CKAC turns 100 | A century of anecdotes

It was the glory of the Empire. In October 1922, 100 years ago, the prestigious BBC broadcast its first broadcast. And precisely at the same time, we inaugurated CKAC. Montreal was thus home to one of the first radio stations in the world. The newspaper The Press then owned it. Until 1929, the antenna was located on the building on rue Saint-Jacques. During the first years, we broadcast in French and English.

Denis Lessard
The Press

The metropolis of Canada was at the cutting edge of technology. The Canadian subsidiary of the Italian inventor Marconi is Montreal. In Paris, Radiola, the French public radio, was only a few months ahead of it. The word “broadcasting” has just appeared. The timetable strategists are not yet cracking down. However, for the young station, “information has become a priority”, points out Pierre Pagé in his History of radio in Quebec. We bet on “unpublished news”, the ancestor of exclusives. At 11 p.m., we air The newspaper today, an impressive press review. It’s 1928!

For decades, CKAC will be the most listened to station in Quebec, will contribute powerfully to the proliferation of receivers. There are craftsmen who will leave their mark: Roger Baulu, the “prince of advertisers”, and Jean-Louis Gagnon, the king of journalists at the time.

Jump in time: 1970 is an important date for CKAC. Not only because the direction of the station must meet the cardinal Léger to announce to him that one put an end to the diffusion of the rosary in family, but especially because the young members of the FLQ send by taxi their manifesto to the station located in the Art Deco building, at the corner of Sainte-Catherine and Metcalfe streets.

“The bosses were nervous, wondering what to do, but in Ottawa, Minister Mitchell Sharp announced that Radio-Canada would be allowed to read it on the air. We did it the day before,” recalls Louis Fournier, the one who will be asked to read the manifesto. He was then 25 years old.

A few days later, the station receives a phone call, we will know later that it is from Paul Rose. A press release with a sketch of the Saint-Hubert airport awaits the young Mychel St-Louis at Place des Arts. St-Louis will go there, with Robert Nadon, photographer of The Press.

His photos of the open rear trunk of the green Chevrolet will go around the world. The director of information, Normand Maltais, opens the airwaves. Shortly after midnight, in a feverish voice, St-Louis announces the death of Pierre Laporte. The reporter is 23 years old.

A talent pool

For years, CKAC will rely on young people in the news. “An incredible breeding ground for talent”, summarizes Pierre Arcand, journalist then boss at the station. The list is astonishing: Pierre Bruneau, Daniel Lessard, Jean Pelletier, Raymond Saint-Pierre, Gilbert Lavoie, Jacques L’Archevêque made their debut there in the 1970s. Richard Desmarais, Jacques Camirand, Jacques Millette too. All will make remarkable careers as journalists. Later, it will be the Alain Gravel, André Pratte, Michel Vien, Denis Ferland, all recruited in their early twenties.

The first woman to cover news items, Jocelyne Cazin already has the features of the “pittbull” that we will find in I., the one who brought donuts to the police was wearing a plaid shirt and Kodiak boots. She rode the sidewalks in her car to get around the yellow tapes at crime scenes. As for the animators, we will find essential duos: Jean Duceppe and Réal Giguère, Jacques Proulx and Jacques Morency, Jean Cournoyer and Jean Lapierre.

In the 1980’s, The informant noon with Pierre Pascau will be the most popular program in Canada, in French and in English. “I was listening As It Happens at CBC, several topics that tumbled quickly, I thought it was the right formula if we did the same thing with local information, “recalls Pierre Arcand, then director of the station. “The competition was then Mathias Rioux and Jean Cournoyer. In two BBM polls, Pascau had dislodged them, ”he explains. Outstanding interviewer, “Pascau had managed to draw emotions from astronaut Marc Garneau, a very reserved personality,” recalls André Pratte.

” Everyone does it ”

The station’s slogan is not humbling: “Everyone does it, so do it!” We are witnessing a friendly competition between Pascau and Suzanne Lévesque, who precedes him on the air. Jokingly, Rodger Brulotte says he is no stranger to this success: at the end of the game descriptions on a haunting rhythm of Jacques Doucet and Brulotte, “the listeners closed the station, which was tuned to CKAC the next morning! “.

Louis-Paul Allard will be the serious guarantor of the humor festival, which brought together Roger Joubert, Pierre Labelle and Tex Lecor, painter known for his insolence on the telephone, a Saturday program which will also have peak audiences. Marcel Béliveau will host The world upside downa formula that must have been sleeping in Stéphan Bureau’s unconscious.

