CBC North
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 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 receiving an initial shipment of 53 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, 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
- CFYK – Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
- CFGB – Goose Bay, Labrador
- CBXH – Fort Smith, Northwest Territories
- CFHR – Hay River, Northwest Territories
- CHFC – Churchill, Manitoba
- CHAK – Inuvik, Northwest Territories
In conjunction with the CBC taking over the stations, delivery of programming slowly began to be transitioned away from tape recordings and toward direct links to the CBC network via an expanding Canadian National Telegraph system, which, in 1959—under the authority of the Department of Transport—had become the successor of the NWT&Y Radio System. Additionally, shortwave broadcasting started to be used in 1960 when the CBC's shortwave transmitter complex in Sackville, New Brunswick, began airing programming specifically intended for Northern Canada.
The CBC constructed CFFB in Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories, and began operations on February 5, 1961, adding it to the Northern Service. The new station had local programming in Inuktitut, English and French, as well as news and other programs from the CBC network.
Television became a component of the Northern Service in 1967 when the CBC introduced the Frontier Coverage Package, a service in which the CBC Delay Centre in Calgary would record onto videotape four hours daily of CBC Television programming and send the recordings to remote communities in Northern Canada for playback over local television facilities. The programming did not arrive at all facilities simultaneously, but was instead sent to one facility, which, after playback, would send it to another, and so on, until all facilities had gotten a chance to air it. This process meant that programming could be up to a month old by the time it aired. On May 14, 1967, CFYK-TV in Yellowknife became the first television station to partake in this service.
With the advent of the Anik series of satellites in 1973, the CBC began transmitting its television programming on satellite. For Northern Canada, this meant the ability to view the full CBC Television schedule live with the rest of Canada for the first time. The Frontier Coverage Package was discontinued, and all remote northern communities with a population of 500 or more were offered a live television relay transmitter as part of the CBC's Accelerated Coverage Plan of 1974. The governments of the Northwest Territories and Yukon would later supplement this plan by installing additional relay transmitters in communities of less than 500 people.
Radio was affected by the transition to satellite broadcasting as well, since a feed of CBC Radio originating in Toronto was carried via satellite for reception at local CBC production centres. By 1976, CFFB was utilizing this feed not only to obtain live CBC Radio programming, but also to distribute a separate satellite feed to eleven relay transmitters in Inuit Nunangat that combined the output from Toronto with CFFB's own local programming in Inuktitut and English.
For the first fifteen years of CBC North, most of the service's radio stations with studios produced very little of their own programming. Instead, regional programming targeting the North was largely produced in southern Canada, particularly Montreal. This gradually began to change in the 1970s following the Northern Broadcasting Plan of 1974, which outlined goals for the CBC to establish and grow local radio programming in Northern Canada, including programming in Indigenous languages. This goal was further reiterated with the Government of Canada's Northern Broadcasting Policy of 1983.
To facilitate increased local radio productions, a radio production centre was opened at CBQR in Rankin Inlet in 1979 to serve the Keewatin Region of the Northwest Territories. A similar centre was opened in Kuujjuaq, Quebec, in 1985 to serve Nunavik. By 1988, the CBC's production centres in the North were collectively producing 220 hours of regional radio programming per week, of which 100 hours were in seven Indigenous languages.
On television, the first CBC production centre inside the CBC North service area opened at CFYK-TV in Yellowknife in 1979, producing Our Ways, a monthly news magazine. An additional television production unit was established in Whitehorse in 1986, and in Iqaluit in 1987 when production of the weekly program Taqravut moved there.
The 1980s also saw the creation of new Indigenous-led broadcasting organizations in Northern Canada, some of which were permitted to use CBC North to broadcast their programming. For example, until the launch of Television Northern Canada in 1992, the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation aired programming during allocated time slots within the CBC North television schedule. On radio, programming from the James Bay Cree Communications Society and Taqramiut Nipingat aired on local CBC North relay transmitters and CKCX until the 2000s, when both organizations launched their own independent radio networks.
In 1992, after being located in Ottawa since the establishment of CBC North, the service's regional head office was moved to Yellowknife.
CKCX and its associated shortwave broadcasting facilities were shut down on December 1, 2012, following a significant budget cut to Radio Canada International, the operator of the facilities. To compensate for the loss of CBC North radio coverage this caused in northern Quebec, FM relay transmitters were installed in five communities of Nunavik, including the production centre of Kuujjuaq.
By 2018, CBC North was broadcasting 211 hours per week of regional programming, including 125 hours per week in eight Indigenous languages.