brunswick.
At the time I had an Icom 706 in my Ford Expedition. I also had a couple scanners in the car, BCT15/996 types at the time or perhaps one may have still been a BC780XLT. I had a couple Spectras (VHF and UHF) but they were pretty much useless as they were programmed mostly for my work channels, so I just left them on 146.520 and 446.000 the whole trip.
During the drive from QC to Moncton we followed the St. Lawrence Seaway for a while, so I listened to the marine band on the scanner. That was pretty interesting listening for sure. I caught some sort of regatta chatting amongst themselves coordinating a fuel and provisions stop, and they all spoke Canadian English so I suspect they were from Ontario.
My CloseCall scanner (Opto Scout connected to an AOR AR8000 at the time) was pretty active during this trip as well, mostly hitting on pagers and other data signals. These seemed to be more prevalent in Canada than I was used to in the US, but it could have been that I had most of the common US channels locked oout. I did get some interesting hits along the way, apparently there are some VHF trucking channels active out east similar to the British Columbia and Alberta networks.
As we were touring New Brunswick, I happened to come across a 6-meter contest going on. I swapped out the Ham-Stick antenna on the truck and tuned in. I put out my callsign and appended “Mobile VE9” and ended up with a pileup. Then they started asking for grid squares. I had no idea so one of the contacts asked my location and gave me the grid square for it. That night at the hotel I was able to download and print a set of maps showing the grid squares along our planned route for the next couple days. I made more 6M contacts that afternoon than I have made in my life since.
The main point of the trip however was Prince Edward Island. This idyllic little paradise was on my bucket list for years. As soon as we crossed the Confederation Bridge we stopped at the visitor’s center. Much of the staff were walking around with small Icom radios on some 463 MHz. channel I found by using my Opto Scout. Soon after I found it and programmed it into my scanner a local security guard comes up to me and asked if I was listening to a scanner. Since it was so obvious I just said yes. He then said that the “Operations Channel” was 463.xxx (which I had just found) but Security was on a different channel, 464.xxx. We chatted about radio stuff for a while, he was studying for a ham license and working part time as a security guard to pay for college classes. Quite a different experience than I expected, I was expecting more Paul Blart than that. He then noticed that my wife was deaf, and he started speaking to her in sign language, turned out his sister was deaf. He provided me with some good scanner freqs for the island, and we corresponded a few times in the following year or two. Last I heard he had graduated from university with a degree in physics.
During our 4 days in PEI we visited all over, taking the circle tour around the island, spending the day in the harbor area in Charlottetown, spending a day in Summerside and more. We went to dinner one night at what is reported to be the best lobster place on the island, in a little town called New Glasgow. The place was simply called “Lobster Suppers” and was pretty much a barn with picnic style benches. We had no idea how to crack open a lobster (we don’t get many in Chicago) but by the time we left we had dozens of new friends and full bellies.
What does all this have to do with scanning you might ask? Well, Lobster Suppers staff all had portable radios. Interestingly they were on the Marine band! I noticed the radios, again all Icom’s, when we were being seated. I first thought they were just business band radios but when I was able to get a better view of them, I noticed they had 2-digit displays and a WX button. When we finished eating and left, I listened to the scanner in the parking lot for a few minutes and sure enough heard the hostess talking to the waitress on a marine channel.
We later took the ferry across to Nova Scotia and spent the next few days touring it before heading back to New Brunswick and then back into the US and Maine. I found many more instances of Marine Band use for non-marine uses all over the Maritimes. Perhaps I hadn’t paid that much attention before then to the marine band, but it was almost like CB in the 70’s; everyone had it and everyone used it.
A few years before that I had toured the north side of the Seaway in Quebec and then Newfoundland. I was invited to ride a Cartier Railway train from Port Cartier for a few miles after having sent in some nice prints from a visit a couple years prior. I took them up on that offer of course, as any good railfan would. Luckily, I drew an engineer who spoke passable English as my French is worse than my Latin, and I know nothing of either.
All the radio chatter was in French of course so I had no idea what they were saying but all of a sudden, a pickup truck appeared at a siding north of town, he was there to drive me back to Port Cartier, otherwise I would be a few days on the rails as they were headed up to the mine.
I visited a couple other ore roads in the area. One of them did not use the AAR channels but my memory is fuzzy on this now. I think it was the Arnaud but cannot recall for sure.
Out in Ontario I also traveled extensively. I spent a lot of time in the Burlington, Hamilton and Mississauga area. I met with a large group of railfans who would spend the evenings at the old Burlington CN depot and became a member of the Burlington Area Railfans (BARF). This was a loose group of men, women and children from the area. They would bring lawn chairs and hang out at the old depot where two subdivisions joined up. It was a great spot to watch trains as you had CN, CP, Via and GO trains, and lots of them. This was well tolerated by the station agents, I suspect he was happy to have the company and share in the food and beverages shared by the railfans. For years I would visit the depot until one year it was boarded up and fenced off.
Of course, most of the BARF people had scanners. Interestingly at the time the Burlington Fire Department used the same frequency as the small department I was on in Illinois; 154.205 Since I had my Minitor with me most trips I would put it in Monitor mode and listen in.
