On February 10, 1969, RadioYork signed onto the airwaves thanks in part to Robert Wolfe, CHRY's first station manager.

    A history graduate (BA '74) specializing in Canada and the history of ideas, Wolfe started RadioYork to add more flavour to a young institution. "We were a small group of people thinking about what a new university needed," says Wolfe.

    Wolfe says he was more interested in organizing people than broadcasting itself. "My role in forming
Radio York was that I was heavily engaged with people on student council and the academic structure."

    Wolfe and the other station founders -- program director Larry Arklewicz and chief announcer Jaimi Crokston -- scrounged together $35,000 from three college councils to start broadcasting. RadioYork's first location was Vanier College's basement. "We had a small office and a smaller studio which opened into the hall way. Our newsroom was in the laundry room."

    The group rented equipment from the University of Toronto's station to pipe their broadcasts directly into common rooms on campus. Within the first year, Rogers picked up the signal allowing anyone in North York with a cable hook-up on their stereo to tune in to CHRY.

    In its first year, RadioYork grew from the three founders to over 50 volunteers.

    In the late '60s, the campus was a little different. Wolfe says the atmosphere was one of fire, spirit and activism in the student body. When the October Crisis occurred, a group from RadioYork organized a rally. "We got the idea at 7 p.m. Sunday over dinner. The next morning we had over 3,000 people around the flag pole." Other differences characterized the new campus as well. "York was floating a couple of feet off the ground due to the chemicals being ingested."

    Wolfe left York to eventually become a professor in Policy Study at Queen's University, and has not sat before a microphone since.

    His latest project is a book to be released this year, Farm Wars, on the political economy of agricultural and international trade regime. As well, he's editing two books: one on relations between Canada and Great Britain, the other on the role of Canadian ambassadors.

    In retrospect, Wolfe says his pleasant days at Radio York were due to the people and the music. "It was a wonderful experience to go in for your show on a Friday night and go into the record library and pick out the evening's music. You could play what you want and say what you want about it. It was a bigger record collection than anyone could dream of having."

    The only drawback: ads for Molson Golden beer. "It was a little disconcerting after an hour and a half of intense music to play the ads. They were corny."