Hay River community radio station CKHR had its licence formally revoked this week by regulator the CRTC, a final act after years of decline following a fire.
In a Thursday notice, the CRTC said it was revoking the licence at the request of the Hay River Broadcasting Society.
Correspondence published by the regulator showed the society declaring in December that CKHR had been off the air for years and there was no plan to return it to life.
Launched in 1979, CKHR was reported to be on “shaky financial footing” by 2016. A 2019 fire in the highrise building that contained the station’s studios set CKHR on a permanent downward spiral.
“It was devastating,” said Dian Papineau-Magill, who with late husband Peter helped to run the non-profit responsible for CKHR.
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“At one point, we weren’t even sure if we were going to be able to go in and take equipment out.”
She described a frantic dash up many flights of stairs – with the elevators out of order – to retrieve equipment once the fire marshal gave the go-ahead.
While volunteers worked to find a new home for the station, it never returned to the FM dial after the highrise fire, Papineau-Magill said, not helped by the upheaval of floods and wildfires that affected Hay River in subsequent years. Online broadcasts stopped several years ago.
“It was all too much,” she said, “and there just weren’t enough people. There were only three of us.”
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Writing to the CRTC to have the licence revoked had been hard, she said. “Until that point, there’s always that little glimmer. ‘We just need one more thing.’ But when I signed off in the final email, it was like, ‘OK, I guess we’re done.'”
Papineau-Magill said the station in its heyday produced “the best radio bingo around” and brought attention – and journalism – to the South Slave.
“It kept a lot of local news local,” she said.
“We were able to produce local stories about people who live here, things that people want to hear about.”
