“Keep Nanaimo Weird” reads a piece of artwork on the wall of CHLY 101. 7 FM, a campus and community radio station in Nanaimo, British Columbia in Canada. Affiliated with Vancouver Island University (formerly known as Malaspina College) “through its purpose and membership,” the station is located off-campus in Nanaimo’s historic downtown. Situated next to a community co-operative bike shop and in the basement of bar/music venue The Queen’s, CHLY is accessed through the back of the building on the charmingly-named Lois Lane. Appropriately, a brightly colored super hero mural covers an adjacent wall.
History of CHLY: From Conception to Streaming to FM
A relatively young station, CHLY began streaming online in 2000 and took to the FM airwaves in fall 2001. It originated as a project of Malaspina College Professor John Black in 1990, when he helped to found the Nanaimo Education and Community Media Society. In 1997, The Radio Malaspina Society was formed. By 2008 the university began operating under the name Vancouver Island University.
The March 1995 issue of the Malaspina University-College newsletter, Mainly Malaspina, ran an article “Radio Malaspina Poised to Sign On” by its founder John Black. At the time the station was “on the brink of implementation as a closed-circuit operation on the Nanaimo campus,” Black writes. He describes the planned method, saying that the station hoped to transmit “over the campus cable system, so that it is accessible in lounges, classrooms and the cafeteria by plugging in a radio tuner to the campus cable outlet.”
Radio Malaspina began streaming online on April 1, 2000, while it awaited word about its application for a broadcast license (take a look at its old website circa 2001 on the Wayback Machine) and officially launched as CHLY 101.7 FM on October 5, 2001. By 2008 the university began operating under the name Vancouver Island University, although the CHLY-FM license holding organization still utilizes the name Radio Malaspina Society.
Touring CHLY during the National Campus and Community Radio Association Conference
My visit to CHLY in June, 2025 coincided with the National Campus and Community Radio Association Conference (NCRC), which was hosted by CHLY on the Vancouver Island University campus. During a welcome event, attendees were invited to the station for dinner and entertainment on the adjacent outdoor patio. Before the grill was fired up, I took a quick semi-self-guided tour of the station. Staff and volunteers were on hand to answer questions as folks from all over Canada wandered through to check out their space.
One of the more unusual features of the station is a kitchen, which was certainly in use as CHLY members prepped to host dinner for a crowd. Exposed brick walls are visible near the station entrance, where a counter is filled with informational literature. An open area has desks for CHLY staff and volunteers. Overhead one can see a loft area that is used mainly for storage.
Proceeding down a hall towards the studio are shelves full of CDs. Filed in chronological order of their add date, the CDs are in the midst of being digitized by station volunteers. The on-air studio is tucked in the back of the space, near storage lockers and stairs that lead to a washroom. DJs are able to use turntables, CD players, as well as digital music that has been added to the CHLY library.
Programming Mix: Music, Spoken Word and News
Most programming over CHLY is produced by local volunteers, with the schedule containing a mix of music and spoken word, as well as some syndicated shows. The wide mix of shows include “Midday Mozart” (classical music), “Into the Void” (underground, extreme and fringe music), “Queerly Beloved” (music and local interviews in the queer community), “Tuning Fork” (food and farm talk focused on local farmers), “Thrash Can” (thrash metal), and “Nash Holos Ukrainian Roots Radio” (arts, culture and news).
Additionally, a number of the shows on CHLY are hosted by student collectives, including The Music Collective, The International Student Collective, The News and Current Affairs/Mariners Sports Collective, The Indigenous Collective, The LGBTQ2+ Collective, The Environmental Collective and the Philosophy Collective.
News is also a big part of CHLY, which launched a Nonprofit Newsroom Project. According to the project’s web page, “Our Nonprofit Newsroom Project sets out to establish a sustainable non-profit newsroom, supported by our listeners, readers, sponsors, and advertisers.” Supported by funding from the Community Radio Fund of Canada (CRFC) the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI), and Radiometres, CHLY has been able to hire reporters and produce news and public affairs shows. News reporting can also be found on the CHLY website.
Field Trip to CHLY Transmitter Site on a Hill
As an added bonus, I also traveled to the CHLY transmitter site on Cottle Hill in Nanaimo. At the end of a conference day, I hopped on a green propane-fueled bus with around ten other campus and community radio folks for the last-minute field trip. “Medieval Chaos” was painted on signs outside the bus and a bumper sticker inside read “My dragon can take your unicorn.” The whimsical messages provide clues to the bus’ participation as a transport vehicle to live action role-playing games in the Nanaimo area.
Owned by the CHLY Technical Director, the bus carried us on a journey to a woodsy park on a hill north of the city. After a short walk to look at the transmitter shack and beholding the cluster of communication towers, our group of radio aficionados hiked up to the summit of the hill to take in the lovely view as the sun was setting.
Thanks to CHLY + Station Tour Archive
Thanks to everyone at CHLY for hosting a really fun and educational NCRC 2025! This is my 192nd radio station tour report and my 133rd college radio station tour. You can view the entire collection of my radio station visits in numerical order or by station type in our archives.
