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This picture of my grandfather, the late Jack Beardall, founder and owner of radio station CFCO 630 AM, was brought to my attention by Mr. John Cryderman of Chatham on April 29, 2015. I am familiar with this photo, and I'm sure my grandfather took it himself, using the time-delayed shutter on his Zeiss Ikoflex twin lens camera. Taken in 1965, three years after he had sold CFCO to Maclean Hunter Broadcasting, Jack is shown sitting in the basement of his home, where he had set up the most powerful ham radio station in the country, which employed 4 cubicle quad aerials mounted on two stacked telephone poles in his backyard. During his retirement years, he regularly spoke with other ham operators around the world, and I would often participate in the conversations on Saturday mornings. I didn't realize the significance of this photo or the basement studio at the time. In fact, I only came to understand it a few years ago when I was cataloguing CFCO memorabilia for an installation I'm producing on the history of the station. As a young man, Jack had qualified to attend university. However, the family sent his younger brother, the late Judge Bramwell Beardall instead, in an effort to have Jack take over the Beardall family butcher store and grocery shop. Enthralled by the new technology of wireless communication, in what I take to be an act of rebellion against his parents, he began tinkering in the basement of his home on Park Street with radio technology. This eventually led him to apply and receive a government licence to broadcast as an experimental station to anyone who was lucky enough to have a receiver. The station went under the call letters, 10bt, which in the government radio speak of the time translated as Beardall Transmitter (bt) based in Ontario (10). A year later, Jack was granted a licence to broadcast as CFCO 630 AM. The CFCO designation was created by asking local residents to come up with call letters in the form of an acronym. A Chatham woman won the contest with the CFCO submission, which stood for "Coming from Chatham, Ontario." So, Jack reinvented his life and created an entirely new future for himself and the community by creating one of the province's first radio stations, working from his basement like some modern day computer hacker. After retiring, it was only fitting that he would return to the basement of his home, then on First Street, and continue his experiments with radio. This photograph shows him bringing his life full circle, which must have been a moment of great satisfaction for him. There is more to be said about the basement studio on First Street, which I now call Jack's Playroom. Again, only in retrospect have I come to understand the meaning of the Playroom's many "stations." It contained a pool table, a large and immensely complex train set stretched across two ping-pong tables, film equipment that included portable light trees, a projection screen and editing equipment, a small shooting gallery, where one could target shoot with Smith and Wesson air pistols, a display on the principles of steam power that featured two mechanical steam engines run on distilled water, various tape recorders, including the latest Sony reel-to-reel model, and a portable DJ booth, where I could play my 45s and flip switches to speak over the records and make announcements. Properly understood, Jack had set up a creativity incubator that allowed a visitor to interact with old and new technologies. As the principal visitor to the Playroom, I was indirectly given an education in how to create one's life ex nihilo, as he had done. The education, however, was never limited to what existed in the Playroom. If I wanted to create a new experiment, but the Playroom didn't accommodate it, Jack would have me design what I wanted on paper, and we would take it to Ivan Collins, a local electronics expert, or someone else with appropriate expertise, and have it made. On tapes I have of conversations Jack recorded during labour negotiations at CFCO in the late 1950s, he once said in passing that he never considered himself to have talent as a broadcaster, even though his Sunday morning radio show was the highest rated program on the station, beating out the likes of Ed Sullivan and Jack Bennie. He said his great interest in life was understanding how "things worked." The Playroom was a testament to that life long passion. Michael Ian Beardall Alexander May 3, 2015 Toronto, ON

Thanks for your comment, Michael! The additional information you are able to provide is useful for the museum staff and for other researchers using the database. Such a special story also provides the context viewers need to appreciate the image as you do! We hope you continue to enjoy the collection. Thank you again, C-K Museum

Such a heartwarming story. I now know so much more of one of my favourite radio stations. May God Bless him.