Art McDonald Coins “The Friendly Voice”

They say that disastrous things come in circumstances of three’s. I really don’t know if that is true or not, but for our family the Victoria Hotel Fire seemed to be a prelude to a series of reversals. In addition to the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression, the bottom fell out of the Prince Edward Island fox industry, and many of Grandfather WK’s business interests plummeted.

Our house on Bayfield Street, which Dad believed was his, bought and paid for by “WK”, was still in “WK’s” name. The bank held a mortgage on it, and the upshot was we had to leave the home we loved and grew up in. Dad was heartbroken for his father, and “WK” was shocked at the suddenness of his reversals. It was really a dreadful and distressing time.

Saddened, we moved in with mother’s father, Grandfather Smith. The crunch had come for “WK” as it had for so many. “WK”, that most flamboyant of figures who drove around Charlottetown in large luxurious cars, who had made many business trips to Paris, London, and New York, and who had employed a full time Austrian, liveried chauffeur, was called into the bank to turn over his fox ranches forth- with. Characteristically, he waited until it was almost feeding time for the foxes. Then taking the huge bunch of keys to the pens, he marched into the bank manager’s office and said:

“There are five hundred hungry foxes out there. Five o’clock is feeding time—you feed them!”

And with that he dropped the huge bunch of the keys with a clatter unto the desk and strolled out leaving an astounded bank manager to stare first at the keys and then at the stiff back and erect head leaving his office.

Tony Shelfoon said that CFCY’s maturation was . .a long process of imperceptible progress; then suddenly it blossomed. Dad broke the ground, tended, weeded, nurtured until finally the bloom was safe. In plain words, to make a success of something one must have the right mix of vision, practicality, concentration, and courage to take risks.”

One of my father’s strengths was his ability to pick the right person for the job at the right time. Tony Shelfoon was exactly right to assist Dad through that very experimental stage; Les Peppin was right for the next ten years while he learned the . .radio business from the bottom up”; so was John Quincy Adams who built another more powerful trans— mitter. I single these three out because their contribution seemed to be

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