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Early Days of CKNX

1924 - Doc was selling Stromberg Carlson radios in his down-town shop by night and on weekends. In those days (about 1924) there was only four or five radio stations in Canada and this new technology was really only beginning to catch the imagination of listeners in the U.S. Radio sales were few and far between but interest was building. But Doc persevered and quit his job at the foundry and opened his store and radio shop on Wingham's main street. Sales picked up and it was then that he got the idea that perhaps he could contribute to the rather sparse choice of programming material that was being broadcast at that time. (Carbert essay, 1995)p.1-2

Feb 1926 - "Radios were a luxury in February 1926, and it could take some pursuasion to convince someone to buy one. It wasn't the kind of weather to try that persuasion. …So the young man, the only radio retailer and service man in a 50 mile radius, sat in the rear of his little shop on Main street in Wingham and idly examined a copy of Popular Mechanics magazine. He came across a story on how to build a simple radio transmitter, and decided to give a try. He had all the needed parts around the shop and within an hour had put the thing together. A telephone mouthpiece was utilized for a microphone and some storage batteries provided the power. (VS-1, 1976)

The young man didn't even know the set worked until tinkering with it a day or two later he had a telephone call from a citizen to whom he had earlier sold a radio set to say that the signal was coming in fine. Almost by accident Wilford Thomas "Doc" Cruickshank had stumbled onto the career that was to make him a legend in western Ontario and in the Canadian broadcasting industry. That day, February 20, 1926 became the beginning of ...CKNX radio and later lead to CKNX television." (50 years, 1976, p.5) (VS-1, 1976)

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W.T. "Doc" Cruickshank with the radio transmitter he built with a Popular Mechanics article
February 1926
Cruickshank's Radio Shop, Josephine Street, Wingham, Ontario

Credits:
North Huron Museum, Wingham, Ontario

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A radio from the Doc Cruickshank collection-an example of what he sold in his store.
1930-1940
Cruickshank's Radio Shop, Josephine Street, Wingham, Ontario

Credits:
North Huron Museum, Wingham, Ontario

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Doc's story in his words in "Voice of the Pioneer," by Bill McNeil (ISBN 0-7705-1730-7

"One tube was all I had in this transmitter, yet it was heard nearly all around the world. At other times it couldn't be heard fifteen miles outside of town. The trouble was that even though I had a transmitter to send sounds out from, nobody had receivers to pick those sounds up on. There were no receivers, in other words, radios, available so I had to make them myself if I was going to sell them. The first three or four I made I was able to sell in just a few minutes, and that gave me the idea - why don't I represent some firm that manufactures radios? So I got a company in Hamilton that was making them to supply me with these receivers and I went out and sold them myself for one hour a day. That's where I actually got it started.

Actually I could have sold a lot more of these things if I had the time, but I didn't. I just had this one free hour a day. You see, I worked in the foundry ten hours a day, seven days a week. And I ran the projector in the picture show for about fours a night. There was one hour left over between seven and eight o'clock in the evening where I had nothing to do. That's when I sold radios.

Nobody worried too much about studios in those days. Just about any place at all would do to put on a program. On Sunday we always did a service from one of all the churches. At that time it meant that we had to connect up all the churches in town with a telephone line. We brought a great lot of wire and strung it on top of buildings and everything else, from the studio over to one of the churches. We did that for years before anyone thought there was any other way of doing it.

On Sunday, after church service, we had a little program for which I took the transmitter and everything down to my home. I had to do that in order to get a piano. I'd carry the transmitter under my arm down to my home and we'd do an hour broadcast, Sunday afternoon, from down there. There was a program of music-hymns and that sort of thing-with local people along for singing and playing the piano. There was recorded music available but it was of no use to me because I didn't have a turntable to play it on. I only had one microphone, and everything was done through that.

We didn't even know that you had to have a licence for broadcasting. Somebody tipped me off that I had to have one and, by golly, I enquired around and sure enough, I was supposed to have a licence. It was very simple to get it, though. All I did was write a letter and pay ten dollars. Before all this business of the licence I was calling the station J-O-K-E, because that's all it was to me up to this time, a private little joke and a lot of fun. But you know, depending on atmospheric conditions, that little station with one tube was being heard, some nights, all around the world. Of course, that was before the airwaves were all cluttered up with hundreds of thousands of stations. When you get a good night, why, my goodness, the world wasn't big enough for you. Lots of other nights, though, we couldn't even get outside of town.

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Story of how Dr. Howson worked with Doc Cruickshank to start the Wingham Radio Club
1924-1940
Wingham, Ontario