Trans Canada Microwave or Trans-Canada Skyway was a microwave system built in the 1950s to carry telephone and TV from Canada's east coast to its west coast. Because microwaves travel in a straight line and do not follow the curvature of the Earth, towers were built every 48 kilometres. The towers ranged from nine metres high to over 100 metres high in northern Ontario

Northern Ontario

Northern Ontario is a region of the Canadian province of Ontario which lies north of Lake Huron , the French River and Lake Nipissing. The region has a land area of 802,000 km2 and constitutes 87% of the land area of Ontario, although it contains only about 6% of the population...

. The system included 139 towers spanning over 6275 kilometres and cost $50 million ($336 million in 2003 dollars).

• It took just one-fiftieth of a second for a microwave signal to travel from one coast to the other.
• The Trans-Canada Microwave system was officially completed on 1 July 1958. It was the longest microwave transmission network in the world in 1958, stretching from Sydney, Nova Scotia
  Sydney, Nova Scotia
  Sydney is a Canadian urban community in the province of Nova Scotia. It is situated on the east coast of Cape Breton Island and is administratively part of the Cape Breton Regional Municipality....
  
   to Victoria, British Columbia
  Victoria, British Columbia
  Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia, Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of about 78,000 within the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria, which has a population of 360,063, the 15th most populous Canadian...
  
  , placing Canada at the forefront of communications technology.
• The system was implemented under Bell Canada
  Bell Canada
  Bell Canada is a major Canadian telecommunications company. Including its subsidiaries such as Bell Aliant, Northwestel, Télébec, and NorthernTel, it is the incumbent local exchange carrier for telephone and DSL Internet services in most of Canada east of Manitoba and in the northern territories,...
  
   president Thomas Wardrope Eadie
  Thomas Wardrope Eadie
  Thomas Wardrope Eadie Born in Ottawa and died at Pierrefonds Manor QC. Son of Robert and Flora President of Bell Canada from July 1, 1953 to July 31, 1963 - Thomas Eadie graduated from McGill University in 1923 and immediately signed on with The Bell Telephone Company of Canada and over the...
  
  as an all-Canadian microwave network for transporting telephone conversations, Teletype messages and television signals.