Which railway made the first national radio network hookup on Dominion Day 1927?

The Canadian National Railway made the first national radio network hookup on Dominion Day in 1927.

The broadcast took place on July 1, 1927, during celebrations marking the 60th anniversary—the Diamond Jubilee—of Canadian Confederation. CNR Radio carried speeches, music, songs, poems and the bells of Ottawa’s Parliament Buildings from Parliament Hill across a coast-to-coast network.

The hookup reached 23 Canadian stations and used telephone and telegraph lines to distribute the signal. Contemporary estimates suggested that roughly five million people heard the broadcast, an extraordinary audience in a country whose communities were separated by vast distances. The event helped demonstrate radio’s potential to create a shared national experience.

This was not the same as the later Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. CNR Radio was a railway-operated service created partly to entertain passengers and make train travel more attractive. It produced its first regular coast-to-coast network program in 1928, while the 1927 Dominion Day transmission was its landmark first national hookup.