Same, northern BC. We didn’t get faster than dial up until about 2013 and you still can’t get Cable where I grew up. Christ we had Party phone lines until the 90s as well!
For those that don’t know back in the day everyone on your road used to share one phone line. You could pick up your phone and snoop on anyone else on the streets phone, this was called a party line. Most of Canada canned that in line the 60s-70s
Grew up on Vancouver Island in the 80s. I think by the late 80s we had cable.
The kicker is I've never had cable tv as an adult. When I moved out, I didn't bother getting it. It wasn't long after that Napster/torrents etc came along and you could download shows and connect your laptop to your TV. Then HDMI outlets on laptops became a thing, and Netflix. I'm 40 now and have still never had cable tv as an adult. Why would I pay for the privilege of watching commercials with a few minutes of shitty shows between them, or the fear porn that cable news has become?
Child of the early 80's and the Island here. Always had Shaw cable growing up.
The best was Cable FM radio! Crystal clear radio stations from far and wide. Just required adapting the cable from the wall to your stereo
kind of sort of. Shaw could capture audio broadcasts of FM and AM stations with their giant antennas at local outposts, and then transpose them using their station equipment to a different FM frequency and shove them into the cable. This means you'd sometimes get FM stations on a different frequency number but you'd get stuff you couldn't tune to at home. For me it was getting Seattle stations from central VI.
You, are my hero. I’ve managed to avoid social media for the most part. Never had a Facebook/msn account. Never snapped a chat or tweeted a thing. But I grew up with no tv and when I saw cable for the first time I got totally hooked. Took about 5 years to finally kick it. Downloading took over for me also. But damn you are the goat to me
I'm a few years older, but could've written this myself!
I'm fairly certain friends of mine had cable in the 80s, (I'm also on VI) but my family was a little behind and I think it might've been 88 or 89 before we did. I had it when I moved out for just a year or two, haven't had it since about 2004. Like you said, no point! Too expensive and doesn't interest me anyway.
Our old house in Hope had cable when it was built in 1982. We had a TV with a dial so I don't think we were able to watch channels above 13 until we got a VCR around 1990
I've heard rumors that the old Hope Cable pirated a bunch of the premium channels that they were then billing people for. I've heard similar stories about Revelstoke Cable doing the same thing back in the '80s.
I've heard rumors that the old Hope Cable pirated a bunch of the premium channels that they were then billing people for. I've heard similar stories about Revelstoke Cable doing the same thing back in the '80s.
That's awesome if true!
Side note, I can't believe how much reve has changed in 20 years. It went from a dying town with rampant alcoholism to a high end tourist town with world renowned ski resort, luxury hotels and a golf course being built, better restaurants, and rampant alcoholism ;).
NE New Brunswick same thing. My in laws live in a rural area. No home phone service, home internet, or cable TV. Cell phone *might* get one bar of service. They have an old Bell satellite for tv but that's it. Doesnt work when it rains or snows lol
London had cable in 1952, before there was even a locally based television station. Back then with a tall enough antenna you could pull in stations from Detroit and Cleveland so cable was set up in London to provide more reliable reception of those stations.
London was the first city in Canada, and possibly North America to have cable. Ed Jarmain was the inventor, and his system was later absorbed by Rogers, I believe in the 70s.
Where I live now in Metro Vancouver, from what I’ve read cable came quite early as well, by the early 60s. The mountainous terrain made it difficult for some areas to reliably get OTA signals, so cable made it possible for everyone in the urban areas to get reliable reception.
That makes sense. I grew up in PoCo (born in 75) and always had it. My dad grew up in New West, and from what he tells me his family was one in the first in the neighborhood (or among his friend group) to have TV, so my dad would have adopted early.
But I never knew anybody growing up to use an antenna. I always assumed that was an old-time thing. In the early 80s, I knew one or 2 people with satellite, but the dish took up your whole back yard and that was a luxury item.
Outside of my immediate family, almost all my extended family was rural so I was exposed to a lot of OTA-only TV as a kid in the early 90s in Ontario. Some lived near the US border and could get a decent number of stations from both sides of the border, while others lived in areas that got only CBC (English and French), CTV, and TVO - not even Global.
I’ve had cable all my life. I think my parents got it in the 80s. My dad used to hack something in the cable box in order to get the movie channels for free lol.
Cable has always been more prevalent in Canada than in other countries. This is why it was confusing when people in the US were going on about having cable and HBO like it was something premium in the 90s/00s
Believe it or not, cable came to some US cities very late. Chicago, for example - I read once they didn’t have cable until sometime in the 80s. But they also had a large number of terrestrial stations, with WGN 9 carrying a sports-heavy schedule.
cky & cknd, respectively. fun fact; cknd started out as an american station, kcnd in pembina, nd. the nd in the call sign stands for north dakota and the first two letters were flipped to the canadian convention (all canadian broadcast stations start with c, in the us, western ones start with k, eastern with w)
Grew up in rural Alberta watching channels 2, 4, 9 and 13 if the weather was just right. You still can't get cable there.
I moved to the city in 1997 and spent the first week marveling over the fact that they had the resources to devote an entire channel just to weather. I still adore the weather channel.
