NRS Newport Corner was established by the
Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in 1942 in the St. Croix River valley in
Newport Corner, 50 kilometres northwest of
NRS Albro Lake in Dartmouth. NRS Newport Corner was a sub-unit of NRS Albro Lake and functioned as the primary transmitting facility, while the receiving facility was located at Albro Lake. A landline connected the two operations. A secondary transmitter was co-located at NRS Albro Lake should the connection to NRS Newport Corner fail. The callsign for NRS Albro Lake (which was responsible for both facilities) was "CFH" and the combined construction cost was $6 million. NRS Newport Corner was a critical component in the success of the RCN and its allies in the
Battle of the Atlantic; it could transmit to locations halfway across the world, stretching from
Murmansk, Russia to the
Falkland Islands. The powerful radio transmissions regularly leaked into passing car radio which would pick up routine Morse Code naval traffic and disrupted local television reception. Transmitters were often moved to low-power during the
Stanley Cup hockey playoffs as a courtesy to nearby residents. NRS Albro Lake and its sub-unit NRS Newport Corner was renamed '
HMCS Albro Lake''''' on July 1, 1956. Permanent married quarters (PMQs) were constructed on the site during this time. Dartmouth's growth during the post-war years degraded radio reception in
Albro Lake as the town became a city by the early 1960s. Unification of the
Canadian Forces in 1968 resulted in the Albro Lake location closing and the unit HMCS
Albro Lake was recommissioned as
CFS Mill Cove when the new receiving facility opened at
Mill Cove, approximately 50 kilometres west of
Halifax in 1967. NRS Newport Corner functioned much as before, as a detachment of CFS Mill Cove instead of HMCS
Albro Lake. Defence cutbacks in the late 1990s saw both the Newport Corner transmitter and the Mill Cove receiver automated from
CFB Halifax, eliminating the requirement for a separately administered Canadian Forces Station, thus CFS Mill Cove was decommissioned and both facilities were renamed as "Naval Radio Section". Both the NRS Newport Corner transmitter and NRS Mill Cove receivers are operated remotely from HMCS
Trinity at CFB Halifax and function as detachments of the base. ==References==