Advertising was already vital for private radio. “My father did the first commercials for St-Hubert BBQ, with the ‘pout pout pout'”, recalls Gilles Duceppe. A man of convictions, Jean Duceppe had read Steinberg’s advertising on the air, but the chain’s stores were on strike. “He ended by saying ‘they are on strike, so go to Dionne (a former grocery store on avenue du Mont-Royal, editor’s note)!’ It was the end of his contract, but a few weeks later, he was at another station,” recalls the former leader of the Bloc Québécois.

red weekend

The station on Metcalfe sometimes becomes the epicenter of the news. In October 1974, 2,400 Montreal firefighters broke out, the fires multiplied in the east of the city, it was the “red weekend”. The union leaders are interviewed at the station, Matthias Rioux manages to convince the mayor Jean Drapeau to go to the studio. He finds himself on the air with the union. “The conflict was settled in the CKAC lobby. Flag was furious. He felt trapped, and said, “I don’t hold a grudge, but I have a memory!” “recalls Raymond Saint-Pierre, director of information at the time.

A fire, an explosion: CKAC was quickly on the spot. “We were very flexible, we could broadcast quality sound from a car, we really took over the airwaves,” recalls Saint-Pierre.

He had also obtained a powerful interview with Robert Bourassa, in exile in Brussels after his defeat. Six hours of broadcasting. There were many highlights: before the 1976 election campaign, Saint-Pierre convinced Robert Bourassa and René Lévesque to take part in a radio debate. The Bourassa government takes a beating on integrity issues, but its retort — “Cite me a case!” — leaves Lévesque speechless.

In the 1985 elections, a debate moderated by Pierre Pascau opposed this time Bourassa to Pierre Marc Johnson. The Liberal leader is still doing well: “What is Quebec’s financial leeway? Johnson’s response never came.

In December 2000, it was at Paul Arcand’s microphone that Yves Michaud recounted his dispute with his Jewish barber. “It’s always you guys. You are the only people in the world who have suffered in the history of humanity, ”he says, annoyed, triggering a lasting controversy.

The power of live

Live, the current prerogative of continuous information networks, belonged to private radio at the time, and to CKAC in the first place. “Before 1995, radio was the main medium for live event coverage”, sums up André Pratte, reporter then executive at Télémédia, before moving on to The Press.

Jocelyne Cazin still remembers when she had obtained permission to go on the air in the middle of an Expos game to describe a tragedy: three firefighters had just lost their lives in a disaster downtown. Alain Gravel had him interrupt an interview of Michel Vien with Robert Bourassa. In the midst of the coup d’etat, in Port-au-Prince, “there had been 52 dead, they were shooting at people and I was in the crowd. A church nearby…hidden in the sacristy, I had been able to find a telephone,” says Gravel.

Doing international news before the internet was perilous. “The Death of Pope John Paul I^er, it is first of all a dispatch of a line from the AFP on the ticker – we were at the mercy of the agencies, remembers André Pratte. We still trigger a special program, Michel Vien enters the airwaves. We have nothing, except a line from the AFP. We phone cardinals, bishops. Suddenly, a few biographical lines on the pope appear on the AFP. I read them on the air, announce a break…until a second paragraph appears. »

An amazing fusion

CKAC’s original frequency, 730 on the AM band, is now only used for traffic information. The cascade of transactions begins with the sale of the station by The Press to Télémédia in 1968. Radiomédia, Radiomutuel, Astral, Corus: the transactions followed one another.

For Paul Arcand, 98.5 FM is an extension of the spirit and atmosphere of CKAC at the time. “These are two talk radio formats. The CKAC brand was strong, and the format of the 98.5 today is squarely inspired by CKAC,” he observes.

He remembers the Friday in 1994 when his bosses at Radiomutuel announced to him the closure of the network purchased by Astral. “One Friday, I closed the station with somewhat Soviet music. As of Monday, I found myself at CKAC on air with Paul Houde, so far my competitor! This forced marriage was something! Paul Arcand will develop excellent relations with Houde as with Jean Lapierre. He will be ten years at CKAC before moving to 98.5 FM.

Previously, competition between networks was fierce. “The news director had warned me: you listen to Claude Poirier in the morning, you don’t pick up his news, he is often wrong. But you phone me right away, for example! recalls Daniel Lessard, who arrived at CKAC in 1970.

Hostage-taking after a failed heist was commonplace. On CKAC, host Matthias Rioux manages to get the perpetrator of one of these crimes on the phone. “The thief responds, on the air: I don’t need you! Claude Poirier, your competitor, is on his way to see us! said Pierre Arcand with a burst of laughter.

Corrigendum

This text has been modified to correct a quote from Gilles Duceppe, who, in an anecdote about his father Jean Duceppe, referred to the Dionne grocery store and not the defunct Dominion food chain.