CFNY let their DJs play weird music. That’s why Rush and New Order loved this Toronto radio station

In the late ’70s and ’80s, CFNY was the Toronto radio station that introduced listeners to British bands such as The Cure and New Order, as well as nurtured Canada’s own indie music culture. Rush was such a fan of the station that it inspired them to write the song The Spirit of Radio, which was CFNY’s tagline.

A new TVO documentary explores the radio station’s groundbreaking impact. CFNY: The Spirit of Radio chronicles the radio station’s height of influence, but also its eventual absorption into the corporate radio system. Now, CFNY is known as 102.1 The Edge, a Toronto rock station owned by Corus Entertainment. 

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with music journalist Liisa Ladouceur about how CFNY: The Spirit of Radio reflects her own experiences as an avid station listener and why CFNY’s story still resonates today.

We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: CFNY, or now 102.1 The Edge, has been on the air for nearly 50 years. But this documentary looks at — primarily — a period in the late ’70s to late ’80s. What is it about that era of time that makes it worthy of a whole documentary?

Liisa: This radio station has a mythology around it, certainly in its formative years, because it was doing something that no commercial radio station was doing at the time, which was letting DJs pick the music. How crazy is that?

You could hear all styles of music on this radio station. You could hear punk rock and prog rock and house music. And that was so different and so exciting for people — not just the bands, who had a chance to get their music heard, but people all around Toronto. 

Elamin: Tell me what it was like to find a radio station like CFNY when you were growing up. 

Liisa: Oh, man, it was so cool. I was a teenager in a small town about two hours away from Toronto, which was about one hour too far away to get CFNY. But I got MuchMusic, so I had started discovering new wave. And then one day I opened the newspaper — my grandfather’s subscription to the Toronto Star — and I saw: “Top 100 songs of the year, CFNY.” I was like, “There’s a radio station that plays The Cure? That’s my new favourite band!” So whenever I was in range, I would tune in. And I would continue to tune in on the car radio long after it became so static-y that my mom would be very mad, like, “This is terrible, please turn this off.” I’d be like, “No! I just want to hear the back-announce to know what this song is!”

WATCH | The official trailer for CFNY: The Spirit of Radio:

Elamin: As you’re watching this documentary, do you walk away being like, “This gave me a hit of nostalgia here” or are there lessons that you think we can take away for this media landscape right now?

Liisa: I watched this and I was like, “Man, this was our WKRP.” Let the weirdos run the show. Give freaks and people with wild ideas — give them money, let them do what they do. Amazing things will come from it.

Elamin: I think that’s such a valuable lesson to remember, especially in a period of time that feels especially devoid of freaks. I feel like everything feels very algorithm-driven and very corporatized. And I keep going: “Hey, where are the weirdos and what are they making?” Not because I’m going to love it, but because I’m going to have an actual relationship to it. 

You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Liisa Ladouceur produced by Stuart Berman.