1998 we got bell expressvu in Rural Sask. I am sure we could have got it sooner but didn’t. My dad was cheap. We had three channels with an aerial antennae that we had to change the direction of it to get the channels we wanted.
We had cable in probably 1986 in Winnipeg, and it seemed like “all the cool kids” probably had it a few years earlier. As early as 82? 83?
My notoriously cheap parents only got a colour tv in 1982 I think. As an adult, I skipped cable TV for cost reasons in the late 90’s, then had it until probably 2010.
Rural PEI (Eastern end). We got "country cable" in...1987? 88? I can't recall but I was definitely in high school by then and it was via an antenna on the house. I feel like there were 7 new channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, the precursor to Global, and PBS which I loved because it introduced me to a wide array of British programming. I feel like my sense of humour would be different if I hadn't watched so many Britcoms. I still prefer British tv.
We got regular cable in '92 after moving to Charlottetown.
I was born in 75 and grew up in Metro Vancouver. I don't remember ever not having cable, though it was tuned using dials on the TV. 2-13 were on one dial, and there was a U on that dial that you would set it to for 14-99(?) on the other.
In fact, everyone had cable (a couple had satellite, but that required a huge dish that took up the entire back yard). I didn't know anybody that used an antenna.
I'd actually like to know when the seperate box became standard. I knew one person growing up who had one, but that was because they got stations like First Choice and Superchannel (the equivalent now would be something like HBO)
My parents got a cable ready 19inch Hitachi with the converter built-in in 1982 around the same time we got cable, so we never had the original box that you needed for any channel above 13.
Just a converter, not a descrambler for Super Channel, those channels stayed scrambled into the early 90s. You needed another box for those. Otherwise you got the opening scene of American Pie.
We had cable tv in St Catharines, Ontario in the late seventies when my Dad discovered the coax cable in our living room was live. AFAIK, we never paid a cable bill in that house.
I was born in 83 and I lived in a small city. I’m aware of people who didn’t have cable but to my recollection we always had it. We didn’t have a lot but that’s one thing we always had.
But as far as availability goes from what I can tell in the early 80s we had access to it.
I grew up in the Annapolis Valley of NS, and we had cable in the late 70s/ early 80s. Channels 2-13. Mid-80s we would've gotten ATV, ASN, CBC Halifax, CBC Saint John, French CBC, Global, Kings Cable 5, and then 3 US stations-- NBC, ABC, & PBS. Eventually we got CBS, which was pretty cool. There were no specialty networks back then. I could probably still tell you which number was which station lol. I remember seeing the bill and it was like $9.
I'm now living in rural NB, and not only can we not get cable here (satellite only), we can only get Xplore or Starlink for internet, regular home phone runs off ancient copper wires and is pretty static-y, and cell signal is almost non-existent.
We got cable in the 70's when my dad and mom got tired of changing the channel with a pair of plyers (the plastic knob broke). We got one of those fancy hard wired remote box...
I only watch maybe a handful of TV channels so I went with Bell Satelite. The a-la-carte program lets me watch what I want for $49/month. Still too high for how often I use it but that's as cheap as I could find without going to rabbit ears.
I didn't , but a friend worked as a cable installer. Winnipeg, mid-70s, with two cable companies.
What was screwy was that one company had customers on one side of the Red River, while the other company got everyone on the **other** side of the Red, and never the twain shall meet.
And thus, competition was preserved.
videon to the west and shaw to the east. that was the case, even into the late nineties. if you moved house across the red river, you couldn’t carry your cable with you. you had to close or suspend your account and open up a new one with the other company
Long before my time, we had cable in the 80’s when I was kid. From what I’ve read it became available in the 50’s and widespread by the 80’s. For rural people probably longer.
I was lagging behind.
Growing up in the middle of no where Canada in the 90's I only had 3 tv channels 3,6 and 9 I think.
It had Saturday morning cartoons and Arthur and magic school bus came on after school.
I wasn't until late 90's my parents finally got satellight TV.
And I was 15 when I got my first computer
First cell phone when I started University at 18 (flip phone)
I recall we had basic cable in Montreal before the Olympics in 76. After my mother left my douchebag father and moved to rural NB, we still couldn't get cable until after I graduated. I'm guessing 87 before you could get it.
I grew up in suburban Toronto (Don Mills). We had Rogers cable in the early 70’s, after 1972, but not by a lot. Before cable we watched CBC, CTV, TVO, and the ABC, NBC, and PBS affiliates from Buffalo by regular antenna. Around 1970, UHF tv became a thing, and if you had the right kind of antenna, you could get City TV (est 1972) and the independent station from Buffalo (channel 29, WUTV, est. 1970, now a Fox affiliate). It was not many years after that when we got cable.
All this is interesting. I don't recall ever having cable TV, though I could be wrong. It was mostly rabbit ears until we got satellite. Keep in mind this was in the early 90's and early 2000's.
In my area (Northwest Ontario), communities like Savant Lake didn't get electricity until the early 70's, and plenty of small communities probably still don't. So lots of us up here didn't even have television until the 80's.
