Legendary Broadcaster Pat Burns' Hotline Debuts in Vancouver 49 Years Ago Today
By Glen Livingstone
Before the rise and fall of Western civilization, before the Wallmartization of everything, when men were men, and Rush Limbaugh was just a gleam in his daddy's myopic Third Eye, there was this:
"Burns Hotline, go ahead!"
With these four words, legendary Canadian broadcaster Pat Burns single-handedly launched - one might say invented - the talk radio format in Canada.
It was May 13th, 1963 when Pat Burns' Hotline debuted on Vancouver, B.C. radio station CJOR.
The station - founded by George Clarke Chandler - signed on the air in July, 1926 featuring a eclectic mix of music programs and radio dramas.
Four years later CJOR changed frequencies from AM 1030 to AM 1230 and in 1931 moved its studios from above the Alexandra Ballroom to the basement of the Grosvenor Hotel located at 840 Howe Street in what is now the hub of Vancouver's financial district.
A power increase to 500 watts soon followed.
In 1944 CBC Radio started the Dominion Network to which CJOR Vancouver, CJVI Victoria and CHWK Chilliwack became local affiliates. A final power increase in 1961 gave the then 35 year-old CJOR a not unsubstantial 10,000 watts.
The twisted path that led to Pat's arrival as a CJOR talkshow host took a number of turns.
Pat Burns was born in Montreal, Quebec on April 6th, 1921 but he had to leave his country of birth to get into the broadcasting racket.
An outspoken defender of freedom of speech and freedom in general, the Runyunesque Burns - with his hard-right conservative views and a voice that suggested he began his morning ablutions by gargling with Drano - was the talk show host who gave Western Canadians a voice. He was fearless, thoughtful, and possessed a great sense of humour to boot.
His radio career actually began in England where he worked for the BBC as a sports reporter covering the world hockey championships in London in 1949.
Upon returning to Canada he got a job as a reporter for the Vancouver Province newspaper before landing a position as the news/sports director for radio station CKLG prior to it making the transition from its easy listening format to Top 40 in 1964.
Pat worked at the station for eight years from 1955 to 1963 and after developing an interest in politics, ran for office and wound up serving four one-year terms as a North Vancouver City alderman from 1960 to 1963 with the hope of eventually winning a federal seat.
But it was not to be.
He lost the Liberal nomination he was seeking to rival candidate Jack Davis, and - his political aspirations derailed - he determined it was time to move on.
Pat decided to get out from behind the typewriter and get in front of a microphone. He put out a few feelers and one fine Vancouver spring morning opportunity knocked.
On May 13, 1963 the "Burns Hotline" (Pat later trademarked the term) made its debut on radio station CJOR thanks to the efforts of Peter Kosick who was the man responsible for putting the show on the air. In a matter of weeks, Burns and his Hotline were the talk of the town.
It seemed like every radio listener in the city was tuned to AM 600 to hear what fellow newspaperman-turned-broadcaster Jack Webster described as this “gruff-voiced, well-informed, first-class demagogue” had to say.
The "dolls" as Burns liked to refer to the female members of his listening audience -loved him - as did the station's advertisers who clamoured for airtime on his show.
Pat's ratings dominance became cause for concern to CJOR's nearest competitor CKNW. In desperation 'NW management appealed to one of their own staffers, Jack Webster, to take on the role of talkshow host to go up against Burns in 1963.
From that moment on, talk radio in Vancouver would never be the same.
Prior to being hired by 'NW, Webster had worked for CJOR in 1953 as a reporter. He remained with the station until 1957 before returning home to Glasgow, Scotland. After a few years he returned to Vancouver and resumed his work at CJOR with his 'City Mike' radio program.
(In 1972, in one of those lateral arabesques typical of the radio business, CJOR hired Webster back from CKNW to do mid-mornings.)
