An early childhood memory is having to run outside in the middle of winter to turn the TV antennae while someone shouted “Clearer!....Clearer!.....Stop!” through an open window so we could tune in CKNX’s “Circle 8 Ranch” and “Hockey Night in Canada” on Saturday nights.
It was an important local ritual occurring simultaneously across mid-western Ontario and I suppose I can thank ‘Doc’ Cruickshank for it.
Using a simple diagram from a Popular Mechanic’s magazine, W. T. ‘Doc’ Cruickshank cobbled together a working radio transmitter from spare parts in his radio repair shop.
The first successful radio broadcast in Huron County took place from the top of a butter box on Feb. 20, 1926. From these humble origins, a broadcasting legend began which is still going strong 82 years later.
Wilford Thomas Cruickshank was born on a farm Aug. 11, 1897 in Morris Township. After his father’s death in 1912, the family moved to Wingham.
Cruickshank was forced to leave the eighth grade to support the family doing various odd jobs.
Cruickshank biographer, Kyle Dore, notes that after working in a furniture factory, he found employment as the chauffeur of Dr. J. P. Kennedy where he was dubbed ‘Doc’ by his friends. Ever after, he was affectionately known as ‘Doc’ Cruickshank.
By 1924, between putting in 10-hour shifts at the Western Foundry and working as the projectionist at the Lyceum movie house in the evening, ‘Doc’ sold radio sets between 7-8 p.m. each evening.
Radio was one of the miracles of the twentieth century. In the Internet age, it is hard to understand the excitement that radio stirred up in the popular imagination.
Pulling voices out of thin air and receiving them inside of the family living room broke through the isolation of rural life. Listeners felt intimately connected with the disembodied voices they heard on the air.
Events could be transmitted live as they happened. For the first time, people could hear the voice of their king or president. News, sports, music, soap operas, religion could be enjoyed by both rural and urban dwellers in their own homes.
By the 1920s, everyone who could afford one had to have a radio. In the early days, Huron County listened to American stations from Schenectedy, New York, Detroit, and Pittsburgh.
Cruickshank’s initial two watt 1926 broadcast from the Brunswick Hotel in Wingham was picked up in a dentist’s office across the street. The first song aired was a harmonica solo played into a microphone of “I am Seeing Nellie Home” (It has not received much airplay since).
The new amateur station would adopt the call letters J.O.K.E. but local support for the local radio phenomenon would insist that the J.O.K.E. stayed on the air. As the J.O.K.E spread, people bought radios to tune in to hear local live music and entertainment.
Later, ‘Doc’ applied to the Department of Transportation for a radio broadcasting license and J.O.K.E. was given the official call letters 10 BP broadcasting on five watts. The self proclaimed “Voice of Western Ontario” was on the air.
Unable to sell advertising, Cruickshank established the Wingham Radio Club with an annual membership fee of $1 to purchase better equipment for the fledgling station. In 1930, with the Depression settling in, more than 300 people were able to spare a dollar to keep local radio alive.
10 BP’s signal was audible as far as Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1928. More extraordinary, someone in New Zealand picked up the signal over 8,000 miles away.
In 1935, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission granted 10 BP commercial status and its current call letters CKNX. Cruickshank’s station was now recognized as the beacon of local entertainment in mid-western Ontario. Advertising spots could be bought for 25 cents.
Former general manager, Ross Hamilton, stated that by 1945, CKNX radio was on air for 16 hours per day with 26 employees. It was now an important mainstay of the local economy and the primary source of news, weather and entertainment for rural listeners.
The most enduring of CKNX’s musical programs was “The Saturday Night Barn Dance” which ran from 1937-63. It was the longest running program of its kind in Canadian radio history. It was also the subject of Paul Thompson’s 1996 play “Barn Dance” at the Blyth Festival.
Local bands reflected Huron County’s rural roots with names such as the Gully Jumpers and George Wade and the Cornhuskers.
“Barn Dance’s” regular bands, Don and Cora Robertson’s CKNX Ranch Boys; the Golden Prairie Cowboys and Earl Heywood’s Barn Dance Gang have become fixtures in Huron County’s rich musical heritage.
As an avid sports fan, 'Doc’ was a founder of the Western Ontario Athletic Association (W.O.A.A.) in 1942. Local sporting events were given extensive live coverage. More than once a live broadcast was disrupted when a stray ball hit the equipment truck.
Appropriately, ‘Doc’s’ picture is displayed on the Wall of Fame in the Westcast Centre.
‘Doc’ saw television’s potential to revolutionize the media in the 1950s the way radio had done in the ‘20s. On Nov. 18, 1955, CKNX-TV went to air serving one of the smallest markets in the country.
By the 1960s, CKNX TV and radio newsroom produced 16 newscasts a day in addition to regular financial, agricultural and special reports and could draw on the services of over 40 correspondents from Tobermory to Exeter. It was truly the “Voice of Western Ontario”.
On Feb. 28, 1971, on the eve before the sale of CKNX to the Blackburn Group, ‘Doc’ Cruickshank died. As he was buried from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church with full Masonic rituals, no one could doubt that an era had ended.
Harry Boyle who began his media career at CKNX and ended it as president of the Canadian Radio-Television Commission paid tribute to Cruickshank’s ‘courage’ in ‘trusting the people.”
According to Boyle, “Cruickshank had fierce loyalties to the people of the community…they were his support and he was their champion.”
And we can all thank 'Doc' for that.
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