This page also includes material from the CJCA-FM years, before the call letter change to CIRK.

Fond memories

Edmonton Journal
December 7, 1993, p. A9

[CJCA went off the air for several months in December 1993 before new owners signed the station on again.]

Sorry to hear about CJCA. It is ironic the station should go under just as the Edmonton Eskimos win another Grey Cup. For more years than we care to remember, CJCA owned the rights to the Eskimo broadcasts. To many of us, they were inseparable.

When we were growing up in eastern Alberta in the early fifties, CJCA was the only station we could be sure of getting. We knew everyone. Some well known people went through the station’s doors – sports announcers like Russ Sheppard, Joe Carbury, and Blue Jays announcer Don Chevrier, to name a few – all brought to us by the local Burgess Battery dealer. Morning announcers like Jim Hault (his introductions of Bryan Hall should have been preserved for comic posterity) and, of course, Bob Arnold. With everyone singing the Eskimo fight song, I wonder how many remember who wrote the song back in the fifties? A CJCA dynamo named Peggy Miller.

The big CJCA sign was a landmark on Jasper Avenue and to rural visitors in those bygone years (you know you’re getting old when you use a phrase like “bygone years”) it suggested a world of great sophistication.

Sorry to see you go, CJCA.

Bob Davidson
Edmonton