But in 1963 Pat himself was far too busy sifting through the personal death threats and fighting off the myriad of Board of Broadcast Governors ultimatums against him to pay any attention to the comings and goings of Jack Webster, a.k.a. "The Oatmeal Savage."
'NW did its best to turn the tables by trying to lure Pat away from CJOR, but he was happy with the eighteen C-notes stuffed in his pay packet every week by the widow Chandler whose husband George had popped his clogs in the spring of 1964 just a year after Burns had been hired.
In the meantime, 'OR briefly toyed with the idea of hiring a fleet of armoured cars to haul away the mountains of advertising revenue the station was raking in thanks to the ratings juggernaut that was the Hotline.
Pat opened each and every show with the following words, delivered in that unmistakable voice that sounded like Thor the God of Thunder casting down fire-bolts as he rode through the heavens:
"And a good evening to all of you Hotliners as once again we go forward with another three hours of argument, discussion and debate on any topic under the sun. The Hotline is the program with no false gods or sacred cows and the one that dares you to think, wants you to think and having thought, speak out!"
Pausing for dramatic effect and also to take another drag from his omnipresent cigarette, he continued:
"And when I say any topic under the sun I mean precisely that. For it doesn't matter to me if what you want to talk about is of a purely local nature, regional, provincial, state wide, national, international, philosophic, outer space or sports."
And he meant it. Every word.
Even on a day when Pat may have been - shall we say - a little under the weather, only a damn fool would try to take him on.
Sure, he could sometimes be a little rude to the "dolls" who called in, but along with his impeccable journalistic skills Pat knew that showmanship was also a part of the package and his brusque language and barbed insults added entertainment value to the show.
To his detractors he was nothing more than forty miles of bad road in a cheap suit - but he carried a big stick - and he wasn't afraid to lay beaters on anyone foolish enough to try to put one over on him.
Callers anxious to go one-on-one with Pat jammed CJOR's phone lines long before his three hour show went to air.
The diminutive (5' 4") Burns plyed his trade from the clapped-out, smoke-filled dungeon of Vancouver's Grovesnor Hotel. The unusually low ceilings forced anyone over 5' 8" tall to traverse the hallowed hallways in a semi-permanent hunch-backed position just to make their way around; ergonomically the joint was pretty much a disaster.
He often used a service tunnel that ran behind the studios to avoid having to mingle with the crowd which would mill around outside the station waiting for him to emerge.
Pat only enjoyed interacting with members of the human race over the telephone and in front of a microphone ... face-to-face, not so much.
He possessed a classic studio tan; his pallid skin mocking the patina of the nicotine-stained acoustic tiles that haphazardly clung to the control room's ceiling. Occasionally one would fall off, causing the edgy Mr. Burns to go straight up and sideways.
Short in stature, sartorially-challenged and perpetually hung-over, Pat was a habitual friend-shy, hard-drinking loner.
Tapping a long plastic cigarette holder against his mic for emphasis, he dispensed raw unvarnished truth for three hours every night from the windowless pit that CJOR management laughingly referred to as a studio.
On the plus side, right next door to the hotel was the all-night government liquor store, so CJOR's chronically parched staffers - Mr. Burns among them - were never in any serious danger of running out of booze.
Yes Mr. Burns enjoyed his tipple.
It wasn't Pat who said "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy," but he probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.
When he wasn't busy railing against false gods (My God is truth!) and sacred cows, he managed to deliver some amazing programming.
He spoke to Dr. Martin Luther King from his jail cell in Selma, Alabama in a lengthly conversation about the Civil Rights Movement.
Pat also interviewed Senator Robert Kennedy, who at that time was serving as Attorney-General of the United States.
Other high profile Hotline guests included attorney Melvin Belli who was representing Jack Ruby, the man who was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald; and James Lincoln Rockwell, Leader of the U.S. Nazi Party.
The Belli and Rockwell interviews offended a lot of Vancouver listeners. Free speech was one thing but you had to draw the line somewhere, right?
