MY Memories
Almost every person who works in the radio business has a story to tell.. and this is mine.
One of the most asked questions I had to field whenever I met our listeners, as well as my peers, was "how did you get into radio?"
Anytime you open the nostalgia vault, some of the stuff that spills out gets mixed up and dates, times, names, places and incidents that have been stored for more than 50 years may appear in the wrong order or, perhaps, not at all.
I'll try my best to keep everything in context but, having just passed my 66th birthday, you will have to forgive me if one or three things go astray. But, thanks to the fact that these memories are being stored digitally and not in print, I have the luxury of correcting and updating at will and ask that you give me your own input if I goof up every now and then.
It all began with a little dawn to dusk radio station in a small Ontario town
I had always wanted to be in broadcasting.. always.
As a small boy growing up in Richmond Hill, Ontario, radio was my main entertainment. The Lone Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch House and numerous other shows were faithfully listened to on weekend evenings. The radio was always on at breakfast time when my dad tuned into Bruce Smith, Walter Bowles and Eddy Fitkin on CJBC to catch the latest news, sports and weather before leaving for the long drive down to Toronto along Yonge Street.
After he left I would usually take command of the Carlton console and make the short trip down the dial to 580 and add Stu Kenney to my morning routine.
Before American Bandstand arrived on the scene, after school entertainment was provided by Keith Sandy and the Make Believe Ballroom (yes.. I and many others thought the Modernaires were singing "It's Maple Leaf Ballroom Time") and the last thing I would hear at night on my little bakelite Arvin bedside radio was Mickey Lester telling that darned cuckoo bird to 'say goonight'.
The odd thing was.. I never really cared about being 'mike side' on the radio. I was more interested in what was happening in the control room. To me, that was where the action was. Without the control room.. there was no radio!
And then it happened!
The main story on the front page of The Liberal, our weekly paper in our town, was like a dream come true. Richmond Hill was getting its very own radio station!
When would it happen? Where was it going to be built? And, most important of all, how was I going to get a job there?
The when was: it was being built over the next few months and would go on the air on July 1st, 1957. The where was: the studios would be located on the 2nd floor of the Mainprize Drug Store building right on Yonge Street, just around the corner from my high school (go RHHS!) The how was: entirely up to me.
I first appeared at CJRH's doorway as a 14-year-old kid, in 9th grade at school, offering to do anything to be able to breath in the sawdust and dodge the workmen as the radio station was being built. I would go for coffee, run errands, grovel and beg.. anything that anyone wanted me to do.. just to be able to say that I was working at the new radio station. Fortunatley for me the owners, John Graham and Stu Coxford, allowed me to hang around and try to be useful as long as I didn't get in the way.
On July 1st, as scheduled, CJRH went on the air at 1300 kc, with Dave Wright as morning man, with special guest George Chassis, the local contractor who built the station.
The Program Director was Stephen Appleby, Chief Engineer was Bill McDougall, and other on-air staff included Marjorie Chadwick, Hal Burns, Gary Parkhill and Stan Larke. I've probably left someone out but what do you expect when the event occured more than 50 years ago? Oh yes, there was one other person present with his nose pressed againt the glass looking into the control room from the newsroom.. me!
Into the early summer I tore news copy from the teletype machine, typed commercials, sat on the switchboard when Pat Harrington went to lunch, refiled 78s, 45s and 33 1/3 rpm records in the record library and spent endless hours with the same nose pressed against the same glass watching the announcers (we didn't really call them DJs back then) play the music and all the other things that made the control room the cente of the radio universe.
Mr. Appleby thought that I was too young to be trusted with something as sacred as 'operating the board' (from whence the term 'operator' came to define those of us who never spoke on the air but played the discs and commercials and made the announcers look good).
One day, in mid-August, Steve went on a short holiday and Dave Wright asked if I would like to operate Sundown Serenade, our daily sign-off program, (we were dawn-to-dusk at that time) for the week.
Two nights later, with my proud father sitting in the newsroom watching through the glass, I became the youngest operator in Canadian radio at that time.
I WAS IN RADIO!
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