In our weekly look back at Timmins history, we’ve been talking about broadcasting pioneer J. Conrad Lavigne..
Timmins Museum director-curator Karen Bachmann says from the local radio station that he established in 1952, he put up a new building in 1956and launched CFCL Television.
“The building is still there at the top of Pine Street,” she notes. “ So a lot of us remember some of those really great programs like Les Gais Lurons; President’s Corner, where he sat down and read his viewer mail, which is hilarious because he had an acerbic wit and would just kind of make comments about all of these letters, which was fantastic. And all of us of a certain vintage cannot forget the Santa Claus Show, and watching Santa Claus run over the hill and come into the TV station and greet all his little kiddies every day before Christmas.
“And (he would) sweep off his boots. And what was really cool is that I remember as a kid, we used to see the TV station from our house and the local flight would leave just about the time that the show would finish. So you would see a little light in the sky and my mother used to say ‘That’s Santa leaving’ and I as a kid, I believed that and I think I still do.”