The first time I was in Ontario by myself I had left the Burlington depot about 10PM and headed down Brant Street (the main drag thru downtown at the time) headed back to my hotel. I was the only car on the road and stopped at a red light. This was a single signal head with 4 faces, one for each direction. After the intersecting lane turned red my side turned flashing green. I had never seen a flashing green before and had no idea what to do. Do I go? Do I wait? Do I floor it (Steady green = Go, flashing green = go fast?)? After a few seconds it went steady green and since the other street was red I figured it was safe. The next day as I waited in line at Tim Horton’s for breakfast, I asked a Halton Regional Police officer there what it meant and he said “Oh, you must be an American!” He explained it was an Advance Green, meaning the same thing as a left turn arrow. I then gave him a patch for the police department I was with, and we chatted over breakfast. He had no idea about the “radio stuff” other than the dispatcher usually answered when he called. He had been on the Burlington Police Service before it was absorbed by the regional police some 10 or 12 years earlier. All he really knew was that the radios worked better than they had before.
One trip had the wife and I head north thru Wisconsin and the UP and spend a couple days in Sault Ste. Marie. I loved hanging out at the locks there, and of course there was a lot of scanner traffic. We then headed east and then to Manitoulin. Driving down the road across Manitoulin Island I came across another regatta of pleasure boats that were apparently island hopping across Georgian Bay and other bays and inlets of Lake Huron. They were using marine band channels to coordinate their stops for food, fuel and lodging. While not as organized as the regatta in Quebec, they were much more interesting and casual in conversation.
On the ferry to Tobermory the on-board crew had UHF portables. I had left my scanner in the car but eventually I was able to find them on the Scout on a couple 457 MHz. channels. Back on land I was hearing the OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) still using the 142 MHz. system with the status tones. I was really missing my old BC220 scanner that had a filter for this!
In the past I enjoyed listening to the OPP on their old 42 MHz. system when skip was in or I was in Ontario. I had done a ride-along with an OPP guy back in the 42 MHz. days and he said he used to listen to the Missouri Highway Patrol all the time. The OPP bosses frowned on trying to converse with them, so he never tried. Later, after they switched to 142 MHz. in southern Ontario I was up in far northern Ontario railfanning Hearst Junction. The OPP still used 42 MHz. up north then, I assume they hadn’t built up the infrastructure that far yet.
As far as western Canada, I have traveled the Trans-Canada Highway several times in each direction, and on each of its several routes. On a couple trips I headed west from Sault Ste. Marie and drove it all the way to Vancouver. On one of these I drove up to Edmonton and then into the NWT. On a different trip I visited the Yukon and stepped into Alaska at Hyder. Once again, I encountered a lot of marine band usage for non-marine related traffic along the way. In British Columbia and Alberta however they have unique VHF radio systems for remote areas used by logging, mining and even recreational travelers. I had them all in a scan bank and they were a lot more active than I expected. I was surprised at how many RV’s and Jeeps had these VHF radios. I stopped at a couple radio shops in BC, and they all sold preprogrammed Icom, TAD and other brands there and had frequency sheets.
I took a daylong coastal tour out of Vancouver and the crew on the ship all used the same 457 MHz. channels I had heard on the ferries out east. Of course, the captain used the VHF marine channels while en-route, especially in the harbor. There were a couple chit-chat channels I found along the way, apparently these captains are a social bunch and love to chat away.
In 2011 we had driven out to Oregon and then Seattle and were planning on visiting Vancouver. The night before we were to leave Seattle and head north however, the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup and Vancouver was engulfed in unrest, including riots. We decided to forgo Vancouver this trip and diverted to Abbotsford. I did hear a lot of chatter on various channels in Abbotsford (40 miles east of Vancouver) about the unrest and there was a large police presence there as we drove thru but apparently the Abbotsford locals are better behaved or the large RCMP and Abbotsford PD presence intimidated any rioters from acting up there. There was quite a bit of scanner traffic with plans to block roads from the west if needed. As we were heading east however, we never saw any problems.
Like the USA, many police agencies in Canada have gone encrypted. Legally scanners are kind of a grey area I guess. One is supposed to be required to have a license for digital scanners from what I have read, but Canada doesn’t issue these licenses. Digital scanners are openly sold so I assume this is one of those laws that are on the books but no one cars about. As far as I know there are no other laws regarding scanners. Every time I encountered border control or police no one has said anything untoward about my radios. A couple times a border guard on either side asked what they were but were likely more curious and didn’t suspect me of being a threat. Once, coming into Ontario from the tunnel at Windsor the border control office saw my radios and my FOP sticker and asked where my gun was. I truthfully told him I left it at home since I knew I was coming into Canada. He seemed surprised that I would drive thru Detroit without a gun and I told him I was from Chicago, our gang-bangers eat Detroit’s for breakfast. He laughed and sent me on my way.
I have visited some pretty good radio stores in Canada, two of my favorites were Durham Radio in Oshawa and Lakeshore Electronics in Burlington. Lakeshore used to sell filters for the OPP 142 MHz. pseudo trunking system. While some Uniden scanners already had that filter, others did not. The cool thing was that same filter worked on the old IMTS systems in the USA, blocking out that annoying idle tone. Lakeshore used to have a very extensive selection of Bearcat, Regency and other brand scanners and more crystals than I had ever seen outside of California.
I have always said that Canada is just like the US but different. That goes for radios as well.
