Placing Radio in Sackville, New Brunswick

Abstract

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) site near Sackville, New Brunswick, exemplifies the material and spatial foundations of radio. Designed by the CBC's own architecture department and constructed in 1939, the station operated as a regional transmitter, broadcasting to the Maritimes of Canada and the northeastern United States, and visually and materially represented the CBC in this area. During World War II the Canadian government decided to establish a powerful shortwave station at the Sackville site, resulting in the erection of a much larger facility on the location of the earlier building and an innovative system of antennae on the surrounding marshlands in 1944–45. The recent dismantling of these towers, which marked the skyline for seven decades, has radically altered the built environment around Sackville and raises questions about the role of architecture and space in the history of radio.