BC Radio History and Chuck Davis

Photo by Jim McGraw

History of Vancouver Radio

Written by Chuck Davis in 1997

In 1926 Henderson's Directory listed six radio stations in Vancouver, where there had been none shown the year before. Yet we know that CFQC (today's CFUN) went on the air in 1922, making it the oldest radio station in Western Canada. On December 5, 1923 radio was used for the first time in a Vancouver mayoralty election campaign: candidate W.R. Owen gave a ten-minute speech over Station CJCE. In 1924 CFXC, founded by radio-shop owner Fred Hume, began broadcasting out of a tiny room in the back of his shop in New Westminster.

The six stations that made it into that 1926 directory were CNRV, the Canadian National Railway Company's station, operated from studios in the CNR station on Main Street (the CNR ran a radio service for its train passengers); CFYC, operated by a company called Commercial Radio Ltd.; CFDC, owned by the Sparks Co.; the aforementioned CFQC, a station operating out of the 16th floor at 500 Beatty, home of the Sprott Shaw Radio Co., a company that had already been in business for years teaching the technical aspects of radio (and that would in 1928 change the name of CFQC to CKMO); a "United Churches" station called CKFC; and CKCD, owned by The Province newspaper (which began a second station, CHLS, in 1930). By 1927 CFXC changed its call letters to CJOR, destined to become the city's major station for many years. In 1933 OR would move to 840 Howe, the Grosvenor Hotel, and operate for years there out of the basement. The station became a real force in local radio in the '30s, with broadcasters like Ross and Hilda Mortimer, Dorwin Baird, the Bill Browns, Sr. and Jr., and Vic Waters. Waters would eventually become program director at OR, and hire future broadcasting stars like Red Robinson, Jack Webster and Brian "Frosty" Forst.

Arthur "Sparks" Holstead was granted a licence to operate a 10-watt radio station, CFDC, in Nanaimo April 1, 1923. In 1925 he brought the station's transmitter to Vancouver in a suitcase, and went on the air, but the federal government's broadcasting regulatory agency objected and ordered him off. Public petitions demanded its return, and the station signed back on. In 1928 Holstead changed its name to CKWX. Of all the call letters cited so far that latter set is the only one that exists today. (Just before this book went to press WX changed to an all-news format, proving for the thousandth time that nothing is so permanent in the world of radio as change.) In 1934 a station appeared called CRCV, on Station Street off Main. It had been CNRV, the CNR station, but now it was run by a new entity called the Canadian Radio Commission, which in 1936 would change yet again to the CBC, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

What were people listening to in the earliest days? Well, many of the stations were tiny, and often on just a few hours a day. Shows were simple, with such fare as poetry readings, recitations, amateur musicians, educational programs, and preachers. On Fred Hume's CFXC, for example, the station's entire schedule consisted of a brief daily broadcast of Hume's singing sister and her pianist. Not surprisingly, most local listeners preferred American network radio, on which more polished drama, comedy and music could be heard. The Canadian Encyclopedia quotes a survey taken at the end of the 1920s showing that 80 per cent of radio programs listened to by Canadians originated in the U.S.

That began to change with the creation of a national radio network started, curiously, by the Canadian National Railway Co. CNRV, the CNR's Vancouver station, produced Canada's first regular drama series on radio, beginning in 1927. Produced by Jack Gillmore, the CNRV Players lasted until 1932 and were heard across the country on the railway's network. Among their offerings were occasional plays by British Columbia writers. By 1936 the CN Radio network had transmogrified into the CBC, whose local call letters were CBR, soon to have studios in the "CNR Hotel" at Georgia and Hornby, a building we know today as the Hotel Vancouver. A lot of the drama for which the public radio network became famous originated from the CBC's Hotel Vancouver studios. Radio drama still exists on CBC (local call letters are CBU today), but television and reduced budgets have dealt heavy blows to its scope and regularity.

A closed-circuit station, CITR, began in 1950 at the University of British Columbia, started by students who had been broadcasting on other stations since 1937. Alumni include Dorwin Baird, Pierre Berton, Ray Perrault and Lister Sinclair.

