Photo courtesy of Canada Post
Radio is 100 years old and Canada Post is celebrating with some stamps to mark the occasion.
Jim Phillips, director of stamp services at Canada Post, says that although there had been some experimenting, the 1920 broadcast of a performance was different.
“This was the first scheduled radio broadcast in Canada by a registered radio station. This took place May 20th where members of the Royal Society of Canada gathered at Ottawa’s Chateau Laurier for the historic event, which would launch Canada into the radio age in a big way and the real interesting thing is that it came from Montreal, so 200 kilometres away.”
“And they listened to a performance by a singer by the name of Dorothy Lutton and she sang a couple of songs, and also by some poetry. That was broadcast by XWA, or Experimental Wireless Apparatus, one of the Marconi stations, and that was the first station in Canada to receive a commercial licence.”
XWA would become Montreal’s CFCF a short time later. (CFCF= “Canada’s First, Canada’s Finest”)
Phillips says this event marked the beginning of radio stations in Canada.
“Canada Post chose this historic occasion for this broadcast because after that there was many other broadcasts, so it was not just a ‘one-off’. A couple of years later, there was over 34 radio stations in Canada, two years later, Montreal’s CKAC became the first licenced French radio station in Canada.”
The stamps were designed based on experts from radio historians from the Museum of Science and Technology, as well as vintage radio hobbyists.
Canada Post is also collecting radio stories from Canadians on social media under #MyRadioStory.
