The first formal radio archives at the CBC began in Toronto in 1959. The English and French networks subsequently gathered, organized, and cataloged disc recordings from the late 1930s to the 1960s as well as the magnetic tape masters that gradually replaced discs as the production and archiving format. The CBC has also been actively acquiring a selection of contemporary programs. The high cost of archiving broadcast recordings means that the CBC is not able to keep tapes of everything it broadcasts. The emphasis is on news and current affairs, drama and other arts programming. In the case of music broadcasts, the archives maintain a smaller selection of recordings, restricted to those of Canadian content.

     The largest Canadian public archives collection of radio broadcasts is at the National Archives of Canada. Most of the radio recordings are of CBC radio programs on disc and tape. The CBC has donated almost all of its discs to the Archives but retains tape copies of a large selection. The earliest broadcast recording at the Archives is coverage of the official celebration of Canada's 60th anniversary in 1927, broadcast by the radio network of the Canadian National Railway, a predecessor to the CBC. Another highlight is an excerpt of the round-the­ clock coverage of the rescue of three men trapped in a mine in Moose River, Nova Scotia, in April 1936, which was broadcast by the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission several months before that entity was replaced by the CBC. The Moose River Mine broadcast captured the attention of radio listeners across Canada and the United States, demonstrating that radio had an immediacy that newspapers and newsreels could not equal.

     Among the most historically valuable programs in the CBC disc collection are the thousands of reports in French and English by war correspondents for the CBC Overseas Broadcast Unit, among them Matthew Halton and Marcel Ouimet. The war recordings cover the contribution of the Canadian military overseas and in some postwar events. Many reports are enlivened by actual battle sounds, recorded by the cumbersome portable disc recording equipment of the era.

     The CBC disc collection also provides a cross-section of the range of program types available to Canadian listeners, especially from the 1940s to the 1960s. By the 1950s, when radio faced increasing competition from television, news and current affairs held onto their place on the schedule, but many drama and entertainment programs gradually disappeared. It is possible to trace this shift in the radio schedule through the types of programs represented in the CBC disc collection.

     The CBC collection at the National Archives of Canada also includes some more recent programming, but the best source of network programs from the 1970s onward are the CBC's own archives. The National Archives of Canada has disc and tape copies of spoken-word CBC shortwave broadcasts, in English, French, German, and other languages.

     Recordings of broadcasts by privately owned Canadian radio stations are considerably rarer, not only at the National Archives of Canada but also at other archives across the country. This reflects the fact that private radio broadcasters have never had financial resources on the scale of those enjoyed by the publicly funded CBC to create and maintain archives. Radio stations have, however, made recordings of programs for their own research and rebroadcast and to preserve noteworthy broadcasts as part of a station's history. The archival record of private radio, especially, exists thanks to the efforts ​​of historically-minded behind-the-scenes individuals who, without prodding by any official station archival policy, recorded an often eclectic selection of private radio broadcasts, saved them, and donated them to public archives. Despite the growing appreciation in recent decades of the historical value of radio broadcasting, most contemporary private-sector radio broadcasting in Canada is still not being saved. The risk to the broadcasting heritage is compounded by frequent changes in station ownership and personnel as radio struggles to compete with television, the internet, and other means of mass communication.

     Among the holdings of private radio at the National Archives of Canada are discs from Toronto station CFRB from the 1940s and 1950s and discs dating from 1938 to 1956 from Montreal station CFCF, the oldest radio station in Canada. There are some examples of day-to-day programming originated by the stations, but many recordings are of speeches by major public figures, often transmissions picked up from British and American sources, of which the CBC and private stations tended to save disc copies. The U.S. network affiliations of major Canadian radio stations are reflected in the occasional copies of American shows from the 1940s and 1950s. The Harry E. Foster collection consists of discs, tapes, and scripts for hundreds of radio programs broadcast on private radio stations in the 1940s and 1950s, from such series as Men in Scarlet and The Adventures of Jimmy Dale; from a news highlights program entitled Headliners; and from The North­ ern Electric Hour, a program of orchestral music. The hundreds of discs and tapes donated by Joseph Cardin, who worked at radio station CJSO in Sorel, Quebec, provide a rich resource for the study of French private radio from the 1940s to the 1980s.

     Another source of private radio recordings are tapes donated by public figures, notably politicians. Interviews and speeches predominate, but examples of radio's democratic impact are illustrated by radio phone-in shows in which listeners were able to express their opinions and sometimes to vent at a hapless politician. The National Archives of Canada collection also includes examples from the 1970s and 1980s of news reports fed by private-sector news services, such as Standard Broadcast News, to member radio stations. There are also copies of radio programs submitted by stations across Canada to awards competitions such as those held by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters.

     The National Library of Canada acquires published recordings, including an extensive collection of the transcription discs of music performances issued by the CBC shortwave service.

     Other public archives across the country have smaller but nonetheless significant collections of radio broadcast recordings, often primarily from the CBC. There are collections of recordings in provincial and territorial archives, university archives, local historical societies, and other organizations. The Folklore and Language Archives at Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's, Newfoundland, has hundreds of hours of programs broadcast by Newfoundland radio stations from the late 1930s to the early 1960s. Included are programs in the series The Doyle Bulletin, which relayed personal messages from people to their friends and relatives in an era when transportation was more difficult and many people did not have telephones. Political events, music, some local drama, and even sound effects of fishing boats are also in the collection. The university also acquires contemporary recordings of local CBC arts programs. The provincial archives in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Alberta are among the government-run regional archives with collections of CBC broadcasts produced in their geographical areas. Most regional public archives in Canada also have small collections from private radio stations, often providing a unique archival record of local news and music. The Saskatchewan Archives Board actively does what many archives talk about doing but seldom carry out: they regularly contact radio stations to record one full day of programming, thus documenting the flow of the broadcast day as a listener experiences it. The Centre for Broadcasting Studies at Concordia University in Montreal has an extensive collection of CBC radio drama scripts.

     Archives in Canada still have considerable work to do to make it easier for researchers to find out what still exists for particular radio stations and networks. Slowly, information about radio archives is becoming more accessible through in­-house databases and on-line catalogs. These automated tools provide a mix of general and detailed information and also alert researchers to a wide range of other archival records necessary for the study of broadcasting history. They include oral history interviews with people who worked in Canadian radio from its earliest days, photographs, and administrative files. Access to copies of the actual broadcasts is more limited. In most cases, the broadcaster has retained copyright to the recordings, and researchers wishing to obtain copies must first obtain the permission of the copyright owner.