OUT OF THIN AIR York City were now accessible to the masses wherever they might be. The broadcasts were so popular that networks around the world imitated them. In Canada , Toronto 's King Edward Hotel Ballroom was most popular, followed later by the opulent Royal York . Until as late as the 1960's CFCY carried the very romantic and popular, "Dancing Under the Stars" from Ontario 's Brant Inn, Burlington . The Big Band era grew out of this tradition, one of the most nostalgic being Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians . Dad and Walter Burke broadcast their Sunday dinner program from Charlottetown 's finest hotel, the Victoria. Dad thought it would be a good idea to build a posh studio there. Mother designed and decorated it. When she was through, it was elegant and in good taste with the walls hung in red velvet drapes and the floor deeply carpeted. The tiny shed at Great with its aged and worn piano was not at all suitable for the classical musical recitals we had broadcast from . The elegant new studio at the hotel, which sported a very fine piano belonging to my grandmother, was ideal for more sophis¬ ticated types of programming. In the fall of 1928 a fashionable concert was given featuring Horace MacEwen on the piano, mother and Mrs. Hermina Richards, and the Casino Orchestra. The Casino was a small string ensemble hired on a regular basis by the hotel. Most of its members were students or former students of Kathleen Hornby . The Victoria Hotel studio, however, was short lived, for on a November night in 1929, a fire started in the basement of the hotel. The flames shot up the elevator shaft and before the night ended, the entire building was engulfed. With high winds blowing from the har¬ bour, all the fire-fighters could do was prevent the flames from leaping to other buildings. The hotel had just taken in a fresh delivery of coal that day, and apparently this burned and glowed for weeks. Fortunately, there was no loss of life. The Charlottetown Volunteer Fire Brigade did a miraculous job of saving the wooden houses and buildings that make up that part of the city. Only forty years earlier, a great part of Charlottetown had been destroyed in what is now known as the "Great Fire". Luckily the building was insured, and when Dad moved in there he had put on extra insurance to cover the new studio. The only thing that was not insured was Grandmother's piano, but fortunately it was rescued, unscathed, from the inferno. 74