It was a question I wasn’t expect to find answered, but stumbled on a name while researching something else. It turns out to be someone with a far bigger history outside radio.
When you cut through the propaganda of the newspapers in the city in 1922, it would appear the Province’s CKCD (originally CFCB) was the first to broadcast regular programming. Yet while the paper’s stories talk about news bulletins and announcements for weeks after, there is no revelation of who is giving them.
We finally get a clue in the October 13, 1923 edition. CKCD had returned to the air after being off for two weeks to have a 2,500-watt Marconi transmitter installed. The paper has some fine pictures of the radio station, one with some men standing around and the caption partly reading “Mr. John Graham, announcer; Mr. Stuart Armour, station manager and announcer.”
By then the paper was generally revealing who was announcing its news bulletins and weather forecast. On November 7, 9 and 10, it was Mr. Graham; Nov. 8th was handled by Douglas Fowler. Both were reporters at the Province. The issue of November 10th, however, also reveals who the station’s first announcer was as he was leaving the employ of the newspaper.
LISTENERS-in of The Province radio broadcast will in future miss the resonant voice of Stuart Armour, seen above, who has been station manager since the inception of The Province service. Mr. Armour has been appointed publicity director for the Canadian Marconi Company with headquarters at Montreal. He was associated with The Province before the war and rejoined the staff soon after his return from overseas. When The Province decided to give its readers the benefit of an up-to-date radio station Mr. Armour was selected for the duties of organizing the work. Mr. Armour has been brigade major of the 23rd Infantry Brigade for the past three years and a member of the Vancouver Little Theatre Association since its inception. He leaves for Montreal on Sunday.
The identity is confirmed in a Province story of August 11, 1934, gushing about CKCD’s latest new transmitter.
OPENING of the new studio of CKCD recalls the humble beginning of the station on March 13, 1922. It was situated in the Merchants’ Exchange Building at first but in June of the same year was removed to the old Province Building at 138 West Hastings. Major Stuart Armour was the first official announcer. Call letters of the station were CFCB and opening words of the broadcast were “Hello, hello all ships and stations.”
Armour’s obituary in the Toronto Star stated he was born in Toronto (March 22, 1893) and moved to Vancouver in 1911. It was here he joined the military, being awarded the DSO and the Croix de Guerre of Belgium for his overseas service.
In 1940, while working as an assistant treasurer for a trust company in Philadelphia, the federal government called him to Ottawa where he set up Canada’s gas rationing programme during the war. Afterward, he was an economist for Stelco in Hamilton and, when he left that job in 1963, became president of the Great Lakes Waterways Development Association until 1978. He died on June 13, 1980.
None of his obituaries mention his return to Vancouver and the Province in 1920, let alone his role as the city’s first radio announcer, or the fact he wrote a couple of one-act plays.
I’m sorry I don’t have access to the pictures accompanying the Province stories to include in this post.
cArtie.