Freddie P's Blog

July 15, 2008 @ 10:21

I got involved in the Facebook thing some time ago but to the chagrin of several of my friends, but I'll tell you, it's come in handy.

I've reconnected with a lot of people of the last few months and it's been great and one of those people is my first boss from CFNY, David Marsden.

I saw David at the CFNY re-union a few years back, and I often listen to him on Friday nights while driving to the tin palace.

He does Thursday and Friday nights at the Rock in Oshawa and enjoy listening to the guy. It reminds of the good old days in the little yellow house, and then the strip mall on Kennedy Rd. S. in Brampton.

And its prompted me to share another excerpt from a work in progress, "A Radio Story" by Fred Patterson.

Everybody at CFNY was fabulous after Melanie was born. It was like she belonged to them all. I had to lug home all kinds of gifts, and because we lived so close to the station all the girls at work insisted I bring her in, which I did, nearly every week.
This also prompted one of the most heart warming experiences of my radio career. It involved David Marsden.
When I took Melanie into his office for the first time, he congratulated me, and then he got very serious.
He said "Fred, you know we'd like to pay you more money right now, but we just can't."
"That's alright David, we're OK, I understand."
"But let me tell you this." He went on to say. "If you need diapers, or formula or anything else for that kid, you let us know, we'll figure something out."
I can't begin to tell you how I felt at that moment. A cynic might say it was the typical radio thing, a manager throwing the "no money angle" at you.
But I didn't "ask" for more money and I'm convinced David wasn't trying to head me off. He wasn't. He was just being a nice guy.
I left the station walking on air. And it made me want to come to work even more the next morning. Crazy eh, that's what good management can do for you.
Why is it lost on so many?

David Marsden came to Brampton in 1978 with a vision, and despite overwhelming odds against him, he built the station into something that will never be forgotten.
In the space of nine years, Marsden grew the station from one room in a converted old house in Brampton, to a major league going concern with a signal booming from the CN Tower.
It took money of course, and it wasn't David's, but he was there pushing all the way. There was a time in 1979 when CFNY almost disappeared. There was no money and no owners. The radio station was in big trouble, so Marsden an on-air campaign to save the "Spirit of Radio".
He got listeners to respond by coming to the station and showing their support.
He got thousands of names on petitions, and had listeners send thousands of letters to the CRTC in Ottawa. He wanted to show the passion that CFNY listeners had for their station. He wanted to the CRTC to keep it alive until owners could be found.
And it worked. The stations hung on until the Civitas Corporation came along, and they were so impressed with what Marsden had done, they threw their support behind continuing the format.
And that was quite the accomplishment, because Civitas president Ed Prevost admitted at the time, that he found the music and the attitude at CFNY to be somewhat unsettling. But he couldn't ignore the passion. Passion that had been created by David Marsden.
The kind of passion that had inspired the Canadian rock band Rush to actually write a song about what was happening at CFNY.
It was called the "Spirit of Radio" and it was written by Neil Peart who refrained from actually putting the call letters CFNY in the title so that other stations would play it.
On the first day that David Marsden worked at CFNY, a mouse ran across a turn-table that made his record skip. On the last day he worked at CFNY, the station was worth several million dollars.