Side A: The Voice of Wesley Radio and home of a million songs

Imagine listening to the radio over the telephone. And not even a modern telephone—the old-fashioned kind that lived on the wall and had an earpiece separate from the speaking tube. You’re probably thinking it wouldn’t work very well. But back in 1924 Reverend J. G. Joyce, the new minister at the Wesley Methodist Church in St. John’s, Newfoundland, decided to give it a shot out of concern for the many parishioners who were unable to make it to the church in person for Sunday service. If Mohammed couldn’t come to the mountain, he would take the mountain to Mohammed, in an extremely ecumenical manner of speaking.

It didn’t work, but Joyce had no intention of giving up. Not only were there local people missing out on his sermons, there were others as well: lighthouse keepers, sailors and swilers (the Newfoundland word for seal hunters) to name just a few.  So, Joyce set about building an entire radio station. Only a few years previously Marconi had made the first successful wireless transmission across the Atlantic Ocean from Cornwall, England to St. John’s, so he seemed like the logical man to approach. Unfortunately, the telegraph tycoon wasn’t able to help, but Joyce remained undeterred. He rounded up some financial support from local businesses and the general public, set a local
Boy Scout troop to work making radios (since broadcasting wasn’t much use if no one could receive the signal) and 8WMC was born.

Now, nearly 100 years later and under the call sign VOWR (Voice of Wesley Radio), which it was granted in 1932 when international call signal standards were established, the oldest radio station in Newfoundland is still going strong.

While the station was first conceived of as a tool to broadcast religious services, it has long since moved beyond that narrow remit. It’s still under the auspices of the Methodist (now United) Church, but it’s run by a volunteer board of directors and its programming is decided by a programming committee. Religious programmes still appear regularly, but the majority of airtime is devoted to music.

Kaye Donovan is a retired health care worker who has been volunteering at the station for 13 years. Photo credit: Denise Flint

Doreen Whalen is VOWR’s manager and she explains what that means. “The music has to meet certain criteria—no rock music, it’s easy listening—and most of the music is from the 50s, 60s and 70s, creeping into the 80s.” She continues, “We have a niche audience and move our programming forward as our audience moves. People don’t get a lot of chatter or news. They get music.”

Doreen describes the station as a kind of haven, free of the cares and worries people face in everyday life. That attitude has been evident during the pandemic, crystallizing at the very beginning.

“When (Chief Public Health Officer) Dr. Tam was doing updates, we aired them and then decided ‘no’. This is a COVID-free zone: just peace and nice music.”

She admits that figuring out what constitutes “nice” easy listening music isn’t always easy. An old Neil Young song is playing as she explains the concept, something that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. That song is courtesy of Kaye Donovan, a retired health care worker who has been volunteering at the station for 13 years. She can be found in the studio every Wednesday afternoon hosting Music Unlimited. She fell into the role by accident after a guest told her she always played great music at her dinner parties. With no background in radio, she had no idea what she was doing when she first started.

“I came in and watched the guys doing it and it was all new,” she remembers with a ready laugh. “I sat down—that’s the only way to learn—I was left alone and told to do it.”

The two hours Kaye’s program runs are carefully curated. That space of time leaves room for about 34 songs, and Donovan spends a chunk of Saturday and Sunday going through the collection and choosing what to play that week. She considers it a labour of love and insists she gets more out of it than she gives.

Henry Pike is VOWR’s oldest volunteer. Photo credit Greg Locke

That attitude seems to be paying off, if the response of her listeners is anything to go by. When the phone rings, she’s friendly and warm, answering questions and doing her best to fulfill requests—although she draws the line at birthday greetings. One woman, who’s been married 62 years, rings up every week to request an Elvis song. Another listener calls randomly from places all around the world, telling Donovan, who thinks the listener must be in the military, how much she misses home.

Whalen says it’s not unusual for listeners to exhibit a personal connection to the station and the people who run it. For many years a taxi used to turn up at the station just before Christmas, full of individual Christmas cakes for every single volunteer there. They were all personally addressed and were sent by a lady in Gander.

At the same time, it’s hard to pin down just exactly who listens to VOWR. As a volunteer-run station that relies on donations and commercial sponsors to keep the lights on, they can’t afford to pay for an audience measurement service.

“We don’t really know who our audience is, but based on responses we figure it’s 45 to 50 and up. We just know from anecdotal information and have no idea how big the audience is. They’re from everywhere, though,” Whalen says, adding that the station also broadcasts over the Internet and has a YouTube channel. “It’s not uncommon to get emails from Russia because of the curve of the earth. We have lots of northern listeners.”

