Early Commercial Radio Broadcasting in Canada, 1918-1932 National Historic Event

Montréal, Quebec
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford at CKAC studio (microphone in lampshade) (© Bibliothèque et Archives Canada | Library and Archives Canada / PA-139111)
Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks at CKAC, 1922
(© Bibliothèque et Archives Canada | Library and Archives Canada / PA-139111)
Address : Montréal, Quebec

Recognition Statute: Historic Sites and Monuments Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. H-4)
Designation Date: 2019-07-26
Dates:
  • 1918 to 1932 (Significant)

Other Name(s):
  • Early Commercial Radio Broadcasting in Canada, 1918-1932  (Designation Name)
Research Report Number: 2018-17

Importance: In the years before government involvement in radio, commercial broadcasters established a new Canadian industry

Plaque(s)


Approved Inscription:  

Between the late 1910s and the early 1930s, commercial broadcasters helped transform the radio craze sweeping Canada into a new mass communication industry. Starting with experimental broadcasts by station XWA (later CFCF), whose studios were located here, French- and English-language radio brought news, debates, concerts, and sporting events into the homes of Canadians, changing the way they consumed information and entertainment. As radio broadcasting continued to expand in the 1930s, privately owned stations provided some of the initial infrastructure for national radio and helped shape the new public broadcasting system.