The man behind the CN Tower’s nightly light show

The colourful lights of the CN Tower have become familiar to many Torontonians, but that doesn't make them any less impressive. What many might not stop to wonder, though, is just how those lights get lit up every night, and by whom.

The Grid TO pulled back the LED curtain to find Tom Mellon, the CN Tower's operations manager. He's the one entrusted with the job of bringing the tower's 1,330 LED lights to life every night in a fantastic display of colour.

At the top of the hour every night, the CN Tower puts on an eight-minute vibrant light show, programmed by Mellon on his laptop. According to TheGrid TO, the designer software looks quite basic, but it allows Mellon to control each of the LED lights to create the dazzling light shows. While it used to take Mellon quite a while to design the show from the millions of colours and patterns he has access to, programming hundreds of shows has given him lots of practice and helped to speed up the process.

"I've done so many," Mellon said in TheGrid TO story, "that I can be at my desk and anticipate what the show is going to look like. I'm less likely to sit across the street at the park and program it from there."

Mellon also creates custom displays for special occasions, like a show synchronized to music during the annual art event Nuit Blanche in 2009, or custom colours to celebrate a Maple Leaf's win, for example. One of the perks of having it be controlled via laptop is Mellon can log in and program the tower's lights from his home in nearby Burlington.

You can find out what colour the tower will be for various special events by visiting the CN Tower's Night Lighting page. Charitable organizations and causes can even request to have the Tower lit up a certain colour in support of their cause, although the request list is a lengthy one.

The lights were installed in the CN Tower's elevator shaft, main pod and antenna back in 2007 at a cost of $2.5 million, lighting up the Tower for the first time since the massive spotlights at its base were done away with in 1997. Those original lights used to take three hours and four people (wearing protective jackets and face shields) to change them. Now, any of the 1,330 LED light bulbs can be changed in ten minutes with just two people.

(CP Photo)