Do you have a story about you and CKUA that you’d like to share with us? Please let us know! We’d love to feature it! What do such stories look like? Well, here’s one by a longtime listener named Rob Derkitt!
Since my pledge during the recent spring fundraiser I was asked to write a note on what CKUA meant to me.
On thinking about the timelines of my and my wife’s Suzie’s involvement with CKUA, the reality of nearly 40 years of being 24/7 listeners and supporters hit home like a ton of bricks.
So many memories: I can see me painting the walls of our new home in Calgary in the spring of 1983 on a sunny February afternoon listening to Bill Coull; the k.d. lang concert we went to see in 1985 with k.d. wearing a wedding dress and cowboy boots was because we had heard her first on CKUA; listening to the station late at night on our patio during the hot nights of early June of 1986 while waiting for our first child Rebeca to be born; and the very first Calgary Folk Festival that we went to in the rainy years of the early 1990s was because we had won tickets on CKUA (oh my God, Rebeca’s younger brother Reilly pledged all his piggy bank money to Andy Donnelly during the first fundraiser after the black-out in ’97—he was seven then!!).
Such memories. Over the past couple decades of my working life, I was fortunate enough to be able to sponsor, through my company, various shows on CKUA. Cam Hayden and David Ward, when they were the morning guys; the Stew a couple of times; the BBC News, back when it was on, and most recently Leeroy and his Dirty Windshields Hour.
It’s been a musical soundtrack of memories from Tommy Banks through Sev Savron. Cathy and David driving to do the “touch the transmitter” tour. The Farm Report. David leaving the family to go to CBC to produce Tim Tamashiro’s show (who really needs to have a show of his own on CKUA by the way), only to return home and be the MASTERMIND behind assembling the incredible list of talented musicians/celebrities and now hosts that make CKUA what it is today.
All in all, on reflection, I am (we; all of us are) very lucky to have our hearing, our senses, and our very good taste to be part of the CKUA family!
That’s what CKUA means to me!
Thanks again Rob!
Please email us if you would like to share your own CKUA story with our community!