Sixty-nine is a strange birthday. Check any card rack and you’ll find all the love for 60. Lots of options for 79, but 69? It’s on a bit of an island. Which fits us perfectly.
CHEK first hit the airwaves on Dec. 1, 1956, making us the oldest privately owned TV station in B.C. – and on Dec. 1, 2025, we marked our 69th the best way we know how: with a cake, some nostalgia, and a lot of storytelling.
“So much has changed for CHEK over the decades, but the mission hasn’t,” says CHEK Media General Manager Rob Germain, shortly after handling cake-cutting duties as staff celebrated the anniversary Monday afternoon at CHEK studios on Kings Road.
We’ll admit it: we’ve had some work done. The glow-up started on Epsom Drive in Saanich, where CHEK began broadcasting all those years ago.
While looking back on day one, I figured there was no way I’d find someone who was actually part of it.
I know Gordie Tupper as one of the most recognizable faces in the station’s long history, but when I called him up for a bit of a retrospective I had no idea he was front and centre for the station’s first day on air.
When the station opened its doors, then eight-year old Gordie was one of the first through them.
“I walked in front of the camera, saw myself on the monitor, and then I couldn’t stop staring at the monitor,” he laughs. What followed was a lifetime of stories—most of them on the lighter, quirkier side of Island life.
Watch the full birthday celebration below:
And to this day, around 5 p.m., Gordie still finds himself in the same spot: watching.
“It’s the local station. I keep saying ‘my station’, and it’s not my station anymore.”
But it is. And it always will be.
And as I set up shop with a camera and a tripod in the 700 block of Fort Street to chat with strangers, I quickly found out it’s Mitch’s station too.
“I watch CHEK on the app,” he says.
Walter just moved here from Medicine Hat, AB, and has yet to find a source for his local news. “I’ve heard of CHEK, but that’s about it,” says the retired long-haul trucker. “You get tired of hearing American news, and local is important.”
“Do we have a new viewer?” I asked.
“Right on,” he said with a handshake.
Others didn’t want any part of being interviewed, while some stopped to say hello and tell me they watch every night.
Those street corner moments are a microcosm of our 69 years: we don’t reach everybody, but we keep trying. Baby strollers, quiet pedestrians and all. We don’t stop trying to connect.
“What I love is that you don’t do crap news,” Andrew, a lifetime CHEK viewer, told me.
We try, Andrew. We really do.
And we’re always looking to grow.
“What can we do better?” I asked.
“Honestly, keep doing what you’re doing,” Mitch said.
One viewer at a time.
“Telling the stories of Vancouver Islanders… that’s an important job,” says Germain.
And it’s one we’re proud to keep doing.
As for turning 69? Yeah, we know, it’s an odd one. The traditional gift for 70 years is platinum.
For 69?
“I dunno. Rust?” Gordie says.
We’ll see you next year for the big 7-0.
But more importantly, we’ll see you tomorrow.
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Correction, December 2, 2025 11:59 am :
A previous version of this story said CHEK was the oldest privately owned TV station in North America. In fact it’s the oldest in British Columbia, and the only employee-owned station in North America.
