Summer is almost here, finally, and another Blyth Festival season approaches. I’m thrilled to have my own play Powers and Gloria repeated in the season and happy to see Anne Chislett’s powerful classic  Quiet in the Land is being staged again at the outdoor stage.
    But the play I’m most looking forward to seeing is Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story, staged at Memorial Hall. Next winter is the 100th anniversary of “Doc” airing the radio station that would become CKNX.
    I wrote a history of Doc and the station in The Village Squire,  on the 50th anniversary of the station’s founding in 1976. Doc was so nicknamed because he had a job driving a doctor around, but his main business was selling radios from a main street store in Wingham. February 20, in 1926 was a stormy day and no customers were coming in, so he took out some radio parts, and, reading Popular Mechanics magazine, put together a radio transmitter.
    Today, it’s hard to imagine those times. Doc had the only shop selling radios in a 50-mile radius. The nearest commercial radio station was in Detroit, 150 miles away and even American stations broadcast only a few hours a day.
    When Doc turned on his transmitter he had no idea if anyone would hear his transmission, but then he received a phone call from one of the customers he’d sold a radio to that the message was coming in. 
    It wasn’t so easy. He found out that even as an amateur he couldn’t broadcast without a license. The first call letters were 10 BP. But running the station was expensive and Doc was not a rich man. After getting used to his broadcasts, people didn’t want to lose the station so 300 joined forces to start a radio club.
    But by 1935 something had to be done and the station couldn’t operate as a non-profit anymore. Doc applied for a commercial license, something unheard of in a small town at that point. But the local Member of Parliament threatened to filibuster until a license was granted. Doc got his license,
    Ads sold for 50 cents a spot and revenue for the first month was $65.50. In news, all newscasts would be 50 per cent local, no matter what was going on. 
    In 1937 came the first Barn Dance, done in the station and using recorded music. After three months the idea came forward to use local musicians and soon the Barn Dance became the most popular show on the station,
    Things changed again in 1942 when young Johnny Brent was hired to run the show. He took the show on the road, broadcasting from various halls around the area. 
    By the 1950s, television was the big new thing. Channel 8 was set aside for an Owen Sound station but Doc wanted it for his own station. Doc went to Ottawa to get permission to set up a station in Wingham at a cost of $125,000, but the commissioners warned the station would cost $500,000 and require $125,000 a year to maintain. Doc went ahead anyway. He got the station and set it up in the old high school which he rented for $1 a year. It went on air on November 18, 1955.
    I remember the day in 1962 when the building went up in fire. The radio crew immediately started broadcasting from the transmitter south of town. As the station burned, other stations came to Doc’s aid, loaning equipment. By evening he was on air from makeshift quarters in the new high school.
    The station was rebuilt in the current building. But by 1970 Doc couldn’t keep the TV station going. It was sold to Walter J. Blackburn, owner of CFPL in London. Later still, the TV station was closed.
    There’s so much more to this fascinating story than I have room for here. Hopefully the play will tell the story. ◊