Wrong.
It was on those occasions that the Hotline really overheated.
More than one person has opined that the invention of the radio industry's seven second delay system was a direct result of the vitriol spewed at Pat Burns from some of his more unhinged listeners.
Despite his rabid following and huge ratings, in early 1965 it all came crashing down around him.
Pat was unceremoniously dismissed by management.
His outraged supporters rallied to his defence, gathering at vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre in March to protest Pat's firing. It was one of the biggest crowds ever assembled downtown to that date and caused a massive traffic jam.
The decision stood however, and Pat returned briefly to newspaper reporting before joining radio station CKGM in Montreal later in the decade.
But Vancouver had not forgotten its former star.
A reheated and watered-down version of "Hotline" returned to CJOR in Vancouver in 1980 where Pat began his campaign to unseat then-NDP Premier Dave Barrett’s “godless socialists”.
The show limped along for a few more years until 1988 when it all went pear-shaped.
Pat was on holiday in August that year and he returned from a much-needed vacation only to learn that CJOR had undergone a change of format and his services were surplus to requirements.
He eventually bounced back and continued to host open line programs in one form or another well into the 1990s, at one time working for the hapless CKO radio network where he espoused Western separatism and various other pet causes.
But Pat's ratings never came close to matching his earlier numbers when he was riding high at CJOR.
While Pat's career floundered, those of his fellow colleagues flourished.
His one-time nemesis Jack Webster went on to enjoy a successful career in television broadcasting while fresh new radio talkers like Rafe Mair, Gary Bannerman, and Ed Murphy came along to fill the void while Pat continued his long slow slide into anonymity.
Not much is known about Mr.Burns' life outside of radio. He was an intensely private person who mostly kept to himself.
One of his few friends, the late broadcaster Dave Abbott said in 2009, "Pat Burns was married. I met her (Mrs. Burns) when she visited Patrick in Vancouver. The marriage lasted less than two years. Pat was a kind soul who was very lonely in his final years but we loved him (my daughter Ingrid and myself)."
Can it possibly be forty-nine years since Hotline's first broadcast in May of 1963?
Its astonishing debut on the CJOR airwaves took sleepy little Vancouver by storm, dragging the city kicking and screaming from the decade of the staid fifties into the turbulent sixties, but after a scant two years on the air it was gone; as fleeting as the spit-shine on a wingtip oxford brogue after a Terminal City downpour.
Pat Burns was a product of his times; a visionary guy in a rotary dial world who through sheer strength of will became a bona fide celebrity in a city where that particular commodity was in short supply.
One can just picture him sitting alone in a red-leatherette booth in the bar that once adjoined the lobby of the Grovesner Hotel, rye-and-seven in one hand, unfiltered Sportsman cigarette in the other - plotting the next day's broadcast.
The Birks clock just up the street on the northeast corner of Granville and Hastings strikes midnight. Time to go home.
Pat gets up, waves a hand at the bartender, steps out the front door onto the sidewalk and walks slowly through the rain-slicked alleys back to his pay-by-the-week hotel room in a part of the city you wouldn't want to hang your hat in.
A stranger, emerging from the shadows, approaches.
"Pat, it's 2012 and the world is going to hell in a handcart."
"Do tell."
"Where do I start? In this province we're being governed by a Premier no one can remember voting for; gangland shootings on our city streets are as common as parking infractions; and, just to put a tin lid on it, it looks like Syria is teetering on the edge of Civil War. Can we talk?"
Tipping his head slightly to let the raindrops slip off the brim of his snap-brim fedora, Pat gives him a nod.
"Glad to," he says, not missing a beat. "Call me tomorrow when I'm on the air."
The stranger looks at him questioningly.
"You kiddin' me?" he says, visibly taken aback.
"Any topic under the sun, pal ... any topic under the sun."
In 1996 Pat Burns was inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame following his death earlier that year in Vancouver, British Columbia at age 76.
