Andrea Langlois et al - Islands of Resistance - Pirate Radio in Canada

18 • islands of resistance
began the process of applying for a low-power community licence. At
the time of this writing, they are still involved in the application process.
26 Most recently, the delay was due to problems created by a subsequent
application by Rogers Communications Inc. — which already
operates a regional commercial station — to expand their broadcast
range. In this situation, the Rogers application was given legal priority
because they already held a licence as compared to the still unlicensed
Gabriola station’s earlier application. In 2000, a pirate station
on Hornby Island, another Gulf Island in British Columbia, was visited
by Industry Canada based on a complaint of illegal broadcasting
and told to cease and desist. It complied and some of the programmers
began the process of applying for a 5-watt developmental community
licence. They are still mired in this application process as this book
goes to press. Yet other former Free Radio Hornby pirates were never
interested in being licensed in the first place and some have drifted to
other pirate stations instead.
Conclusion
Pirate radio, by its illegal and often ephemeral nature, is difficult to
document. In our research, we found a wide variety of stations plying
the airwaves as pirates. We also met numerous dead ends, in large
part because it is so often a clandestine activity. Since documenting
a pirate station may lead to its discovery by regulators, we respect
the decisions not to participate in this book that were made by those
pirates who did not want to have their stations profiled here out of a
concern about inadvertently increasing their vulnerability to shutdown.
In other cases, we had leads, but were unable to find enough
tangible details to weave them into a story. Consequently, despite our
persistent inquiries, there are inevitably gaps within this anthology.
In that sense, while this book maps previously uncharted waters, it is
not definitive. We encourage others to fill in those gaps — from ethnic
underground dance music stations in urban areas to rural stations
actively engaged in cultivating regional life-ways. It is indeed possible
that once this volume is published, more historical and present-day
examples of pirate radio will start to surface like formerly submerged
islands of radio resistance arising from the depths of the sea. Others,
no doubt, will choose to remain invisible. One thing is certain — they
will not cease to exist. After all, it is relatively easy to set up a pirate