DX Audio Service
Historical Moments
January 1997

Historical Moments in Radio .. a collection of stories of the rich and
exciting past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today a look at the origins
of radio broadcasting by our Canadian neighbors.  It appears they have
many of the same uncertainties about when broadcasting started that we in
the U.S. do .. but after some careful research and a review of work by
Mary Vipond in the McGill-Queens University Press, certain facts become
clear.

For instance, there is no doubt that voice and music tests were conducted
in Toronto and Montreal during 1919.  And it was about that time that
some enterprising souls began to think that maybe they could manufacture
and sell radios to the general public.  This was based on the mail
received from the public as a result of tests run during the spring of
1920. The program consisted of "Hello, this is a test .. one .. two ..
three .."  and when it was necessary for the engineer to step away from
the microphone, he would play a phonograph record.

The public wrote in to ask if there were some way the station could
announce it times for broadcasting symphonies and other good music .. and
this was coupled with the success being enjoyed by a local music store of
records that we played on the air.  That music store had gambled by
loaning the radio people a record player and the records that were
played.  And when you added up all the numbers, it was clear that lots of
people were listening to the test transmissions and were responding to
the mention of that music store each time a record was played.

Our story now focuses on Montreal where the experimental station operated
by the Marconi Company, XWA,  established a schedule of musical programs
on Tuesday evenings starting in late 1920.  Not only that but, on
Christmas Eve, 1920, XWA had a short visit from Santa Claus .. it is
probable that very few people heard his "Ho-ho-ho", however, since they
came in the middle of a test program on another evening of the week.  

Word about radio began to spread throughout the dominion .. by the middle
of 1921, the Marconi station in Toronto was broadcasting musical concerts
every Tuesday evening too.   The large department store, Eatons,
established a radio receiver department.  The Toronto Star newspaper got
the idea that radio might be useful in selling newspapers and sent
employees to Pittsburgh and to Detroit where radio stations seemed to be
flourishing.  The reports from those cities convinced the Star to build a
radio station that would stay on the air every day of the week.  

At first, they threw some equipment together just to show their own
management what they had in mind .. and to their astonishment, fan
letters from hundreds of miles away began pouring in!  
It didn't take long to assemble a proper station .. and the Canadian
Government was anxious to promote radio as a way to encourage tourism and
to help get news and culture out to its residents far from urban reaches,
particularly to the north of the settled centers of population.  Thus,
CFCA was born, licensed to the Toronto Star.

By the end of 1921 and more noticeably during the spring of 1922, radio
stations began appearing simultaneously in most major Canadian centers.
 
In March, 1922, the Radio Branch of the Department of Naval Service
decided that a new category of license should be created for these
entertainment stations that had been operating under experimental
licenses.  They called the newly licensed enterprises, Private Commercial
Broadcasting" stations.  Licenses for broadcasting in Canada, therefore,
began officially on April 1, 1922 and the call signs they made available
to the stations ranged from CFA to CKZ.  

By April 30, 1922, 21 such licenses had been processed and were assigned
frequencies ranging from 666 to 750 kiloHertz.  The stations were
allotted as follows:  Marconi stations were granted in Halifax, Montreal,
Toronto, and Vancouver were all assigned to 440 Meters (that would be
about 680 on modern dials).  The Montreal station was named CFCF and was
the first to be issued.  Two other stations were granted in Montreal,
CJBC at about 710 and CHYC at about 730 on the dial.

Toronto received 6 stations, each separated by a bit under 20 kiloHertz
from the next.  That was too close a spacing for radios of that era .. in
fact, even today, stations in the same city are not assigned channels
closer together than 40 kiloHertz except in the rarest of cases.  Other
Canadian cities getting allotments in that first series of licenses were
Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg.

By now, radio broadcasting was off and running throughout the provinces
and, within 6 months another 26 Canadian stations had been authorized
thus pretty well blanketing the populated sections of the country.

For Historical Moments in Radio, this is John Bowker.