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When Canada had just 20 (or so) community radio stations

Meandering through the Internet Archives, I ran into this chestnut, circa 1974: “Community Radio in Canada,” authored by Toronto’s Office of Community Radio. The survey covers the following Canadian community radio outlets (I’ve left the strange typographical characters in for historical funkiness’ sake):

1» Arctic Bay, Northwest Territories
2« Armstrong I Ontario
3. Baker Lake^ Northwest Territories
4. Big Trout Lake, Ontario
3« Broughton Island » Northwest Territories
6. Cambridge Bay^ Northwest Territories
7, Cross Lake I Manitoba
8» Espanola^ Ontario
9. Fort Good Hope i Northwest Territories
10. Fort Simpson, Northwest Territories
11. Grsat Whale River, Quebec
12. Kitchener«Waterloo , Ontario
13 • Longlac, Ontario
14» Montreal (Downtown) , Quebec
15. Ottawa-Hull » Ontario
16. Pond Inlet, Northwest Territories
17. Rankin Inlet, Northwest Territories
18. Sanikiluaq^ Northwest Territories
19» Tuktoyaktuk» Northwest Territories
20# Vancouver, (Downtown), B.C.

I’m sure that there were more than 20 community radio operations back then. The survey notes that it sent out questionnaires to various signals and received no reply. But I’m guessing that there was nothing like the approximately 220 Canadian community licenses that Wikipedia lists today.

Each listed community radio station received its own special page on the survey. For example, here’s the Pond Inlet station of the Northwest Territories:

Pond Inlet community radio page

Here’s another, Radio Centerville of Montreal:

Radio Centerville of Montreal

The introduction to the tome concluded:

“Most of these groups operate on a volunteer basis, inviting members and guests in their communities to come to a studio, take simple training in operating equipment, and to participate in basic program production.

Throughout the country many more groups, not listed in this survey, are seeking ways and means of meeting needs they feel exist in their communities for volunteer-operated local radio programming.

This survey will be circulated to community media groups and could be a means for them to contact one another.”

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