In the 1940s, thanks partly to a listening public hungry for news of Canadian troops, home grown stations grew in popularity. Still, my own recollection of Vancouver radio in the 1940s was that, with the exception of Billy Brown's cheerful morning program on CJOR, virtually every show we listened to originated in the States: Jack Benny, Fibber McGee and Molly, Lum and Abner, Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, The Lone Ranger, The Great Gildersleeve, and soap operas like Ma Perkins and One Man's Family ... many of them relayed by local stations affiliated with American networks. CKWX, for example, became a Mutual affiliate in 1945. The CBC began an FM station (CBU-FM) in 1947.

By 1944 the newspaper listings for local radio showed that four stations had survived of the six listed in 1926. On Tuesday, August 15, 1944 you could choose from CBR, CJOR, CKWX and CKMO. Local programs included Moments in Melody; Twiddle, Biddle and Bop; and The Royal Canadian Navy Presents. U.S. network stations that Tuesday were bringing us Ginny Sims, Lum and Abner, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and the crime drama Big Town. Most stations featured live orchestras at night.

A new station that had signed on that day, and that was destined to change local radio dramatically, was not listed. As far as the newspapers were concerned, the arrival on the scene of CKNW was a non-event. Part of the reason was its location in "far off" New Westminster. But NW's owner Bill Rea, a 35-year-old Edmonton-born dance hall manager, band leader and radio time salesman (he'd quit CKMO to start his own station), had assembled an eager little group of people to staff his new station. And what did NW listeners hear? Cowboy music. And a lot of it. No soap operas or cops-and-robbers dramas interrupted the flow. "I think cowboy songs are a whole lot better," Rea told his staff, "Such songs all tell a story -- a clean, wholesome story about the outdoors."

His new station had another distinction right from the start: a very strong emphasis on news. He'd guessed correctly that audiences would be eager for news of Canadian troops overseas. From its opening day NW broadcast news every hour on the hour. The importance given to news by CKNW has paid dividends to the station every day of its existence. More than 50 years after it signed on it is still considered the leader in local radio news.

Sometime during NW's first day a young sailor stationed at Esquimalt on Vancouver Island was hunched over his ship's radio equipment and picked up the station. "Everyone used to listen to Seattle those days," he recalled, "but I was roaming the dial and picked up this new station at 1230 kc. I got rid of it instantly! Cowboy music! Yeukhhh!" The sailor's name was Jack Cullen. In October, 1996 Cullen would celebrate 50 years of broadcasting ... virtually all of it on CKNW, with his gigantic collection of records and old radio shows, and his encyclopedic memory for show biz minutiae, on a remarkable show called The Owl Prowl.

Big bands were a radio staple: Dal Richards, still active, led his band for many years in a weekly CBC radio show broadcast nationally from the Panorama Roof of the Hotel Vancouver. In the early 1950s Monty McFarlane began a hugely popular and funny morning record show on CJOR.

Programming began to fragment, a phenomenon not unique to Vancouver, as different audiences honed in on their favorite kinds of music or special programming. CKLG went on air in 1955 in North Vancouver (the LG stands for Lions Gate), owned by the Gibson Brothers, the logging family. In the summer of 1961 the station was taken over by new owners, who moved it to Vancouver. In 1964 LG went rock, and started an FM station that today is called C-FOX. In 1996 LG was still rocking, but also carrying Vancouver Grizzlies games.

Red Robinson became a meteoric favorite in the '50s playing music by Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and Motown hits, introducing that music to local audiences. After 40 years Red's still getting good numbers in the morning on Richmond's C-ISL, and in 1995 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio.

CHQM, which started in 1959, began the trend to "easy listening," and launched CHQM-FM in 1960. The latter was the first privately-owned FM station in Vancouver. In 1960, it went "stereo," also a Vancouver first. Today, CHQM has become CHMB, a station owned by and broadcasting mainly in Chinese. QM/FM, still with that name and programming "Soft Favorites," is owned by the same company that runs CFUN.

CKLG (the call letters are a clue to its North Vancouver origins: the LG stood for Lions Gate) and CFUN went for younger listeners with rock, while the country music fan had CKNW at first. When NW eased out of country, its fans went to (now-vanished) CJJC in Langley--if they could pick it up--and later to CKWX. C-FUN, by the way, had been CKMO--the former CFQC-- until February of 1955. In 1968 it changed owners and got its fourth name, CKVN, emphasizing news. In October, 1973 CKVN died and CFUN was reborn at the same spot on the dial as a contemporary music station.

On December 1, 1967 French-language radio came to B.C. when the CBC's CBUF-FM signed on.