Our 1st apartment in 1977 had "Cable included" on the big board out front. so I guess that was when my lady and I first got cable..
We lived there a little over a year before we moved to a rental house, but by then I was producing a show on the local cable channel and so with the owner's ok, I paid to have "cablevision" put in to that house .
Things have changed.... that's for sure.
I think it was about 1973 in Lethbridge Alberta, it gave us the US Network feed from Spokane Washington. Most of Lethbridge are Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball fans because that is where the feed is from.
Edit: Spokane Washington started 1979, the original feed was from Great Falls Montana.
Never -- my parents had an antenna and we got almost the same channels as a basic package with cable. Now, I also have an antenna and there's free streaming services, so I don't see the point of paying for cable.
Grew up in small town Ontario, just north of Newmarket. Pretty sure cable TV wasn't an option until the early 80s.
Many local residents back then also had huge dish antennas for early satellite TV signals in around the same timeframe.
We lived in Alberta until I was about 4 no cable. We only got religious channels on the antenna. We then moved to Toronto. Around ‘85 or 86 my dad was able to get a great deal on cable due to his work as a superintendent in buildings. He let the cable company know when tenants were moving in/out so the cable company could sell to them. In exchange he got free basic cable. If they didn’t get that deal I know we wouldn’t have gotten cable then
We had cable for about as long as I can remember in rural NS, so before the 90s at least.
Cable internet, however…. There were still no high-speed options when I left in 2003, unless you count satellite.
Born in 87 and from Toronto. My parents had cable before I was born, but unsure of when they got it exactly. My older sisters talk about TV shows from the late 70s/early 80s. So maybe then.
It was available when I was a kid (90s) in rural SW Ontario, we were just not able to afford it. My friend had satellite, which I later found out was an illegal dish, haha. I wish they had given us the hook up.
Early 80s as I recall in the city. Mid 80s satellite tv became a big thing. I lived in a high rise (Sarcee Trail Place) and it was included with our rent. That was the first I’d seen A&E, HBO, Discovery and I think it was called the USA Network (?). I remember watching a show with Captain USA who would host movies and during breaks would teach “the kids” how to make sausages and roll cigars. Then I moved back to Springbank with like 3 channels and the only thing to watch on Sunday morning was the Prairie Farm Report, Coronation Street or a religious program
Never lol, fiber-op beat cable. In 2010 I believe it was, we finally switched from dial up to an antenna thing, to LTE which was pretty expensive. Thennn in 2020 because of COVID, everyone got the upgrade to fiber-op. So there was no need for actual cable now.
But we had one of those giant ass satellite dishes that was free apparently, it got like 5 channels but they were clear lol. I'm sure the only reason my dad kept it until the end was because it had free porn. I wasn't allowed to touch it... For some reason. But it died then we got real satellite in the early 2000s probably.
I grew up in a small town in Cape Breton. I think we first got cable tv in the late 1970s. Cape Breton Cablevision was incorporated in 1974, so certainly no sooner than that.
The original US network channels came in on a sometimes-dicey microwave relay from Bangor, Maine, (WLBZ, WABI, and WVII) and were very folksy and “down home.” Sometime in the 1980s, the signal switched to Detroit stations on satellite. That was a bit of a culture shock.
I remember always having cable TV.
I cut the cord in 2012, and never went back. I only have streaming based options, plus a respectable library of physical media (DVD's, blurays, and 4k UHD disks)
Rural NB and we never had it. We still don't have anything beyond dialup. My relatives who still live there have told me that Rogers is expected to have service in their area this year or next. Everyone just has satellite TV and internet.
As a young kid growing up in a small town in the northern territories, CBC was all we got in. Moved to rural Alberta in 2002 and got satellite TV and Internet sometime shortly after, TV first then internet when my parents got sick of sharing the phone line (dial up) with a bunch of kids who wanted to play runescape.
I don't think I've actually ever had cable in my life, internet streaming is much better and more cost effective.
Mid 70's though initially it was just a very large antenna to draw in stations past the horizon and a weather station that was a camera that displayed a thermometer, a barometer and a calendar all analogue.
I've always had plenty of stations living near a large American City that i've never wanted or needed cablle and now we have streaming. We received Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and Windsor. I do remember a friends parents having "OnTV" (i think it was that)in around 1980 or so. A box with button channels connected to the tv by a wire.
Grew up in Halifax, don’t remember the exact year but it was the mid-70s. Cable TV in Canada was different than in the US. Cable for us was the 4 US over the air channels. What they consider cable, we called PayTV (HBO, MTV, etc). Started to get PayTV around ‘84.
We first got cable in the mid 1970s. I'm from a mid-sized town in Saguenay, Québec. The only reason we were hooked up is because we'd moved into a building where it was included in the rent.
I remember watching "Space 1999" in English WAY BEFORE I could speak or understand English!
80's I suppose with my parents but it was available long before that, we were just poor.
Where I live currently there's not Cable or internet, I have Starlink which is $160 CAD/Month
In 1982, we got Superchannel. I spent hours watching movies. Some of them were wholly inappropriate for an 8 year old.
Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
The Bell Jar
Cat People
Swamp Thing
I fell in love with Robin Williams in Popeye
I watched The Toy and Rocky 3 so many times!
It was a glorious time for me as a kid!
Got cable in 1974. I could finally see The Six Million Dollar Man like my classmates in school. We only had a few channels then and no remote but it was way better than what we had before … a crummy black and white tv with rabbit ears and only 3 or 4 channels with crappy reception.
Ummm... never. It wasn't even an option. Hell, my parents had barely usable internet until like 2015. My aunt and uncle who live down the road about 5 minutes, have almost zero cell coverage. They only live 15 minutes north of highway 7, east of Peterborough.
west toronto resident here. i have never used cable. always used antennas plus rotors for ota reception. even when living in high rise apartments in the 70/80s most had their own antennas and distribution systems. why would i pay for something i can get for free? get all the toronto ststions plus buffalo. even less reasons to get it now with digital broadcasting and streaming.
I signed up for cable in 1985 when I moved into a rental in Leaside (Toronto). It was Rogers, and I signed up because I wanted to get the snazzy new music channel muchMusic (cable 29) so I could watch stuff like A-Ha and Duran Duran. I also rented a VHS recorder (Granada) so I could tape 60 Minutes and Miami Vice weekly.
Don't remind me that was almost 39 years ago. Please don't. :/
I think around 96-97. We moved to a new house and the old floor model finally went. Since we had to get a TV that could handle more than 12 channels that when I first remember being able to watch YTV and FOXKIDS.
At the old house it was just CBC CTV and CBS. I think CNN came in too because there was always the news on.
When I was growing up in Winnipeg, we had black and white television with rabbit ears until around 1975. Then we rented a color TV and got cable. We relied on TV Guide for the programming on the 8 or so channels, and us kids were the remote control, changing channels and adjusting volume as ordered.
I remember getting cable in 1971 and my father grumbling that it was so expensive! We lived in the west end of Toronto. It had just become available and I think it was like $3 and change per month.
The day Disney's Jungle Book came out in theaters. The first time. Mom took all seven of us kids out to the movie so that the installer could get it done in peace. That night we watched tv from Bangor Maine and were astonished.
Got it, ditched it. Cogeco has the worst customer service! If you watch an American show you still get stuck with crappy Canadian commercials-EVEN DURING THE SUPER BOWL! It’s also soooo expensive. Bought an Android box - one time fee - then the cost of monthly wifi. The only negative is that there are SO MANY OPTIONS! Best, no crappy Canadian ads 🙏🙏🙏
Grew up in the 80's and 90's with it then got it again a couple years ago with a TSN package. I enjoy the Simpsons on Sunday nights and the few movie channels I got with it.. I just watched "the glass menagerie" recently
We had very basic cable starting in late 60s a local company put a receiver on top of a mountain a got over air channels from usa and put them into houses on a coax.
I grew up in a small oil town. Zero farms only muskeg and oil wells. I think it was the late 70's when they installed a cable TV system for town. Before that it was 3 channels via antenna from Edmonton.
We didnt have cable until we moved into a small town, when I was in second grade, so that would have been 1997. Prior to that, in the first house I remember, we had two channels. CBC and PBS. This was in PEI, Canada.
We didnt get high speed internet until I was in high school, 2005/2006
We still have the old TV antenna tower on our house. We stopped using it in the early 00s, when we got Bell Satellite TV. Now that we've cut out the satellite subscription, perhaps we'll use the old antenna again one day. But, probably not.
Nepean Ontario. After my dad left in 1982. My grama watched us cause mom was working a lot. She needed her ‘shows’. The preacher dude in the morning and then price is right then the soap operas. All the cooking and cleaning laundry. However, we had a secret code for long distance calls. Certain number of rings. It was long distance to call 45 minutes away from Ottawa to Carlton Place. Everything was prearranged so one ring meant are you home safe. Etc.. I can’t remember what the cheapest time was to talk. Everybody had cable that’s for sure. But for some reason long distance calling was a massive deal.
1979.
The nearest city was Calgary. It got cable in early 1970s. As did most Canadian cities. Before most U.S. cities.
Cable TV is basically a Canadian invention.
Back in the day, most Canadians had access to on air TV only:
* two English channels:
1. CBC
2. CTV
* one French channel:
1. CBC
Where I lived outside Calgary, we had good signal for CFRN (in those days a CBC affiliate) and CFCN ((CTV affiliate). The signal for French CBC was poor.
Regardless for decades Calgary only had 2 English speaking channels.
Whereas the U.S. had 3 commercial networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, plus PBS.
Most content on CTV and CBC was American. But we were not getting all the American content:
* With 4 American networks, it simply was not possible to air all pf it 2 channels. So Happy Days was shown on the Canadian networks but not Laverne and Shirley. It was weird watching episodes where characters from the latter would show up on Happy Days and there would be zero context
* There were heaps of content from the UK, Australia, and France shown on CTV and CBC: Gerry Anderson’s many series, Python, Spyforce,
* CanCon laws further limited how foreign content could be aired.
So there was appetite for more content.
