> ‘A lot of history in those halls’
ROGER ASHBY
Roger Ashby started at 1331 Yonge St. in 1969, doing the all-night show on 1050 CHUM radio before taking the helm in 1985 as morning man on CHUM-FM, the No. 1 station for more than a decade. A member of the Canadian Music and Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame and a 30-year morning host, Ashby talks about the building he came to love.
Was it a cool building?
It was never a gorgeous building, or state-of-the-art in any way. I believe it was an old warehouse where pharmaceuticals were stored at one time, prior to (CHUM Ltd. co-founder) Allan Waters purchasing it in the 1950s (the station moved there in 1959).
The southern section was later joined onto 1331. That building had belonged to an insurance company, then CHUM bought it and linked the two with a parking lot in the middle. If we were going over to somebody’s office, we said we were going to the insurance wing.
How did you feel when it was sold?
In 2008, when it was announced the property had been sold (to Aspen Ridge) and we would be moving, that was a real shocker to me; that made me sad, because I’d spent 40 years of my life there, and it really was a second home. I loved that building.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the launch for The Jack . . . I walked behind where the servers were putting the hors d’oeuvres together and noticed the old outside brick and it brought back memories. I went over to (Aspen Ridge chief) Freddy DeGasperis and said, ‘please save me a brick when you knock the building down,’ and he’s promised to do that for me.
A lot of important music moments took place there. The Osmonds came by and Bay City Rollers — and when each of those acts visited it was pandemonium on Yonge St.
When the Bay City Rollers came (authorities) actually had to close off “Save me a brick when you knock the building down,” Roger Ashby (1985 and now) asked developer Freddy DeGasperis. that section of the street, there were so many kids. I remember them climbing on top of the group’s car. When the Osmonds came, we snuck them in the back door and kept them in a small section at the bottom of a staircase, to get them away from the crowd. After they left, that room became known as the Osmond Room, because that’s where everybody would go to smoke a joint when they had the opportunity. The code was, “Do you want to go the Osmond Room?” and everyone knew what that meant.
What other big names dropped by the CHUM building?
Well, Elvis was never in the building; he played Toronto in 1957, . . . two months before the station changed to rock ’n’ roll format. Paul McCartney was in the building and Elton John, and on the FM side Frank Zappa and Supertramp. A lot of history in those halls! Did you ever hear the story about the two guys who cut the wire to our transmitter tower?
What happened there?
It was Aug. 11, 1986; I was on vacation. Just before our show began at 5:30 a.m., two guys from across the street who thought our transmitter was interfering with their TV signal came across, went up on the roof, cut the wires, and the tower that fed the CN Tower (transmitter) fell across Yonge.
It hit the (Chevy) dealership across the street, damaged a couple of cars, but nobody was injured. But the Yonge bus, which is jammed at that hour because the subway isn’t yet running, had just gone past the building. The antenna would have hit that bus. Ryan Starr