By Glen Livingstone
Before the rise and fall of Western civilization, before the Wallmartization of everything, when men were men, and Rush Limbaugh was just a gleam in his daddy's myopic Third Eye, there was this:
"Burns Hotline, go ahead!"
With these four words, legendary Canadian broadcaster Pat Burns single-handedly launched - one might say invented - the talk radio format in Canada.
It was May 13th, 1963 when Pat Burns' Hotline debuted on Vancouver, B.C. radio station CJOR.
The station - founded by George Clarke Chandler - signed on the air in July, 1926 featuring a eclectic mix of music programs and radio dramas.
Four years later CJOR changed frequencies from AM 1030 to AM 1230 and in 1931 moved its studios from above the Alexandra Ballroom to the basement of the Grosvenor Hotel located at 840 Howe Street in what is now the hub of Vancouver's financial district.
A power increase to 500 watts soon followed.
In 1944 CBC Radio started the Dominion Network to which CJOR Vancouver, CJVI Victoria and CHWK Chilliwack became local affiliates. A final power increase in 1961 gave the then 35 year-old CJOR a not unsubstantial 10,000 watts.
The twisted path that led to Pat's arrival as a CJOR talkshow host took a number of turns.
Pat Burns was born in Montreal, Quebec on April 6th, 1921 but he had to leave his country of birth to get into the broadcasting racket.
An outspoken defender of freedom of speech and freedom in general, the Runyunesque Burns - with his hard-right conservative views and a voice that suggested he began his morning ablutions by gargling with Drano - was the talk show host who gave Western Canadians a voice. He was fearless, thoughtful, and possessed a great sense of humour to boot.
His radio career actually began in England where he worked for the BBC as a sports reporter covering the world hockey championships in London in 1949.
Upon returning to Canada he got a job as a reporter for the Vancouver Province newspaper before landing a position as the news/sports director for radio station CKLG prior to it making the transition from its easy listening format to Top 40 in 1964.
Pat worked at the station for eight years from 1955 to 1963 and after developing an interest in politics, ran for office and wound up serving four one-year terms as a North Vancouver City alderman from 1960 to 1963 with the hope of eventually winning a federal seat.
But it was not to be.
He lost the Liberal nomination he was seeking to rival candidate Jack Davis, and - his political aspirations derailed - he determined it was time to move on.
Pat decided to get out from behind the typewriter and get in front of a microphone. He put out a few feelers and one fine Vancouver spring morning opportunity knocked.
On May 13, 1963 the "Burns Hotline" (Pat later trademarked the term) made its debut on radio station CJOR thanks to the efforts of Peter Kosick who was the man responsible for putting the show on the air. In a matter of weeks, Burns and his Hotline were the talk of the town.
It seemed like every radio listener in the city was tuned to AM 600 to hear what fellow newspaperman-turned-broadcaster Jack Webster described as this “gruff-voiced, well-informed, first-class demagogue” had to say.
The "dolls" as Burns liked to refer to the female members of his listening audience -loved him - as did the station's advertisers who clamoured for airtime on his show.
Pat's ratings dominance became cause for concern to CJOR's nearest competitor CKNW. In desperation 'NW management appealed to one of their own staffers, Jack Webster, to take on the role of talkshow host to go up against Burns in 1963.
From that moment on, talk radio in Vancouver would never be the same.
Prior to being hired by 'NW, Webster had worked for CJOR in 1953 as a reporter. He remained with the station until 1957 before returning home to Glasgow, Scotland. After a few years he returned to Vancouver and resumed his work at CJOR with his 'City Mike' radio program.
(In 1972, in one of those lateral arabesques typical of the radio business, CJOR hired Webster back from CKNW to do mid-mornings.)
But in 1963 Pat himself was far too busy sifting through the personal death threats and fighting off the myriad of Board of Broadcast Governors ultimatums against him to pay any attention to the comings and goings of Jack Webster, a.k.a. "The Oatmeal Savage."
