Art McDonald Coins “The Friendly Voice”

Indeed he was the friendly voice. He was a superb performer with an intimate, easy-to—listen to voice. The public image he projected was one of warmth, sincerity, and humanity. Art loved his radio audience in the way a great actor loves his audience, and he projected this through the microphone. The private man was restless and complex. There was a tragic history of tuberculosis in his family. Art, himself, was a sufferer, and typical of those who are, he was prone to fits of depression and irritability. After he was at CFCY for about a year he and Dad did not see eye to eye over a certain matter, so he left for a while. But he and CFCY needed each other, and it was not too long before there were com— promises and understandings, and LA “Art” McDonald was back on the job again, more energetic than ever.

In 1936 he wrote, compiled and edited a CFCY magazine called The Friendly Voice. It was no run—off—on-the duplicator affair, but a beautifully laid out two-colour print job with pictures on good quality paper. As I look at it, I am amazed at how professional it was and the time it must have taken him to put it together, but Art was indefatigable. He really was Mr. CFCY, even to the point of having had made a large black onyx ring emblazoned with the letters CFCY in gold with a pair of cuff-links to match. He was responsible for bringing Don Messer to the Island, and between the two of them they made CFCY a household word from coast to coast.

When the word came from Ottawa that he had to locate his new 500 watt transmitter outside of the city limits, Dad had to forage around for the things he needed but couldn’t afford: two steel towers at least 100 hundred feet high each, brick, lumber, labour and many other requirements. True to his fashion, Dad did what he always did when he had worries and problems to solve—he went fishing. Away he’d go tramping along his favourite streams until late evening when he headed home again with a basket of trout. He got to work right away—horse trading. Over the next weeks loads of yellow brick arrived at the site from the LE. Shaw brickworks, and lumber arrived from Paoli’s lumber yard.

The towers, however, are a story onto themselves. Dad knew that the two steel towers used by the Canadian National Railways Radio Station, CNRA in Moncton, had been dismantled when the Canadian National went out of the radio business. Where were they? He turned on his amateur radio transmitter, VElHI, and put the word out to all his friends that he was trying to locate the two 150 foot towers.

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