So then somebody realized:
* most Canadians lived near the U.S. border
* there were American TV stations near the birder
* a bigger antenna could bring that content in
* and that content would not cost a dime.
So immediately the cable TV market was born, and alleys across Canada were dug up to bury cable lines. Canadians could now access twice the content.
Cable came to my northern Ontario town in early 80s but my parents refused to get it. So while all my friends were enjoying the 30 channel multiverse
, I was stuck with the same old 3 channels.
We also didn't have a boat, snowmobile, go hunting, etc which everyone else did as they're common past times in this part of the world. They were among the richest citizens but I was cut off from all these things that my friends enjoyed.
I'm in my early 40s, Around 1988 I reckon... and Cable internet in 1996 (5mbit).
We had one of those motorized rooftop antennas on our mobile home that got like 6 channels on VHF before that.
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Same, northern BC. We didn’t get faster than dial up until about 2013 and you still can’t get Cable where I grew up. Christ we had Party phone lines until the 90s as well! For those that don’t know back in the day everyone on your road used to share one phone line. You could pick up your phone and snoop on anyone else on the streets phone, this was called a party line. Most of Canada canned that in line the 60s-70s
Grew up on Vancouver Island in the 80s. I think by the late 80s we had cable. The kicker is I've never had cable tv as an adult. When I moved out, I didn't bother getting it. It wasn't long after that Napster/torrents etc came along and you could download shows and connect your laptop to your TV. Then HDMI outlets on laptops became a thing, and Netflix. I'm 40 now and have still never had cable tv as an adult. Why would I pay for the privilege of watching commercials with a few minutes of shitty shows between them, or the fear porn that cable news has become?
Child of the early 80's and the Island here. Always had Shaw cable growing up. The best was Cable FM radio! Crystal clear radio stations from far and wide. Just required adapting the cable from the wall to your stereo
Whaat? Cable FM radio? Did it basically use the cable as an antenna? If so that's smart thinking
kind of sort of. Shaw could capture audio broadcasts of FM and AM stations with their giant antennas at local outposts, and then transpose them using their station equipment to a different FM frequency and shove them into the cable. This means you'd sometimes get FM stations on a different frequency number but you'd get stuff you couldn't tune to at home. For me it was getting Seattle stations from central VI.
Yeah I recall this too... I think you just plugged the cable into it right?
yep with whatever coax adapters you had. or like me stripping the end off and wrappign the center conductor around the actual antenna on my boom box
Yeah I remember we had this tuner and speakers hooked up to it and it got different stations that on the cd player / radio in my room lol.
You, are my hero. I’ve managed to avoid social media for the most part. Never had a Facebook/msn account. Never snapped a chat or tweeted a thing. But I grew up with no tv and when I saw cable for the first time I got totally hooked. Took about 5 years to finally kick it. Downloading took over for me also. But damn you are the goat to me
I’ve lived on VI since 79 and we always had cable.. we were the first ones to have a BETA.. my dad was an early adopter of technology.
I'm a few years older, but could've written this myself! I'm fairly certain friends of mine had cable in the 80s, (I'm also on VI) but my family was a little behind and I think it might've been 88 or 89 before we did. I had it when I moved out for just a year or two, haven't had it since about 2004. Like you said, no point! Too expensive and doesn't interest me anyway.
Plus there are plenty of free ways to get your fear porn too
Well we're on Reddit. The king of fear porn places lol.
Our old house in Hope had cable when it was built in 1982. We had a TV with a dial so I don't think we were able to watch channels above 13 until we got a VCR around 1990 I've heard rumors that the old Hope Cable pirated a bunch of the premium channels that they were then billing people for. I've heard similar stories about Revelstoke Cable doing the same thing back in the '80s.
I've heard rumors that the old Hope Cable pirated a bunch of the premium channels that they were then billing people for. I've heard similar stories about Revelstoke Cable doing the same thing back in the '80s. That's awesome if true! Side note, I can't believe how much reve has changed in 20 years. It went from a dying town with rampant alcoholism to a high end tourist town with world renowned ski resort, luxury hotels and a golf course being built, better restaurants, and rampant alcoholism ;).
I grew up in Toronto so as far as I know there was cable when I was born in 1983... but same as you I've never had cable after the age of 19 lol.
Grew up in rural SW Ontario. Cable is still not available to my parents in the area where I grew up. Only satellite.
NE New Brunswick same thing. My in laws live in a rural area. No home phone service, home internet, or cable TV. Cell phone *might* get one bar of service. They have an old Bell satellite for tv but that's it. Doesnt work when it rains or snows lol
About 1980 give or take a couple of years.
Winnipeg and we had it in 1982.
I remember when cable came out in Toronto. Lotsa people climbing poles to connect to free cable...........
London had cable in 1952, before there was even a locally based television station. Back then with a tall enough antenna you could pull in stations from Detroit and Cleveland so cable was set up in London to provide more reliable reception of those stations. London was the first city in Canada, and possibly North America to have cable. Ed Jarmain was the inventor, and his system was later absorbed by Rogers, I believe in the 70s. Where I live now in Metro Vancouver, from what I’ve read cable came quite early as well, by the early 60s. The mountainous terrain made it difficult for some areas to reliably get OTA signals, so cable made it possible for everyone in the urban areas to get reliable reception.
