Expansion, Rifts and Competition

...it is not your business to comment one way or the other in this matter. It is the policy of the Department to remain impartial in disputes of this nature. The station owners must come to some agreement themselves.

It lasted for ten years, causing considerable distress to the opponents—especially’for Mr. Burke. My father was upset because _ Walter Burke was caught in the middle; and he was distressed because " . of the frustration and energy which had to be expended. But a battle is a battle and must be fought to be won. Jim Gesner was as tenacious as Dad until he later left the Island. The alignments and realignments of sides in this struggle were like a microcosm of world powers in their perpetual struggle to seek a balance of power. What it amounted to in the end, was in the best tradition of North American free enterprise— there had to be a winner and there had to be a loser and in the interim, there was a vigorous scrap.

In the last analysis, it came down to a competition between Jim Gesner and my Dad, Mr. Burke really having no taste for it. A devoted family man, a hard worker, and a devout Methodist churchman, Mr. Burke was well regarded by the many who knew him. The words of Joe Rodd, the retired owner of Toombs Music Store in Charlottetown, typify the general opinion of him:

“Burke was a man you couldn’t discourage—he’d come up smiling. It was his religion. He was a very religious man—0h not the book kind, he carried it far beyond. You couldn’t get a more honest, kinder man”.

Mr. Burke’s association with Gesner lasted more or less about three Years and deteriorated steadily over the next four. The quality of the PTOgamming deteriorated to nothing more than that played over a gramaphone—or mechanical music as it was called then. In addition to sacred music the only other kind Mr. Burke considered in good taste Was light classical, and when these gave way more and more to raucous POpular hits and jazz played over the phonograph, he protested; but

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