An early indication of the popularity of talk in local radio was the success of a Glasgow-born ex-newspaperman named Jack Webster. Webster, who'd worked for the Sun from 1947 to 1953, was lured away by CJOR in 1953 to do a show called City Mike. He was 35. His pugnacious style won him listeners quickly, and his hard-hitting daily reports on the Mulligan police scandal made news themselves. (Webster, an expert in shorthand, shoved a pencil into his pocket as he sat in the courtroom and--no recording devices being allowed--scribbled down verbatim testimony.) In 1960 WX started the kind of open-line broadcasting so popular in Greater Vancouver today. Barrie Clark was an early star. But the talk show as a local ratings phenomenon really had its beginning in 1964 on CJOR with the sudden and volcanic appearance of a man named Pat Burns. Burns wasn't new to radio: he'd been a news broadcaster for years. But when OR's Peter Kosick put Burns on air with his Hotline program, the change in local radio was convulsive. Within weeks, seemingly everyone was listening to, as Webster described him, this "gruff-voiced, well-informed, first-class demagogue." In fact, it was Burns' success on OR that sparked NW's counterattack with Jack Webster, and talk radio has been a local radio staple ever since. Astonishingly, the Burns phenomenon was over in little more than a year: by the end of 1965 he was released without explanation by CJOR's owners. He later returned to the talk show format, but his ratings never matched the earlier numbers. Webster, on the other hand, became hugely successful in the format for many years and later took it to television with BCTV.

Today, CKNW's talk-show hosts include Rafe Mair, Bill Good, Gary Bannerman, and the remarkable Dave Berner, while CKST ("Coast Radio") counters with Dave Abbott, Charles Maclean and others. Mair's show inherits (and adds to) a big audience from Brian "Frosty" Forst's morning show. Morning is radio's prime time, with news and weather and traffic and sports presented with machine-gun speed, and competition is constant: in 1996 Forst was head of a pack that included CFUN's Dave Welch, CKKS's Fred Latremouille and Cathy Baldazzi, C-ISL's veteran rocker Red Robinson, Stu Jeffries and Stu McAllister on CKLG, "Larry & Willy" on C-FOX. "The Fox," by the way, had started as an "easy listening" format in 1964 as CKLG FM.

CKNW's decades-long success enabled them to move in 1995 to glossy new quarters taking up two floors of the T-D tower in downtown Vancouver. Part of the station's success comes from its coverage of Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Grizzlies and B.C. Lions games. NW has a corporate relationship and part-ownership of GM Place, where the Canucks and Grizzlies play their home games.

Vancouver Co-Operative Radio (CFRO-FM), a unique station--non-profit, community-based, and run by its members--began broadcasting in 1975, and has an enthusiastic and eclectic audience. I turned Co-Op Radio on while typing this, and the host (named Parth, who was presenting a program of religious music from India) was thanking the host of the preceding Jewish program for covering for him for 15 minutes because he, Parth, had been stuck in a traffic jam! The station's like that: informal, lots of ethnic programming, public affairs, out-of-the-mainstream music. CJVB, started by Jan van Bruchem June 18, 1972, carries on its multi-lingual programming under new owners. Most of its programming is in Cantonese and Mandarin. CHMB (once CHQM) is now run by Chinese owners, and carries many Chinese shows and a variety of other language programs. CHMB has a relationship with a Hong Kong broadcasting company, carries some programming from there.

With the advent of television, and the increase in car radios, and the upsurge in popularity of FM stations (there are now 10 AM, nine FM stations in the Lower Mainland) regular titled programs of drama and the like began to disappear on both public and private radio, and what took over was pretty much what we hear today: a mix of news, recorded music and talk shows. There are a few exceptions: CBU has the widest variety of programming, there are the two Chinese-owned stations, and CJOR, after a six-year stretch as CHRX playing "classic rock," changed call letters in 1994 to become 600 AM The Bridge (CKBD), Canada's first Christian music station.

Radio tends not to keep archives, so much of its interesting local past lives on only in the memories of old-timers. And, in the absence of a detailed history, the names of radio stars like actor John Drainie, hosts Ross and Hilda Mortimer, musician John Avison, entertainer Barney Potts, "items" broadcaster Earle Bradford, sportscaster Bill Good, Sr. (a member of the CFL and the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame) may be fated to join their earlier counterparts in unrecorded obscurity.

BC Radio History