Radio Waves from Afar

When I was growing up in Calgary in the 1950's and early 60's, there were three local radio stations. FM was just coming in, and an early demo had listeners set two radios side by side: each tuned to a different AM station to give a stereo experience.

Beyond the local scene we had two options: There was the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) whose main provincial transmitter was located at Lacombe, midway between Calgary and Edmonton, Alberta's two major cities.

By late in the 50's, CBC reception in Calgary from Lacombe got poorer, due to the increasing power of American stations, particularly after dark. The led initially to one of Calgary's privately owned radio stations being taken over as a part time CBC affiliate. Eventually Calgary got its own CBC station in 1964.

The second outside option was the US radio that came streaming across the border. In my teens I had a radio by my bed and would try to see how many distant stations I could pick up by turning the dial slowly at night. The distinguishing feature of American stations was call letters that began with "W" as well as the accents of the announcers, especially on stations farther south.

There were distinguishable accents on CBC Radio as well. Most notable was the English accent on the BBC news from London that was broadcast at nine o'clock every morning on the network.

There were other accents too: ones I've learned to recognize as Maritime or Toronto. In the days before multiculturalism, I believe the CBC worked at maintaining a more standardized accent. One exception was the slight accent and intonation of announcers and reporters from Radio-Canada, the CBC's French arm, when these covered stories for both language networks.

In Edmonton, where my grandparents lived, there was a French language station affiliated with Radio-Canada, because of a greater concentration of French speaking Canadians in Northern Alberta. At the stage my French was not good enough to pick up more than word snippets from stories I'd heard already in English. But I still used to listen in while cruising the dial for other new sounds.

From south of the border came "Fibber McGee and Molly," an American classic radio comedy we used to look forward to. It was produced in Chicago and ran until 1959. We may have heard it in Calgary on a Denver station, though it was carried by a number of local Canadian stations..

The Canadian popularity of "Fibber..." and other American radio sitcoms, foreshadowed the wholesale importing of US television into English speaking Canada in the early days of TV. This ultimately led to "Canadian content regulations" and the rise of a new wave of Canadian culture.