CHWK Chilliwack

JACK PILLING: The initial justification for a radio station in Chilliwack was brought about in this manner--and this involved both Casey Wells and Jack Menzies (of Menzies Hardware.)  Radio receivers were not very sophisticated then, and the Chilliwack Valley, being surrounded by mountains, made it very difficult with the receivers of that day to bring in signals from outisde the valley.  Casey and Jack arrived at the conclusion that if they were going to go into sales of radio receivers someone had to have something to listen to.  The best way to accomplish this was to establish a little radio station.

CASEY WELLS: In 1927 I went to Mission.  I knew a radio ham there--Mr. Earl Streeter--quite well, and persuaded him to sell his ham radio broadcasting station.  My Dad backed a note for me, and I went down with a cheque and picked up the transmitter from Mr. Streeter.  We loaded it into the Model T Truck and came back with a complete radio station: miles of wire, 1000 volts in storage batteries, and an old transmitter off a submarine in the First World War.  That was the original equipment in CHWK.  Our schedule then was from 12-1 and from 6-7.  From 1:00 until after 7 I was selling radios.  These radio sales generally took till midnight.  You couldn't catch the farmers in the daytime.  The only time to sell to a farmer was after he'd finished the milking and had his supper; then you could go in and talk.  In 1929, we were fortunate in getting Jack Pilling to help in the radio department of Menzies Hardware. 

JACK PILLING: The radio station was operating more or less one hour a day, between 12 and 1.  If Casey was out trying to close a sale and 12:00 came around, the radio station became a secondary thing and it didn't go on the air that day.  The local residents used to make bets as to whether it would or would not come on the air between the hours of 12 and 1.  Gradually I became the one who had to take over when Casey didn't show up.  We had a single turntable--which was hand-wound, believe it or not--and a fairly good selection of the records of the era.  You just played records and made comments and tried to pick up a little news here and there---which was very, very difficult--and just filled in the hour as best you were able and then signed off.    It would be about 1932 or 33 that Menzies Hardware decided that they would also go into the furniture business.  For that they would require the second storey, in which the radio service department and the radio station was located.  At the same time, they decided that maybe radio broadcasting was not too profitable a line of business.  Casey decided to purchase the stock that Menzies Hardware held, and we cut a hole through the cement wall and moved into the area above the Fashion Bakery.   

      Through the 30s, there were a number of shifts in the ownership and control of CHWK.  Jack Pilling became an equal partner with Casey Wells in 1940.

Author Dennis Duffy,
Published 1982