'NW did its best to turn the tables by trying to lure Pat away from CJOR, but he was happy with the eighteen C-notes stuffed in his pay packet every week by the widow Chandler whose husband George had popped his clogs in the spring of 1964 just a year after Burns had been hired.
In the meantime, 'OR briefly toyed with the idea of hiring a fleet of armoured cars to haul away the mountains of advertising revenue the station was raking in thanks to the ratings juggernaut that was the Hotline.
Pat opened each and every show with the following words, delivered in that unmistakable voice that sounded like Thor the God of Thunder casting down fire-bolts as he rode through the heavens:
"And a good evening to all of you Hotliners as once again we go forward with another three hours of argument, discussion and debate on any topic under the sun. The Hotline is the program with no false gods or sacred cows and the one that dares you to think, wants you to think and having thought, speak out!"
Pausing for dramatic effect and also to take another drag from his omnipresent cigarette, he continued:
"And when I say any topic under the sun I mean precisely that. For it doesn't matter to me if what you want to talk about is of a purely local nature, regional, provincial, state wide, national, international, philosophic, outer space or sports."
And he meant it. Every word.
Even on a day when Pat may have been - shall we say - a little under the weather, only a damn fool would try to take him on.
Sure, he could sometimes be a little rude to the "dolls" who called in, but along with his impeccable journalistic skills Pat knew that showmanship was also a part of the package and his brusque language and barbed insults added entertainment value to the show.
To his detractors he was nothing more than forty miles of bad road in a cheap suit - but he carried a big stick - and he wasn't afraid to lay beaters on anyone foolish enough to try to put one over on him.
Callers anxious to go one-on-one with Pat jammed CJOR's phone lines long before his three hour show went to air.
The diminutive (5' 4") Burns plyed his trade from the clapped-out, smoke-filled dungeon of Vancouver's Grovesnor Hotel. The unusually low ceilings forced anyone over 5' 8" tall to traverse the hallowed hallways in a semi-permanent hunch-backed position just to make their way around; ergonomically the joint was pretty much a disaster.
He often used a service tunnel that ran behind the studios to avoid having to mingle with the crowd which would mill around outside the station waiting for him to emerge.
Pat only enjoyed interacting with members of the human race over the telephone and in front of a microphone ... face-to-face, not so much.
He possessed a classic studio tan; his pallid skin mocking the patina of the nicotine-stained acoustic tiles that haphazardly clung to the control room's ceiling. Occasionally one would fall off, causing the edgy Mr. Burns to go straight up and sideways.
Short in stature, sartorially-challenged and perpetually hung-over, Pat was a habitual friend-shy, hard-drinking loner.
Tapping a long plastic cigarette holder against his mic for emphasis, he dispensed raw unvarnished truth for three hours every night from the windowless pit that CJOR management laughingly referred to as a studio.
On the plus side, right next door to the hotel was the all-night government liquor store, so CJOR's chronically parched staffers - Mr. Burns among them - were never in any serious danger of running out of booze.
Yes Mr. Burns enjoyed his tipple.
It wasn't Pat who said "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy," but he probably would have wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.
When he wasn't busy railing against false gods (My God is truth!) and sacred cows, he managed to deliver some amazing programming.
He spoke to Dr. Martin Luther King from his jail cell in Selma, Alabama in a lengthly conversation about the Civil Rights Movement.
Pat also interviewed Senator Robert Kennedy, who at that time was serving as Attorney-General of the United States.
Other high profile Hotline guests included attorney Melvin Belli who was representing Jack Ruby, the man who was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald; and James Lincoln Rockwell, Leader of the U.S. Nazi Party.
The Belli and Rockwell interviews offended a lot of Vancouver listeners. Free speech was one thing but you had to draw the line somewhere, right?
Wrong.
It was on those occasions that the Hotline really overheated.