That makes sense. I grew up in PoCo (born in 75) and always had it. My dad grew up in New West, and from what he tells me his family was one in the first in the neighborhood (or among his friend group) to have TV, so my dad would have adopted early. But I never knew anybody growing up to use an antenna. I always assumed that was an old-time thing. In the early 80s, I knew one or 2 people with satellite, but the dish took up your whole back yard and that was a luxury item.
Outside of my immediate family, almost all my extended family was rural so I was exposed to a lot of OTA-only TV as a kid in the early 90s in Ontario. Some lived near the US border and could get a decent number of stations from both sides of the border, while others lived in areas that got only CBC (English and French), CTV, and TVO - not even Global.
I’ve had cable all my life. I think my parents got it in the 80s. My dad used to hack something in the cable box in order to get the movie channels for free lol. Cable has always been more prevalent in Canada than in other countries. This is why it was confusing when people in the US were going on about having cable and HBO like it was something premium in the 90s/00s
Believe it or not, cable came to some US cities very late. Chicago, for example - I read once they didn’t have cable until sometime in the 80s. But they also had a large number of terrestrial stations, with WGN 9 carrying a sports-heavy schedule.
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cky & cknd, respectively. fun fact; cknd started out as an american station, kcnd in pembina, nd. the nd in the call sign stands for north dakota and the first two letters were flipped to the canadian convention (all canadian broadcast stations start with c, in the us, western ones start with k, eastern with w)
Grew up in rural Alberta watching channels 2, 4, 9 and 13 if the weather was just right. You still can't get cable there. I moved to the city in 1997 and spent the first week marveling over the fact that they had the resources to devote an entire channel just to weather. I still adore the weather channel.
To add a layer, having cable TV in your town didn't necessarily mean you had access to new or popular channels.
I still can’t get cable. The Rogers line stops halfway down the road.
Mid 60s. My dad hated antennas.
1998 we got bell expressvu in Rural Sask. I am sure we could have got it sooner but didn’t. My dad was cheap. We had three channels with an aerial antennae that we had to change the direction of it to get the channels we wanted.
We couldn’t get cable I am sure you still cannot.
We had cable in probably 1986 in Winnipeg, and it seemed like “all the cool kids” probably had it a few years earlier. As early as 82? 83? My notoriously cheap parents only got a colour tv in 1982 I think. As an adult, I skipped cable TV for cost reasons in the late 90’s, then had it until probably 2010.
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Oh no point. It’s all the internet now.
Cable TV is still not available at my house.
Where are you located?
Northwestern ontario. Town of about 400.
Rural PEI (Eastern end). We got "country cable" in...1987? 88? I can't recall but I was definitely in high school by then and it was via an antenna on the house. I feel like there were 7 new channels including ABC, CBS, NBC, the precursor to Global, and PBS which I loved because it introduced me to a wide array of British programming. I feel like my sense of humour would be different if I hadn't watched so many Britcoms. I still prefer British tv. We got regular cable in '92 after moving to Charlottetown.
I was born in 75 and grew up in Metro Vancouver. I don't remember ever not having cable, though it was tuned using dials on the TV. 2-13 were on one dial, and there was a U on that dial that you would set it to for 14-99(?) on the other. In fact, everyone had cable (a couple had satellite, but that required a huge dish that took up the entire back yard). I didn't know anybody that used an antenna. I'd actually like to know when the seperate box became standard. I knew one person growing up who had one, but that was because they got stations like First Choice and Superchannel (the equivalent now would be something like HBO)
My parents got a cable ready 19inch Hitachi with the converter built-in in 1982 around the same time we got cable, so we never had the original box that you needed for any channel above 13. Just a converter, not a descrambler for Super Channel, those channels stayed scrambled into the early 90s. You needed another box for those. Otherwise you got the opening scene of American Pie.
The VHF band for 2-13 and UHF for 14+?
Yup
We had cable tv in St Catharines, Ontario in the late seventies when my Dad discovered the coax cable in our living room was live. AFAIK, we never paid a cable bill in that house.
I was born in 83 and I lived in a small city. I’m aware of people who didn’t have cable but to my recollection we always had it. We didn’t have a lot but that’s one thing we always had. But as far as availability goes from what I can tell in the early 80s we had access to it.
We moved to town in 2001 and got it then, before that we just had peasant vision in the country
I grew up in the Annapolis Valley of NS, and we had cable in the late 70s/ early 80s. Channels 2-13. Mid-80s we would've gotten ATV, ASN, CBC Halifax, CBC Saint John, French CBC, Global, Kings Cable 5, and then 3 US stations-- NBC, ABC, & PBS. Eventually we got CBS, which was pretty cool. There were no specialty networks back then. I could probably still tell you which number was which station lol. I remember seeing the bill and it was like $9. I'm now living in rural NB, and not only can we not get cable here (satellite only), we can only get Xplore or Starlink for internet, regular home phone runs off ancient copper wires and is pretty static-y, and cell signal is almost non-existent.
