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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.
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 broadcasting 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-FM in Goose Bay, Labrador (now Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador) receiving an initial shipment of 53 discs that would then be sent to CHFC in Churchill, Manitoba; and then to CFWH-FM 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 magnetic tape 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 (also known as the Fowler Commission), 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:
Of the eight inaugural stations, studio facilities were retained only in Churchill, Goose Bay, Inuvik, Whitehorse, and Yellowknife. The Dawson City, Fort Smith, and Hay River stations were converted into unattended relay transmitters. Similar relays were built during 1959 at Fort Nelson in British Columbia and Watson Lake in Yukon. As the service took its present form, numerous additional relay transmitters would be added throughout its service area.
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 (CNT) system, which, in 1959—under the authority of the Transport Canada—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 (now Iqaluit), and began operations on February 5, 1961, adding it to the Northern Service. The new station had local programming in Inuktitut, Canadian English and Canadian 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-DT 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-FM in Rankin Inlet in 1979 to serve the Keewatin Region of the Northwest Territories (now mostly the Kivalliq Region of Nunavut). A similar centre was opened in Kuujjuaq, 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 broadcasting 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.
These stations broadcast the same regional and local programing heard on CFFB in Nunavut, with the exception of the Sunday Request Show. Additionally, on weekday mornings, they broadcast a portion of Daybreak Montreal, produced in English at CBME-FM in Montreal, as well as a portion of Quebec AM, produced in English at CBVE-FM in Quebec City.
Programming solely in Inuktitut includes Tausunni ("smell of humans"), produced in Iqaluit on weekday afternoons, and Tuttavik ("place of encounter"), produced at CFFB-FM-5 in Kuujjuaq, Quebec (Nunavik), also on weekday afternoons. Unlike other stations within the CBC Radio One network, CFFB broadcasts regional programming on weekday evenings. This consists of the Indigenous storytelling programs Ullumi Tusaqsauqaujut ("heard today") and Sinnaksautit ("bedtimes").
On weekends, CFFB produces a regional morning program and a music request show, the Sunday Request Show.
Between 5:00 to 6:00PM on Saturday afternoons, CBC Radio One airs a local arts programming block. CFWH-FM broadcasts Rencontres, a production in French made by volunteers at the Association franco-yukonnaise in Whitehorse. This program is broadcast through CFWH-FM for the benefit of Franco-Yukonnais outside of Whitehorse, as no other Yukon community is served by an Ici Radio-Canada Première relay transmitter or a local francophone community radio station. Whitehorse itself is served by CFWY-FM, owned by the Association franco-yukonnaise as a relay of CBUF-FM in Vancouver.
The original Northern Messenger was produced by KDKA in Pittsburgh, and broadcast from 1923 to 1940 on its "Far Northern Service" shortwave radio simulcaster, 8XS (later known as W8XK and WPIT). Its intended audiences were Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and other southerners stationed in the Canadian Arctic, to keep them in touch with events in the outside world. KDKA was owned and operated by Westinghouse Electric Corporation and the suggestion for Northern Messenger came from Canadian Westinghouse. The show was broadcast weekly from November to May, when normal mail delivery was unavailable.
On the suggestion of a commander of a British naval expedition based in Nain, Labrador, who wished for his men to receive messages from family and friends, the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC) began its own version of the service in 1932 under the name Canadian Northern Messenger. Like its American cousin, it consisted of personal messages from friends and family around the world to RCMP officers, missionaries, trappers, doctors, nurses, and scientists as well as Cree and Inuit,"Radio Message Show Beams With 100 P.C. Audience From Arctic", Christian Science Monitor, October 26, 1949, pg 3 and also ran from November to May. It was initially produced by CBLA-FM in Toronto and carried on the CRBC's network of medium wave and shortwave stations, including CRCX (Bowmanville), CJRO/CJRX (Winnipeg), and VE9DN (Drummondville). When the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was formed as the successor to the CRBC, the program was continued by CBC Radio into the 1970s. During its first year, Canadian Northern Messenger relayed 1,754 messages, and would handle six times that many by its fourth year.
Beginning in the 1940s, Northern Messenger would be recorded and broadcast to the Yukon and Northwest Territories on Saturday nights over the NWT&Y Radio System as well as western CBC radio stations CBW Winnipeg, CBX Edmonton, and CBK in Saskatchewan. A rebroadcast would then be done eight days later over CBC's powerful Sackville Relay Station aimed at Labrador, northern Quebec, and the eastern Arctic.
Production of the program took place in Winnipeg in the 1950s and early 1960s, then from Montreal beginning in 1965, a move that also coincided with expanding the program into one that aired on shortwave every weekday throughout the entire year.
Until July 31, 2012, CFFB-TV in Iqaluit, CFWH-TV in Whitehorse, and CHAK-TV in Inuvik operated in association with CFYK-TV. However, following a budget cut that went into effect on that date, the CBC shut down those three stations as well as more than 600 analog television relay transmitters throughout the whole of Canada. In the North, only CFYK-DT and any transmitters owned by local governments or community organizations remained in operation thereafter. Most viewers in the Arctic did not lose access to CBC programming because of the extremely high penetration of cable and satellite.
CFYK-DT broadcasts two half-hour regional newscasts on weekdays, CBC Northbeat (which is primarily presented in English, but also contains stories presented in Indigenous languages with English subtitles), and the Inuktitut-language (ᐃᒐᓛᖅ, "window"). Both programs replaced the previous weekly news magazines Focus North and in 1995. was anchored by Rassi Nashalik until her retirement in 2014. Northbeat was the only local newscast in English not merged into Canada Now from 2000 to 2006.
In Cree, a current affairs program known as (ᒫᒯᐄᑖᐤ, "let's get together", starting in 1982) airs on Sundays. This program and the regional newscasts were also broadcast on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network before the creation of APTN National News.
Upon launch on satellite in 1973, there were two separate CBC North television feeds. CBHT-DT in Halifax, and later CBNT-DT in St. John's, provided an "eastern" feed on an Atlantic Time Zone schedule, while CBUT-DT in Vancouver provided a "western" feed on a Pacific Time Zone schedule. These feeds also served as the master national network signals for CBC Television. Viewers in North America with C band receive-only satellite systems used to be able to receive the two unencrypted analog NTSC feeds until the early 2000s, when the CBC consolidated master control operations to Toronto and Montreal and transitioned to encrypted DVB-S satellite transmissions. The western feed would then be discontinued altogether following the 2012 shutdown of all CBC-owned transmitters in the North except for CFYK-DT. The remaining feed for Yellowknife left C band satellite in 2018, by which time the CBC had connected its production centres to a fiber optic network and, after 45 years, stopped leasing satellite space from Telesat, the owner and operator of the Anik satellites.
Some of these recordings were remastered by Kevin "Sipreano" Howes for the 2014 compilation album Native North America, Vol. 1.
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