CFDC Nanaimo/CKWX Vancouver

      One of the most frequently repeated stories of early broadcasting in British Columbia tells of the radio station that Arthur "Sparks" Holstead started in Nanaimo and moved to Vancouver.  Stanley Goard provides a detailed first-person account of the beginnings of CKWX.

STANLEY GOARD: The Sparks Company was an automotive-electical place at Wallace and Fitzwilliam Street in Nanaimo, operated by Arthur Holstead and Bill Hanlon.  Both these fellows had been employees at the powder works (the Giant Powder Co.) at Nanoose Bay.  Sparks was a good electricia; he picked up the name "Sparks" there.  He worked as an automotive electrician, on extracurricular activity, for Weeks Motors in Nanaimo, before opening his shop with Bill Hanlon; I think that was about 1920 or 21.  They were Willard Distributors--Willard batteries--and they also carried the parts for magnetos and generators and starters.  They were the people where everybody went; they just had a good business.  That's where I went to work for Sparks at $8 a week.  Because I'd had an interest in wireless, it wasn't hard for Sparks to kind of appreciate what I knew about wireless.  And about that time the word "radio" was beginning to be bandied about.  I got acquainted with a young fellow by the name of King Cavalsky.  He was out of school and looking for a job, and he'd been doing pretty much what I'd been doing--fixing up receivers and things.  He'd got a little further along than I had in my day.  He invited me over to his house and I heard my first sound of voice and music over the air in his place.  He'd got the thing rigged up and he was picking up a Seattle station.  And it left an impression.  It started me.  It kind of came home to me.  I guess, at that time.  One of Sparks' trips to Seattle, he came back with a 10-watt Westinghouse Model TF transmitter.  This got us thinking broadcasting, so Arthur Holstead applied for a licence and received the call letters CFDC in 1923.  To put this transmitter on the air, we got King Cavalsky and put him on the payroll.   From the Sprott-Shaw wireless school in Vancouver we got a fellow by the name of Jack Allen.  Jack was glad to come over and help us put together the transmitter.  We got the thing all set up and going in business.  King left for the telephone company.  Jack Allen's wife--an English war bride-- got homesick for England, so Jack went back to England.  We ran this station mostly in the evening, after we shut down the shop; we did this an extracurricular activity.  We borrowed records from the G.F. Fletcher Music Company and gave them credit on the air.  We never did any advertising, never solicited any business for ourselves; it just wasn't thought about, I guess.  After Cavalsky and Allen left, it left it pretty much for me to go up in the evening to run the station.  I was a young fellow and I needed to get out around at night a little bit after work.  We weren't very dependable, and finally we shut it down.  Afbout that time, Sparks decided he wanted an automotive electrical and battery station in Vancouver, so he went over there and opened a place down on 1220 Seymour Street.  He was doing it all himself, he left Hanlon in charge at Nanaimo.  On one of his visits over to the island, I said, "Sparks, I'd like to come over and work for you in Vancouver."  So the conclusion was that I should come over.   Radio was growing more, and more things were going on about the need for batteries and things. We had a few customers that we could go out to and pick up their batteries and charge them for them; we'd loan them a battery while it was being done.  And this developed to be quite a little project.  It ended up that we had three cars on the go; we'd take these batteries out to a customers's house and leave them the rental battery, which they could use while we had their regular battery for charging.  A fellow who was the chairman of the Liberal Party in Vancouver and a customer of ours--an attorney by the name of Ed Sears--knew that we had the transmitter sitting idle over in Nanaimo.  He said that if we would bring it over, the Liberal Party, would pay the expenses of bringing it over and setting it up in Vancouver, and they would have us broadcast the meetings they had as rallies to ensure their election.  They footed the billand we brought over the equipment.  We arranged for a room on the top floor of the Belmont Hotel on Granville Street.


        The Belmont Hotel was an advantageous location for the transplanted station.  Microphone lines were strung to pick up the orchestra in the basement cabaret and grand piano upstairs.  However, the broadcast licence issued to CFDC mad no allowance for the move from Nanaimo to Vancouver, and station was ordered off the air.  Luckily, it had alrerady established a coterie of regular listeners who successfully petitioned for its return to the airwaves. 

STANLEY GOARD:  When the Liberal acitivity was over, we were still operating it but just for short periods of time.  A fellow by the name of Reg Burgess, who'd had experience selling advertising, came to us one day and said, "I think I could sell some advertising on your station."  He succeeded and when we saw some dollars and cents coming into the place, this changed the picture materially.  About that time, a fellow by the name of Ivor Bassett came along.  He was a school teacher, very good command of the language, very knowledgeable, had an appreciation for classical music and an ability to just ramble on on a microphone.  So he was up on the top floor of the Belmont Hotel, playing the records and announcing the program.  He had a voice that bothered ladies like nobody's business.  I was amazed at the mail that man got, and the things that wer in the letters that he got.  Ivor Bassett really did a lot to help that station go; he just had something.  I don't know what it was.  He wasn't anything to look at; he was a round-faced, red-faced individual, and bald.  He didn't look anything like he sounded.  I think a lot of the ladies or girls that wrote letters to him, if they saw him, they'd wish they hadn't. 

       By the end of 1927, CFDC had moved to larger quaters in the Sparks Company's garage on Seymour Street, installed a new 100-watt transmitter and changed its name.  The original call letters were too frequently misinterpreted by out-of-town listeners seeking to identify the station; the call letters CKWX were chosen for their distinctive sound.  In 1928, CKWX moved its studios to the top floor of the Hotel Georgia, where they remained until 1941.  In 1940, Taylor, Pearson and Carson Limited, an Alberta-based station management company, bought into the operation, eventually taking it over completely.  In its heyday, CKWX was the most popular commercial radio station in the province.

Author, Dennis Duffy
Published in 1982