Atlantic Canada's radio pioneer: Fredericton's CFNB went on the air 100 years ago
CBC
When Fredericton businessman J. Stewart Neill began to experiment with a small radio transmitter in his home, it's likely some of his friends and neighbours labelled him a dreamer.
The year was 1922, and there were only a few functioning commercial radio stations in Canada, with none in Atlantic Canada.
The federal government had only begun regulating radio that summer, and it wasn't long before the hardware-store owner forked over the five dollars it cost to purchase an amateur radio transmitter licence.
Neill was given the call letters 10AD, and his 10-watt transmitter took up a substantial amount of room in his home's parlour on Waterloo Row.
Outside, he installed a 10-metre mast on the roof of his house and a second 20-metre mast in the backyard, which were connected by a four-strand aerial array.
On Jan. 12, 1923, he turned on his transmitter and began to broadcast for the first time.
Neill wasn't broadcasting to a big audience, just a handful of people who lived near his home.
Few New Brunswickers could afford a radio receiver, let alone had a reason to buy one in a community with no radio being transmitted.
So Neill began with just a few hours of programming a day, consisting of commentary and news he performed himself and music from a gramophone record player.
In an edition of Canadian Broadcaster dated Jan. 23, 1958, CFNB's then-station manager, Jack Fenety, related an early story of Neill's broadcast experiences.
One day his listeners were suddenly greeted with dead air in the middle of a broadcast.
"Only when the family telephone started to ring," Fenety wrote, "and the half-dozen radio homes reported the break in the program, did the Neill family discover that the head of the house lay prostrate on the floor."
Neill had apparently fainted, the microphone still open beside him.
Having a radio station in your home wasn't easy for the family. They were sworn to silence when the radio was transmitting, learning to communicate using sign language.
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