CBC North (; ; ) is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television service for the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon of Northern Canada as well as Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik in the Nord-du-Québec region of Quebec.
History
The genesis of CBC North began in 1923 when the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals established a radiotelegraph system linking Dawson City and Mayo in Yukon with Alaska, British Columbia, and Alberta. Other settlements in Northern Canada were soon connected, forming the Northwest Territories & Yukon (NWT&Y) Radio System.
While the original purpose of the NWT&Y Radio System was to provide a means of communication among military personnel and commercial interests in far-flung corners of remote Northern Canada, the system came to be used for the transmission of general information and entertainment to the civilian population as well. Over the subsequent three decades, this ancillary role of the NWT&Y Radio System led to the development of low-power AM community radio stations at sites where NWT&Y radiotelegraph stations were located.
Most of these radio stations were operated on a volunteer basis by members of the Canadian Armed Forces as well as civilians residing in the communities the stations served. In addition to local programming, the stations often aired recordings provided by the United States Armed Forces Radio Service—owing to the US military presence in several Arctic settlements at the time—and also a limited amount of CBC programming relayed via the NWT&Y Radio System.
In late 1952, the Armed Forces Radio Service ceased deliveries of programming to several of the radio stations. Efforts were then made to expand the reach of CBC programming in Northern Canada by utilizing the resources of the CBC's Troop Broadcast Service, which was originally developed to distribute recordings of CBC radio programming to Canadian military units stationed overseas.
The domestic distribution of CBC radio recordings began in January 1953 with CFGB in Goose Bay, Labrador (now Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador) receiving an initial shipment of fifty-three discs that would then be sent to CHFC in Churchill, Manitoba and then to CFWH in Whitehorse, Yukon. The program was immediately popular and quickly expanded to include CFYT in Dawson City, Yukon; CHFN in Fort Nelson, British Columbia; and CHAK in Aklavik, Northwest Territories.
Having to be shipped from Montreal, where they were recorded, the discs proved to be too fragile, so were replaced by tapes in April 1953, along with a promise that stations would receive six hours of CBC programming each day.
By 1958, the Department of National Defence desired to reduce its role in maintaining broadcasting infrastructure in Northern Canada. Meanwhile, as an outgrowth of the 1957 Report of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting (also known as the Fowler Commission), the CBC proposed operating a "northern service" of up to twelve radio stations, in part by converting existing stations operated by volunteers into stations staffed by CBC employees. One of the primary reasons cited for the necessity of such a service was that radio listeners in the North could often more readily hear broadcasts from Radio Moscow and the Voice of America than from Canadian sources.
The CBC's proposal was presented to the Parliament of Canada and approved in June 1958. On November 10, 1958, the Northern Service came into being when the CBC formally took over the operations of CFWH in Whitehorse and made it a part of the Trans-Canada Network.
Over the next two years, the CBC would take over the operations of seven other stations, listed below in chronological order: CFYT – Dawson City, Yukon (November 13, 1958) CFYK – Yellowknife, Northwest Territories (December 13, 1958) CFGB – Goose Bay, Labrador (February 23, 1959) CBXH – Fort Smith, Northwest Territories (May 29, 1959) CFHR – Hay River, Northwest Territories (September 7, 1959) CHFC – Churchill, Manitoba (September 13, 1959) CHAK – Inuvik, Northwest Territories (November 26, 1960)
Of the eight inaugural stations, studio facilities were retained only in Churchill, Goose Bay, Inuvik, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife. The Dawson City, Fort Smith, and Hay River stations were converted into unattended relay transmitters. Similar relays were built during 1959 at Fort Nelson in British Columbia and Watson Lake in Yukon. As the service took its present form, numerous additional relay transmitters would be added throughout its service area.