Donovan’s 13 years with the station pale in comparison to nonagenarian Henry Pike. Back in 1958 he was interested in a girl he worked with, but when he asked her out for a date, she always seemed to be busy. He finally told her he’d meet her at 9:00pm Sunday when she’d finished her stint at the station. She came out with the station manager who took one look at Pike’s enormous 1955 Pontiac and recruited him to transport some equipment the following week.

“I couldn’t say ‘no’; I wanted to impress Frances,” Pike admits. His perseverance paid off. The couple were married shortly after and volunteered together at the station for many years. Frances did the announcing on air and Pike was her operator, the tech guy, a role he filled for other women at the station as well. He laughs at the memory, saying the station manager must have trusted him to be a gentleman. Eventually Frances and Henry had both a son and daughter, who followed in their parents’ footsteps and volunteered at the station, both on air and on the board. Pike, naturally, also served as his daughter’s operator.

When Frances died several years ago Pike continue on, stepping out from his work behind the scenes to sit in front of the mic. He continues to host a show every two weeks, one in the morning and one in the evening.

“I’ve got a lot of memories. I don’t know if I should repeat them to you, though,” Pike says with a hearty laugh.

Albert Spurrell has been a volunteer since 1989. Photo credit Greg Locke

One story he does tell illustrates how otherworldly the voice on the radio—always heard, but never seen—can seem. “We had Sunday nights and people would call in and request a hymn. Frances answered the phone and every Sunday this man would call in. It was Frances’s grandfather and he never knew it was Frances he was talking to.”

Nowadays the station relies on donations and a few commercial sponsors to keep the lights on and the sound rolling out. Pike remembers a time when they had to raise funds by offering yearly turkey teas—potato salad, corn salad, fruit salad, sliced turkey and ham, all prepared by the ladies and arranged in a small box for delivery.

“We did it on November 11 because that was a holiday,” Pike recalls. “We’d have 1,500 turkey teas to deliver. We’d load up the car with 60 or 70 teas and go all over town.”

The station also held a yearly auction which ran over three evenings and offered everything, according to Pike, from “salt fish to blueberries to headstones, whatever people were willing to donate.” Once again that enormous Pontiac came in handy when it was time to deliver the headstone to the successful bidder.

Fred Greening is another long-time volunteer. But unlike some of the others, his background is in broadcasting. He started out as a radio announcer back in the 1970s and was a television news producer with the CBC for 30 years before retiring. Then he got bored.

He remembered volunteering at VOWR when he first started out and then returned to it a few years later. Now he’s on his third rotation. He hosts Country Light and Easy on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and Country Gospel on Saturdays—and he’s passionate about what he plays. For Greening, a big country fan, it’s all about the music rather than the listening audience.

“When I do my show, I’m in my own world and I don’t want to be interrupted. I don’t get as many calls and I don’t do requests because I don’t want anyone else programming my show.”

He makes sure he goes a full two months before he repeats a song, and he steers clear of the more popular stuff that everyone already knows.

“I look for the more obscure. There’s lots of great stuff that people don’t know exists. I’ll do Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson or Emmy Lou Harris, but not the up-tempo stuff.”

Getting hold of some of those more obscure tracks isn’t a problem at a station like VOWR. Their collection has been almost 100 years in the making and is staggeringly large. Every piece of music, just like every piece of equipment, has been donated, mostly by other radio stations as they update their facilities. The catalogue in the library on the main floor lists 320,535 songs and that’s just the beginning. The basement holds the CBC collection, given to VOWR when the local affiliate went digital. The cement walls and middle of the room are lined with shelves holding 25,000 CDs and 25,000 old-fashioned record albums. The basement also holds over 200,000 backup copies of the upstairs collection.

“There are 1,000,000 songs in this station,” Doreen Whalen says with some pride.

A couple of years ago the station received a substantial donation from a listener that allowed them to digitalize their entire collection. It wasn’t an easy task, but they managed it, finally getting the job completed just as COVID-19 hit.

Since the system is so new, not all the volunteers have learned how to use it. The station was shut for a couple of months and when it reopened, it did so with restrictions on the physical collection. The shelves and shelves of albums, tapes and CDs are off limits because of the risk of infection, so those few who still rely on turntables and cassette players have still not returned. But they all hope to do so.

In the meantime, the station is looking forward to planning the 100 year anniversary of the first broadcast. Though the Reverend himself is long since gone, Whalen is in touch with some of Joyce’s descendants who now live in the United States. Joyce’s son is almost as old as the station he created and probably won’t be doing any travelling, but plans are afoot for some of his grandchildren to join in the celebration.

Until then, the 65 current volunteers at the station carry on as usual. Some of them, like Pike, have been volunteering at VOWR for more than 50 years. Others come and go.

As for Greening, he makes no bones about how he feels. “This is my third go-round. I look forward to it and I missed it when we were down for six months. It gives me something to do, you’re providing a service and I love country music. They’ll have to carry me out this time in a pine box.”