CJCE, CFCQ and CKMO Vancouver
The Vancouver Sun radio station was designated CJCE and operated
by Vancouver Sun Radio Phones Ltd. This company was created in
conjunction with the Sportt-Shaw School of Commerce, which was offering
courses in radio and wireless telegraphy. Wireless instructor
Bruce Arundel and president R.J. Sportt were key figures in
establishing the station. The transmitter was located on one of
the upper floors of the Tower Building--later known as the Bekins
Building and still later as the Sun Tower--at the corner of Beatty and
Pender in downtown Vancouver. There are indications that the
Sprott-Shaw School was broadcasting on a casual basis even earlier than
1922. Albert Carrick remembers studying with Bruce Arundel prior
to that time.
ALBERT CARRICK: The
Vancouver School Board had night classes in radio. Burce Arundel
of Sprott-Shaw ran the class; that how we got to know him. There
was only a few of us, so we did it right in CJCE. We used to stay
after class and help Bruce at CJCE. We used to play around with
different tests and stuff like that. Bruce showed us different
things. It didn't cost Sprott-Shaw anything, because we were
learning from it anyhow. I put in time there for about three
years. It wasn't a high-powered station; it was approximately 10
watts. But do you know, we got across the Rockies to Calgary
regularly, and we got down as far as 'Frisco on that 10-watter.
There was no set time for broadcasts. It was just as we or Bruce
saw fit. We put on the first live program in Vancouver.
They got a piano up there, and a lady, and a man played the piano for
the lady. I don't know how they got the piano way up in there,
but that was the first real live show in Vancouver.
Mr. Carrick may
be referring to the Sun broadcast of March 22, 1922, which featured two
acts from the Pantages Theatre. Miss Emma Heit sang "Maytime"
with piano accompaniment and the "syncopated orchestra" of G. Wesley
Johnson played "The Sheik." The Sun, ever eager to claim a "first" said
that Miss Heit was "the first artist in Canada to sing into the
microphone." On March 25, the Sun rose to new heights of
self-adulation by publishing a telegram from Prime Minister W. L.
Mackenzie King. The message congratulated the Sun on starting
"the first radiophone service in Canada."
A new
transmitter was put into service in mid-April. At around the same
time, the responsibility of operating the station was assumed by the
Sprott-Shaw Radio Company. Though the Sun continued to sponsor
daily programming, it porbably recognized that the radio school, with
its student body as manpower, was in a much better position to run a
broadcasting operation. By mid- 1923, another station was
broadcasting from the premises of Radio Specialties Ltd. on Dunsmuir
Street, one of the first firms in Vancouver to stock radio
componments. It was owned by Major J.C. Dulfesne, who hired young
Milton Stark as his helper.
MILTON STARK: Major
Dufresne had an elementary knowledge, gained through reading a book or
something, and he was buying components from the trade magazines he
bought, maybe from Seattle. He was somewhat retired. He was
taking life very leisurely and was definitely a sweetheart, but he
wasn't out to do anything other than to keep himself occupied. He
thought of me as a wizard because of the little things that I would get
done. The occasional customer was the chap that abashedly said
that his son had sent him in; they didn't want to admit that they were
playing around with this new fad, you see. There was a man named
Roy Brown whose knowledge of radiio was deep from instinctive technical
abilities or gained through some work from Seattle. he noticed
that I was working on something that was a little extraordinary to the
regular run of the business. I told him I was building a
transmitter. "How powerful?" I said. "Well, I can't
spend too much money, and the Major isn't that excited about it,; a
10-watt transmitter." I took a record player with a horn, and I
took a microphone and put it in front of the horn and gave music to the
audience that was listening."
Radio Specialties Ltd. was
licensed in 1923 to broadcast as CFCQ on a 40-watt transmitter.
Despite the discrepancy in transmitter outputs, it seems likely that
CFCQ was Stark's station. Both CJCE and CFCQ were operated by
their respective owners into 1924. At some point, however, the
Sprott-Shaw School stopped broadcasting as CJCE and assumed the call
letters issued to Dufresne's store.
ROSS MacINTYRE: They had two
or three licenceses in there at the school in a very short time.
They closed the station down, sent their licence back, and then decided
to start it again.
CYRIL TROTT: Major Dufrersne
was the owner and operator of CFCQ. He was down on the corner oof
Howe and Dunsmuir in his radio parts store. CFCQ was his licence
call, and I have the feeling that station moved from there to the
Sprott-Shaw School under Bruce Arundel.
CFCQ became CKMO in
1928. The station enjoyed something of symbiotic relationship
with the Sprott-Shaw School, providing operational experience for th
eager students who functioned as unpaid personnel.
DON HORNE: Sprott-Shaw
ran a wireless telegraphy school and a so-called broadcasting
school. To get into the broadcasting group, you had to get your
second-class wireless certificate first. They gave you this great
technical course to become a wireless operator, and you eventually took
the government exams. The broadcast course included the
opportunity to operate their transmitter and to do some studio work in
announcing--unpaid, of course. But anyway, it was a tremendous
thrill.
ERNIE ROSE: The school
owned CKMO as a sort of a---it wasn't a sideline, really, I
guess. I never could figure out which made the most money to keep
the other going.
EARLE CONNOR: I was
introduced to broadcasting through CKMO. I was hired as an
announcer. Within 3 weeks, I was chief engineer, because the chap
who had been the engineer decided he could make more money if he went
back as a wireless operator on the rumrunners. I stayed with them
for about a year. The pay was $45 a month--when I got it.
Occasionally the Sprotts would go off on their yacht in the summertime,
and we'd work three months before they'd come back and sign the
cheques.
DON HORNE: Since at small
stations in those days, everybody had to be on the air, the school
tried very hard with some of us. They had a voice coach and they
went through the "How now brown cow?" routine and all that stuff.
I suppose some of the fellows did turn out to be pretty good
announcers; I know I didn't. But you had a good chance to be on
the air. CKMO had studios on Robson Street, not far off
Granville. They were above Welch's candy store where they made
the candy. On a hot summer evening, you opened the control door
and this almost nauseating smell of sweet chocolate came pouring
out. The other place I worked was their transmitter, which was on
top of the Bekins Building. When you started out with this
experience business, they put you on a request program from midnight
till 2:00 in the morning at the transmitter. That was a lot of
fun, of course; people would phone in and yak and what not. But
the people that owned the building, wouldn't let us use the elevators,
so we had to walk up 17 flights to work before midnight and walk down
17 after. Which was fine at the time, but when I was about 19, a
little bit after that, one lung collapsed when I was walking home from
work. The doctor said that probably it was the 17 floors up and
down every night that did it in.
CKMO was connected with the
Sprott-Shaw School until 1955, when it was sold and became CFUN.
During the late 60s, it operated briefly as CKVN with an all-news
format.
Writer Dennis Duffy approx. 1980