More than one person has opined that the invention of the radio industry's seven second delay system was a direct result of the vitriol spewed at Pat Burns from some of his more unhinged listeners.
Despite his rabid following and huge ratings, in early 1965 it all came crashing down around him.
Pat was unceremoniously dismissed by management.
His outraged supporters rallied to his defence, gathering at vancouver's Queen Elizabeth Theatre in March to protest Pat's firing. It was one of the biggest crowds ever assembled downtown to that date and caused a massive traffic jam.
The decision stood however, and Pat returned briefly to newspaper reporting before joining radio station CKGM in Montreal later in the decade.
But Vancouver had not forgotten its former star.
A reheated and watered-down version of "Hotline" returned to CJOR in Vancouver in 1980 where Pat began his campaign to unseat then-NDP Premier Dave Barrett’s “godless socialists”.
The show limped along for a few more years until 1988 when it all went pear-shaped.
Pat was on holiday in August that year and he returned from a much-needed vacation only to learn that CJOR had undergone a change of format and his services were surplus to requirements.
He eventually bounced back and continued to host open line programs in one form or another well into the 1990s, at one time working for the hapless CKO radio network where he espoused Western separatism and various other pet causes.
But Pat's ratings never came close to matching his earlier numbers when he was riding high at CJOR.
While Pat's career floundered, those of his fellow colleagues flourished.
His one-time nemesis Jack Webster went on to enjoy a successful career in television broadcasting while fresh new radio talkers like Rafe Mair, Gary Bannerman, and Ed Murphy came along to fill the void while Pat continued his long slow slide into anonymity.
Not much is known about Mr.Burns' life outside of radio. He was an intensely private person who mostly kept to himself.
One of his few friends, the late broadcaster Dave Abbott said in 2009, "Pat Burns was married. I met her (Mrs. Burns) when she visited Patrick in Vancouver. The marriage lasted less than two years. Pat was a kind soul who was very lonely in his final years but we loved him (my daughter Ingrid and myself)."
Can it possibly be forty-nine years since Hotline's first broadcast in May of 1963?
Its astonishing debut on the CJOR airwaves took sleepy little Vancouver by storm, dragging the city kicking and screaming from the decade of the staid fifties into the turbulent sixties, but after a scant two years on the air it was gone; as fleeting as the spit-shine on a wingtip oxford brogue after a Terminal City downpour.
Pat Burns was a product of his times; a visionary guy in a rotary dial world who through sheer strength of will became a bona fide celebrity in a city where that particular commodity was in short supply.
One can just picture him sitting alone in a red-leatherette booth in the bar that once adjoined the lobby of the Grovesner Hotel, rye-and-seven in one hand, unfiltered Sportsman cigarette in the other - plotting the next day's broadcast.
The Birks clock just up the street on the northeast corner of Granville and Hastings strikes midnight. Time to go home.
Pat gets up, waves a hand at the bartender, steps out the front door onto the sidewalk and walks slowly through the rain-slicked alleys back to his pay-by-the-week hotel room in a part of the city you wouldn't want to hang your hat in.
A stranger, emerging from the shadows, approaches.
"Pat, it's 2012 and the world is going to hell in a handcart."
"Do tell."
"Where do I start? In this province we're being governed by a Premier no one can remember voting for; gangland shootings on our city streets are as common as parking infractions; and, just to put a tin lid on it, it looks like Syria is teetering on the edge of Civil War. Can we talk?"
Tipping his head slightly to let the raindrops slip off the brim of his snap-brim fedora, Pat gives him a nod.
"Glad to," he says, not missing a beat. "Call me tomorrow when I'm on the air."
The stranger looks at him questioningly.
"You kiddin' me?" he says, visibly taken aback.
"Any topic under the sun, pal ... any topic under the sun."
In 1996 Pat Burns was inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame following his death earlier that year in Vancouver, British Columbia at age 76.