Gordon Walker (UVIC) A CFHT saga - the first Doppler search for extra-solar planets Abstract Hundreds of extra-solar planetary systems are now known, mostly confirmed or detected through the Doppler reflex motion of the primary star. The development of digital detectors and improved spectrographs in the 1970s led to orders of magnitude improvement in radial velocity precision making the measurement of such tiny reflexes possible. In 1978 Bruce Campbell and I successfully introduced hydrogen fluoride into the telescope beam at the DAO to act as a wavelength fiducial. Bruce moved to CFHT where he perfected the technique and, in retrospect, detected the first planetary companion candidate, gamma Ceph. While our work went on against a background of considerable skepticism, we always had the best of support from the CFHT staff. The eventual introduction of iodine in echelle spectra by the Lick group and stabilisation of the line spread function through fibre scrambling by the Geneva group proved much more effective than HF and led to an explosion of discoveries.