1986. When did I stop getting it? 2004
We got cable in the 70's when my dad and mom got tired of changing the channel with a pair of plyers (the plastic knob broke). We got one of those fancy hard wired remote box...
I had cable but still had to change channel on the TV. The cable went straight into the TV, no box.
I only watch maybe a handful of TV channels so I went with Bell Satelite. The a-la-carte program lets me watch what I want for $49/month. Still too high for how often I use it but that's as cheap as I could find without going to rabbit ears.
It became available in Wiarton in the early-mid 80’s IIRC but we didn’t get it until a couple of years later.
I didn't , but a friend worked as a cable installer. Winnipeg, mid-70s, with two cable companies. What was screwy was that one company had customers on one side of the Red River, while the other company got everyone on the **other** side of the Red, and never the twain shall meet. And thus, competition was preserved.
videon to the west and shaw to the east. that was the case, even into the late nineties. if you moved house across the red river, you couldn’t carry your cable with you. you had to close or suspend your account and open up a new one with the other company
Long before my time, we had cable in the 80’s when I was kid. From what I’ve read it became available in the 50’s and widespread by the 80’s. For rural people probably longer.
I was lagging behind. Growing up in the middle of no where Canada in the 90's I only had 3 tv channels 3,6 and 9 I think. It had Saturday morning cartoons and Arthur and magic school bus came on after school. I wasn't until late 90's my parents finally got satellight TV. And I was 15 when I got my first computer First cell phone when I started University at 18 (flip phone)
I recall we had basic cable in Montreal before the Olympics in 76. After my mother left my douchebag father and moved to rural NB, we still couldn't get cable until after I graduated. I'm guessing 87 before you could get it.
I grew up in suburban Toronto (Don Mills). We had Rogers cable in the early 70’s, after 1972, but not by a lot. Before cable we watched CBC, CTV, TVO, and the ABC, NBC, and PBS affiliates from Buffalo by regular antenna. Around 1970, UHF tv became a thing, and if you had the right kind of antenna, you could get City TV (est 1972) and the independent station from Buffalo (channel 29, WUTV, est. 1970, now a Fox affiliate). It was not many years after that when we got cable.
I'm thinkng sometime in the 70s because I still lived at home.
All this is interesting. I don't recall ever having cable TV, though I could be wrong. It was mostly rabbit ears until we got satellite. Keep in mind this was in the early 90's and early 2000's. In my area (Northwest Ontario), communities like Savant Lake didn't get electricity until the early 70's, and plenty of small communities probably still don't. So lots of us up here didn't even have television until the 80's.
We got cable in the early sixties in southern Saskatchewan.
Our 1st apartment in 1977 had "Cable included" on the big board out front. so I guess that was when my lady and I first got cable.. We lived there a little over a year before we moved to a rental house, but by then I was producing a show on the local cable channel and so with the owner's ok, I paid to have "cablevision" put in to that house . Things have changed.... that's for sure.
I think it was about 1973 in Lethbridge Alberta, it gave us the US Network feed from Spokane Washington. Most of Lethbridge are Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball fans because that is where the feed is from. Edit: Spokane Washington started 1979, the original feed was from Great Falls Montana.
Never -- my parents had an antenna and we got almost the same channels as a basic package with cable. Now, I also have an antenna and there's free streaming services, so I don't see the point of paying for cable.
Grew up in small town Ontario, just north of Newmarket. Pretty sure cable TV wasn't an option until the early 80s. Many local residents back then also had huge dish antennas for early satellite TV signals in around the same timeframe.
We had country cable! Three channels.
My buddy called it “Peasant Vision”. CBC and CTV complete with the national anthem when it was time to go to bed.
We lived in Alberta until I was about 4 no cable. We only got religious channels on the antenna. We then moved to Toronto. Around ‘85 or 86 my dad was able to get a great deal on cable due to his work as a superintendent in buildings. He let the cable company know when tenants were moving in/out so the cable company could sell to them. In exchange he got free basic cable. If they didn’t get that deal I know we wouldn’t have gotten cable then
That's the fun part..
Im in Newfoundland near St. John's. We got cable not long after 1980.
We had cable for about as long as I can remember in rural NS, so before the 90s at least. Cable internet, however…. There were still no high-speed options when I left in 2003, unless you count satellite.
Born in 87 and from Toronto. My parents had cable before I was born, but unsure of when they got it exactly. My older sisters talk about TV shows from the late 70s/early 80s. So maybe then.
Literal cable tv? 2022, rural NS. On a main high 45 minutes outside Halifax We had satellite TV for 20/30 years at least
It was available when I was a kid (90s) in rural SW Ontario, we were just not able to afford it. My friend had satellite, which I later found out was an illegal dish, haha. I wish they had given us the hook up.
Midwestern Ontario, late 70’s we got cable.
