It isn’t often we get requests here. But a request has come in for some information about Bruce Arundel, who was involved in the beginnings of radio in Vancouver. Unfortunately, there isn’t too much out there about him.
Arundel was born February 21, 1900 in Ripon, Yorkshire, England to George and Clara Arundel. The family picked up and came to Canada in 1903 and settled in Calgary, where Bruce’s two brothers were born. In late 1906, they moved to New Westminster and the following year were in Vancouver, where George Arundel (and his younger brother) worked as a carpenter and Bruce went to school.
Bruce became interested in radio as a teenager and became a marine wireless operator (he doesn’t appear to have served in World War One). At 18, he started teaching wireless telegraphy at Sprott-Shaw College, and continued to do so until four months before his death.
Sprott-Shaw also had its own radio station under several different sets of call-letters. One of Arundel’s obits says he and R.J. Sprott started the radio first station west of Winnipeg “about 1921.” The station was CJCE, run in conjunction with the Vancouver Sun. It eventually became CKMO and Arundel was a vice president of the station at the time of his death.
One obit also says he was “an original member of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club.” That’s impossible, as the club was founded in 1903. It may refer to the opening of the club’s permanent clubhouse at Jericho in 1927.
He was married in Vancouver in 1929.
Arundel died on February 13, 1951; the death certificate reads “fibro-something-a” (it’s not fibromyalgia) as the cause.
cArtie.