'CBC Northwest'; Cree: ᓰᐲᓰ ᒌᐌᑎᓅᑖᐦᒡ, romanized: SiiPiiSii Chiiwetinuutaahch; French: Radio-Canada Nord) is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's radio and television service for the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon of Northern Canada as well as Eeyou Istchee and Nunavik in the Nord-du-Québec region of Quebec.
The genesis of CBC North began in 1923 when the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals established a radiotelegraph system linking Dawson City and Mayo in Yukon with Alaska, British Columbia, and Alberta.
[6] The program was immediately popular and quickly expanded to include CFYT[a] in Dawson City, Yukon; CHFN in Fort Nelson, British Columbia; and CHAK in Aklavik, Northwest Territories.
[6] Having to be shipped from Montreal, where they were recorded, the discs proved to be too fragile, so were replaced by tapes in April 1953, along with a promise that stations would receive six hours of CBC programming each day.
[10] On November 10, 1958, the Northern Service came into being when the CBC formally took over the operations of CFWH in Whitehorse and made it a part of the Trans-Canada Network.
In conjunction with the CBC taking over the stations, delivery of programming slowly began to be transitioned away from tape recordings and toward direct links to the CBC network via an expanding Canadian National Telegraph (CNT) system,[17][19] which, in 1959—under the authority of the Department of Transport—had become the successor of the NWT&Y Radio System.
[20] The CBC constructed CFFB in Frobisher Bay, Northwest Territories (now Iqaluit, Nunavut), and began operations on February 5, 1961, adding it to the Northern Service.
[22] The governments of the Northwest Territories and Yukon would later supplement this plan by installing additional relay transmitters in communities of less than 500 people.
[28] For the first fifteen years of CBC North, most of the service's radio stations with studios produced very little of their own programming.
To compensate for the loss of CBC North radio coverage this caused in northern Quebec, FM relay transmitters were installed in five communities of Nunavik, including the production centre of Kuujjuaq.
[44] As part of the CBC Radio One network, CBC North radio stations carry national programming in English along with regional and local programming in English, French, and the following eight Indigenous languages: Chipewyan, Cree (East Cree), North and South Slavey, Gwich'in, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, and Tlicho.
[44] The shows include news, weather, and entertainment, providing service to the many Indigenous people of Northern Canada whose first language is not English.
In the Nunavik region of Northern Quebec, CBC North is heard on a single-frequency network of low-power FM transmitters whose main station is CFFB-FM-5 in Kuujjuaq.
[46] These stations broadcast the same regional and local programing heard on CFFB in Nunavut, with the exception of the Sunday Request Show.
Indigenous language productions on weekdays include Tide Godi ("great lake news") in Tlicho,[54] Dehcho Dene in South Slavey,[55] and Denesuline Yatia in Chipewyan.
[56] On Saturday afternoons, CFYK-FM produces Dene Yati, a summary of the week's news in multiple Indigenous languages.
[58] Indingeous language productions on weekdays include Nantaii ("country road") in Gwich'in,[59] Legot'sedeh ("locality and land") in North Slavey,[60] and Tusaavik ("listening place") in Inuvialuktun.
Meanwhile, CBQR-FM in Rankin Inlet contributes the English and Inuktitut program Tusaajaksat ("things heard about") on weekday afternoons.
The Northern Messenger functioned as a way to provide residents in remote locations with a means to communicate with friends and family in the south, especially during the winter months, as normal mail delivery was infrequent or non-existent and long-distance telephone networks had not yet reached the region.
Like its American cousin, it consisted of personal messages from friends and family around the world to RCMP officers, missionaries, trappers, doctors, nurses, and scientists as well as Cree and Inuit,[82][83] and also ran from November to May.
It was initially produced by CRCT in Toronto and carried on the CRBC's network of mediumwave and shortwave stations, including CRCX (Bowmanville, Ontario), CJRO/CJRX (Winnipeg), and VE9DN (Drummondville, Quebec).
[79] A rebroadcast would then be done eight days later over CBC's powerful Sackville Relay Station aimed at Labrador, northern Quebec, and the eastern Arctic.
However, following a budget cut that went into effect on that date, the CBC shut down those three stations as well as more than 600 analog television relay transmitters throughout the whole of Canada.
[92][93] This program and the regional newscasts were also broadcast on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network before the creation of APTN National News.
Over 120 recordings were made in this period by artists including Morley Loon, William Tagoona, Willie Thrasher, and Alanis Obomsawin.