CFCY Goes On the Air

Railways, Moncton, and with another station in Mont Joli, Quebec.

The application was filled and duly sent off with the fee enclosed. In an enclosed letter he accused Ottawa of discriminating against the Maritimes by its allocation of only one wavelength for such a large region, while Toronto and Montreal had several times that allocated to each of them. This initiated a flurry of memoranda up and down the bureaucratic ladder, causing a delay in the granting of the licence. Ten days passed and there was still no letter or word on his application. Dad was impatient and eager. He had sent off his application and $50.00—a lot of money—why wasn’t there a reply? Unable to stand the suspense any longer, he fired off a cable. Two days later, on August 10, 1925, he received the following reply:

LICENCE MAILED TODAY STOP

YOU WILL SHARE THREE HUNDRED METERS WITH MONCTON FOR TIME BEING STOP CALL SIGN CFCY STOP REPEAT CFCY

But when the licence, #42—the first commercial licence issued to Prince Edward Island, and the first commercial licence in Eastern Canada—arrived in the mail, an accompanying letter advised that Moncton had been assigned a new wavelength. CFCY didn’t have to share its frequency.

Even though they were now partners in the first commercial station on PEI, Walter Burke and Dad each had his own personal broadcasting dream. Mr. Burke’s was to broadcast local church services. The Burke family had sacrificed a great deal to purchase lOAS and to have it installed to do just this. Dad’s dream was more secular. He envisioned a powerful station—as powerful as some of the future Toronto or American stations. And why not, he reasoned. Didn’t the air belong to everybody?

While researching the period 1925-1928 at the National Archives in Ottawa, I was amazed at the hefty amount of correspondence between CFCY and Ottawa, all of it written by Dad.

During that time there were two official station inspections; each conducted at the Burke residence where the transmitter was located, and where the licence was required to be posted along with the gov— ernment broadcasting rules and regulations. Each licence shows the

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