The station has one of the longest radio histories in Canada, with experimental broadcasts dating back to 1922 and serves Queen's University students and faculty as well as the greater Kingston community.

He mounted the first public exhibition of wireless telegraphy at a Queen's Convocation lecture on April 28, 1902, only four months after Guglielmo Marconi's first successful trans-Atlantic transmission from Signal Hill.

(At that time, the university's football/rugby team, the Queen's Tricolour, were the winners of the Grey Cup for three consecutive years, and it is a common myth that when the current call letters CFRC were assigned, their meaning was "Canada's Famous Rugby Champions"; this acronym being possible, however, was purely coincidental).

An alumnus donation in early 1923 made possible the acquisition of better, more reliable transmitting equipment, and a private commercial licence was obtained under the call letters CFRC by July 1923.

In 1938, in what was possibly the station's most notable broadcast, United States President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's convocation speech at the university was relayed by CFRC to all North American radio networks.

This changed in 2003 when ownership and management of the station was transferred from the university to the Alma Mater Society (Queen's student government).

[5] Due to changes in CRTC regulations, CFRC's ownership transitioned from 2012 to 2014 so that it became an autonomous service, no longer owned and operated by the AMS.