Kerr, Donald
Donald Kerr attended Radio and Television Arts
from 1973 – 75
I was born in 1955 and grew up in the Annapolis Valley in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada
My father served in Europe for several years during World War II, the legion put on the footstone at his gravesite ‘Gunner’
I remember him mentioning once a bullet barely skimmed the top of his head and when he became awake again he was in an England hospital.
His first wife died while he was serving overseas during the war. After the war he remarried (to my mom). He worked for awhile for the Nova Scotia electrical company and then ran a poultry warehouse full of thousands of laying hens, Eggs and chicken was free for us then!
My brother in law told me he took my dad to the war museum once, and Dad stopped and looked at a particular picture they had on display there for the longest time, and he was asked if he was ok, my dad said the picture was all wrong, the water was red.
Way back in high school, my first thought was to fly, not as a passenger but as a pilot, my brother in law suggested I join the air force for 3 years where all the flight training was free, back then for whatever reason I was not all that interested in joining the air force (although I am sure that would have been a great option), financial resources was not that great at the time, and to get enough flight training to get an entry position on any airline from a non air force source may have been costly. Being technically minded I am sure I could have become a great pilot but I was extremely lucky not to have chosen that option as it would have been a short career as mobility issues that developed over the years would have definitely grounded me.
So now my 2nd choice was to work in the broadcasting field. Although I am not sure if Wally Webb had this as a first choice or not, but in the later years of high school we both where in the same grade and attended the same high school in Nova Scotia.
I had applied to several colleges, the ones I remember are Ryerson, Loyalist, Confederation, I got accepted at all, Wally was leaning with Confederation College so I went in that direction too.
Although my first interest was to work in an on-camera position, I quickly realized my strength was not in that area at all but in the technical / operational side.
I was working with the local Television station in the evening prior to the finish of college and worked in VTR, telecine and in the end master control before obtaining employment in Ottawa in October 1977.
In Ottawa I first started in the VTR on-air department, but have filled in for Telecine, worked in master control, and when master control of several stations was taken over by Toronto in 1998 creating a mega master down there, I moved into news editing.
During the years before and leading up Toronto taking over the master control operations, and during the DOS days of computers, I wrote a large portion of the software used in on-air vtr and master control.
During the years of being in news editing, I did news and sports editing, live news shows being in tape. In 2000 we changed over to non linear computerized video editing, at that time I figured out how automate a recording list and wrote a bat file to read the computer date / time to change the recording file automatically during the night to the next day without any human intervention.
I wrote 2 manuals on the Sundance / leitch, which Leitch obtained a copy of to provide to other stations that the same system was being installed at.
A decade later they changed over to a Harris / Velocity non linear system.
We had a fire that destroyed our broadcast building in 2010 and we ended up moving to a downtown location, none of us was that happy about that at the time particularly the loss of free parking that everyone had enjoyed for decades.
I also had an interest in Audio, which I have served in that function on numerous live news shows, the only thing that prevented me from applying for that permanently was mobility issues that would have made it difficult to work around guests.
| My final shift before retiring I did was an audio shift |
The first onset of mobility issues started around the age of 25 when others before myself noticed a slight limp, this very gradually progressed over the years until now when my walking ability is extremely limited and must be holding on to something to walk at all, use a power wheelchair.
In 2012 when changes where happening in the workplace and reduction in staffing, many of us accepted incentives that where close to retirement to leave then which saved a lot of peoples jobs that where much younger. It was a good time to retire as mobility issues would have eventually forced me to go long term disability. I managed to end my career without resorting to LTD. Although I hated the politics / power struggles that sometimes happen in the workplace, I enjoyed a long career, and miss the daily interaction with co-workers and the suspense of being involved in a live show.
I also served for several years in the work union as master steward and have taken several union courses.
Years ago I have done most of all my vehicle repairs, brakes, rack and pinion steering changing, and other repairs, as well as home furnace repairs, although I still have the knowledge but my physical ability has changed which makes me unable to do a lot of that now, and I hate having to pay others to do what I know I could do myself but no longer can.
I have created many websites, back in 1999 I started with another person an electrical website and forums. The other person was an electrical and building inspector in the United States, and we sold those websites back in 2007 for a good sum of money. The other person is now deceased.
Now I have created a new websites and they are listed towards the bottom of the main page of this website.
Although Google which is the sought after search engine makes it more difficult to get a website on top of the search results but it is getting there.
On a personal note, I am married since 1983, have 3 children who are all adults now, and currently still waiting for grand kids.
Donald Kerr
