1130 NewsRadio was not an all-news station on June 6, 1944, when Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, but it did provide the first word of what had happened to people in the Lower Mainland.
“This was before the day of reporters sending on-air reports from around the world, like we have today,” said Jim Bennie, news anchor at 1130 NewsRadio, who emphasizes that his career at the station began in 1983 and not during World War II.
“What we did have was the Canadian Press broadcast wire, as well as deals with the Vancouver Sun and Daily Province, who provided daily newscasts twice a day. In the case of the Daily Province, it supplied its own newscaster, known as ‘Mr. Good Evening’; he never used his name on the air,” Bennie explained.
He adds that this was also before the days of top and bottom hour newscasts.
Stations broadcast 15-minute news summaries based on material they got from the wire or newspapers.
“The station had just hired a news director named Sam Ross, who was charged with increasing the station’s war coverage. The anchors read all the stories for 15 minutes straight in those days,” Bennie said.
“The station added hourly newscasts in the mornings during music programming, and likely Ross would have read them on D-Day.”
An ad was run in the Vancouver Sun on June 6, bragging our station had the “FIRST flash on invasion” and “FIRST story on Canadians’ part in the invasion” as well as complete spot news coverage.
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There was also a D-Day special that evening.
“The station cancelled ‘Your Hit Parade’ at 9 p.m. and aired ‘The Story of Invasion,’ advertised as a dramatized news presentation,” Bennie said.
There is one regret.
“If the special were recorded on a transcription disc, it has vanished,” Bennie lamented.
The Battle of Normandy, which included the largest seaborne invasion in history known as D-Day, happened on June 6, 82 years ago.
About 14,000 Canadian soldiers landed on the coast of Normandy, together with nearly 150,000 Allied troops.
It marked the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe, with eventually over two million Allied troops being in France by the end of August 1944.
The war officially ended in Europe on May 8, 1945, known as V-Day. Later that year, on Sep. 2, 1945, the global war ended with Japan surrendering to Allied powers.