Our story is about a radio personality, whose voice has become a visiting card of sorts of our World Service in English - my colleague Carl Watts.
“The thing is that I like coming to the radio,” Carl Watts says. “Honestly, this is not a propaganda thing, I come to the radio, because I’m going to meet  very good people here – my closest friends. People I can joke with. We talk about our work and everything else, and I can say that I try to give everything I have to the radio.”
Carl Watts has indeed given much of his energy and talent to the radio. He may be truly called a born broadcaster, for he has an excellent radio voice. Our listeners often wonder where Carl picked up his Canadian accent. And they will be quite right in thinking that it was in Canada. He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where his parents moved from Ukraine in the 1920’s. Theirs was a Russian-speaking family.
“I remember that at home we, naturally, spoke Russian with our parents,” Carl Watts reminisces. “And when we went out in the streets and played with other kids, we said, “Hey, mum, they’re talking some kind of a language that we do not understand.” We did not understand English first. We began speaking English when we went to school. It was an ordinary public school in Winnipeg, and, naturally, all the classes were in English, and at home we tried to speak Russian. There was what we called a Federation of Russian Canadians. It was a very progressive organization. They organized schools for kids of Russian parents, and we went to those schools to study Russian. They were not professional teachers, they were Russians who had pretty good knowledge of Russian, and we learned the ABCs.”
Carl recalled that at school he liked history, geography, and took private violin lessons. And, like most boys, he liked playing ice-hockey with his age-mates.
“We had a little patch in the back of the yard with ice,” Carl Watts continues his story. “And we said, “Hey, Johnny, get your guys over, we’re going to play a game of hockey.” At that time, naturally, we were not well off. All we had was a stick, a puck, and skates. But still we liked it and we played. In the summertime we took a tennis ball and played hockey in the street, where there were no cars going by. And later on, this happened here in Moscow, somebody heard my voice, and they invited to do the announcements in English at the stadium. That was an international game. When they heard me, Tarasov, famous  coach of ours, said, “Hey, why the hell did you hire an American?” And they said, “”He’s no American, he’s ours.” And ever since I’ve been working on these tournaments.”
Small wonder that Carl is familiar with many ice-hockey stars, both Russian and Canadian.
“I’m very proud of it,” Carls Watts says. “That was in 1972. I did the Canada-USSR series, I did the four games in Moscow as a rink announcer and also the interpreter at post-game press-conferences. And, naturally, we had all these guys, the Esposito brothers, Bobby Hull, Gordy Howe, and then also the Russian stars, the big names, Maltsev, Yakushev, Tretyak, whom I consider the best goal-keeper in all the times. There never will be a series like this in ice-hockey anywhere at an international level.”
You’ll probably be surprised, like I was, to hear that in his youth Carl Watts was a pilot.
“When I was at school – this was during the war years – we had to join some kind of cadets,” Carl Watts says speaking about his school years. “Somebody joined the army cadets, naval cadets and that. And I joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. I wanted to become maybe a fighter pilot, but didn’t turn out. I served up to be a flight sergeant. We had a uniform. We had square-bashing, marching. We had parades, and we also had classes in flying. My mum and dad signed a paper to say that, if anything happened to me, they won’t hold them responsible. I didn’t have to pay anything. This was free of charge. A very beautiful plane, and I remember the take-off with the instructor, right turn, left turn, we pick up the speed and the height. I think it was five or six hours with the instructor, and he said, “How do you feel?” I said, “OK”. We made a landing, and he said, “How do you feel?” And I said, “OK”. “So, you want to take it up by yourself?” I said, “OK. I’ll try”. I made just one flight around the aerodrome. I landed, and, naturally, I got  congratulations. And after that I treated everybody to Coca-Cola.”
Another interesting fact in Carl’s biography is that later he became a Soviet Army officer. A pilot in the Canadian Royal Air Cadets and an officer in the Soviet Army. Isn’t that an unusual combination?
“When we studied at the Institute of Foreign Languages, there were army classes. In the summertime we had to go to a summer camp, do all kinds of square-bashing and marching, all kinds of physical exercises. And then we got the rank, and I became a Senior Lieutenant in the Soviet Armed Forces. And then I had to leave, because I was over-age. I don’t think many people can pride that they were a pilot in the Royal Air Cadets and an officer in the Soviet Army. If they are, I’d like to meet them.”
It was in Canada that Carl and his brother George finished high school. After graduation George became a student of McMaster University in Hamilton, and Carl went to work at a factory. He felt that thus he could help his brother receive a university education. But things changed pretty soon, as their father decided to come back to the USSR with his family and filed an application to the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa.
“That was way back in 1948, and he said he wanted to come back to the USSR to help the country,” Carl Watts recalls. “He said he had two sons, and maybe we could do something. And we received information – only in 1951 – that we were granted permission to come back, that is for my parents to come back. For my brother and I that was the first time coming here. He received permission, and at the beginning of March 1952 we left Canada for the USSR.”
The family settled in the Eastern Ukraine. Although Carl and George knew Russian from their younger years, it wasn’t up to par, so they went to school in the evening and worked during the daytime. After their Soviet school course was over, the two Canadian brothers were taken on to the Leningrad Institute of Foreign Languages. A few months later they transferred to the Translator’s Faculty of Moscow’s Institute of Foreign Languages. Both of them wanted to work with the language, and so it happened, for they soon joined Radio Moscow.
“When we transferred from Leningrad to Moscow, just before the World Youth and Students Festival in 1957, there were a lot of very experienced people working at Radio Moscow,” Carl Watts recalls. “And they heard about those two Canadians. They invited us to Radio Moscow and said, “Would you, boys, like to do some work, some interviews and that?” I remember they gave us a tape recorder that was as heavy as hell. I remember the USSR-USA track-and-field meets. We used to go to the stadium and after the meets interviewed the athletes – the Soviets and the Americans. We did all kind of interviews, on-the-spot recordings and evening like that. This was all in the time we were still studying. Upon graduation in 1959 we had a standing invitation to come to the radio. I was taken on as a broadcaster and announcer, and my brother was taken on as a translator. And so, we began to work here at that time, in 1959.”
It was also at the radio that Carl met his wife. That romantic story began with a paper clip.
“The English and the French translators were in one and the same room,” Carl recalls. “We had to come in and pick up the material. I came in this room and saw this very beautiful young girl. I tried to attract her attention but didn’t know how to do it. So, I took the paper clip and threw it into her typewriter. We got to talk to each other. She was very nice. I asked her out. I said, “I’ve got a brother. Have you got a girl-friend so that we can go out together, the four of us?” And she said, “Yes, I have a girl friend.” They sat at the same desk right through primary school. Galya is her name. And so, the four of us began to go out. That was in 1959. And in March 1961 my brother married Galya, and in April 1961 I got married to my wife, Maka. And so, we’ve been happily married ever since. The main thing is that they’re good women and good wives. We go on vacation sometimes – the four of us together. We spend two weeks together. We come home, we just put our suitcases by, and my wife picks up the phone: “Galya, I forgot to tell you something…” Our kids and grandchildren are also very close friends. That is something fantastic, and I’m very proud that now only our wives have been friends for 44 years, but our kids and our grandchildren too.”
Carl Watts has been a broadcaster for over forty years now.
“In my younger days I used to do simultaneous interpretation,” Carl Watts goes on to say recalling his work at the radio. “I used to interpret some “pretty big names”. The first one was Minister of Culture Furtseva, and then Primakov, Gorbachev, and others names. Although you feel that you know the language, but still your knees are shaking. And, after it’s all over, you feel good.”
05/10/2005
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