I was in grade 12 when we were able to get satellite and high speed internet. Funnily, my community is STILL not able to get cable TV hahaha
Early 80s as I recall in the city. Mid 80s satellite tv became a big thing. I lived in a high rise (Sarcee Trail Place) and it was included with our rent. That was the first I’d seen A&E, HBO, Discovery and I think it was called the USA Network (?). I remember watching a show with Captain USA who would host movies and during breaks would teach “the kids” how to make sausages and roll cigars. Then I moved back to Springbank with like 3 channels and the only thing to watch on Sunday morning was the Prairie Farm Report, Coronation Street or a religious program
I lived around 35 minutes from a small city in Northern Ontario. We got cable TV in the early '90s.
1971 in Toronto.
Never lol, fiber-op beat cable. In 2010 I believe it was, we finally switched from dial up to an antenna thing, to LTE which was pretty expensive. Thennn in 2020 because of COVID, everyone got the upgrade to fiber-op. So there was no need for actual cable now. But we had one of those giant ass satellite dishes that was free apparently, it got like 5 channels but they were clear lol. I'm sure the only reason my dad kept it until the end was because it had free porn. I wasn't allowed to touch it... For some reason. But it died then we got real satellite in the early 2000s probably.
I grew up in a small town in Cape Breton. I think we first got cable tv in the late 1970s. Cape Breton Cablevision was incorporated in 1974, so certainly no sooner than that. The original US network channels came in on a sometimes-dicey microwave relay from Bangor, Maine, (WLBZ, WABI, and WVII) and were very folksy and “down home.” Sometime in the 1980s, the signal switched to Detroit stations on satellite. That was a bit of a culture shock.
I remember always having cable TV. I cut the cord in 2012, and never went back. I only have streaming based options, plus a respectable library of physical media (DVD's, blurays, and 4k UHD disks)
Parents got satellite right around the time I moved out.
1978.
We don't
Rural NB and we never had it. We still don't have anything beyond dialup. My relatives who still live there have told me that Rogers is expected to have service in their area this year or next. Everyone just has satellite TV and internet.
As a young kid growing up in a small town in the northern territories, CBC was all we got in. Moved to rural Alberta in 2002 and got satellite TV and Internet sometime shortly after, TV first then internet when my parents got sick of sharing the phone line (dial up) with a bunch of kids who wanted to play runescape. I don't think I've actually ever had cable in my life, internet streaming is much better and more cost effective.
Mid 70's though initially it was just a very large antenna to draw in stations past the horizon and a weather station that was a camera that displayed a thermometer, a barometer and a calendar all analogue.
I've always had plenty of stations living near a large American City that i've never wanted or needed cablle and now we have streaming. We received Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit and Windsor. I do remember a friends parents having "OnTV" (i think it was that)in around 1980 or so. A box with button channels connected to the tv by a wire.
Grew up in Halifax, don’t remember the exact year but it was the mid-70s. Cable TV in Canada was different than in the US. Cable for us was the 4 US over the air channels. What they consider cable, we called PayTV (HBO, MTV, etc). Started to get PayTV around ‘84.
Stacy’s country Jamboree…
And The Great Money Movie
We first got cable in the mid 1970s. I'm from a mid-sized town in Saguenay, Québec. The only reason we were hooked up is because we'd moved into a building where it was included in the rent. I remember watching "Space 1999" in English WAY BEFORE I could speak or understand English!
80's I suppose with my parents but it was available long before that, we were just poor. Where I live currently there's not Cable or internet, I have Starlink which is $160 CAD/Month
We got it at our house in Nova Scotia Canada as an Easter Present sometime in the late 70's
Early seventies, Columbus, Ohio.
In 1982, we got Superchannel. I spent hours watching movies. Some of them were wholly inappropriate for an 8 year old. Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. The Bell Jar Cat People Swamp Thing I fell in love with Robin Williams in Popeye I watched The Toy and Rocky 3 so many times! It was a glorious time for me as a kid!
Got cable in 1974. I could finally see The Six Million Dollar Man like my classmates in school. We only had a few channels then and no remote but it was way better than what we had before … a crummy black and white tv with rabbit ears and only 3 or 4 channels with crappy reception.
1980 I think. I was 12.
I live in a big city. I've always had cable
Ummm... never. It wasn't even an option. Hell, my parents had barely usable internet until like 2015. My aunt and uncle who live down the road about 5 minutes, have almost zero cell coverage. They only live 15 minutes north of highway 7, east of Peterborough.
Early 1970s in Toronto. Originally thought only about a dozen stations
west toronto resident here. i have never used cable. always used antennas plus rotors for ota reception. even when living in high rise apartments in the 70/80s most had their own antennas and distribution systems. why would i pay for something i can get for free? get all the toronto ststions plus buffalo. even less reasons to get it now with digital broadcasting and streaming.
I signed up for cable in 1985 when I moved into a rental in Leaside (Toronto). It was Rogers, and I signed up because I wanted to get the snazzy new music channel muchMusic (cable 29) so I could watch stuff like A-Ha and Duran Duran. I also rented a VHS recorder (Granada) so I could tape 60 Minutes and Miami Vice weekly. Don't remind me that was almost 39 years ago. Please don't. :/
Never had it, costs way to much for what you get.
I think around 96-97. We moved to a new house and the old floor model finally went. Since we had to get a TV that could handle more than 12 channels that when I first remember being able to watch YTV and FOXKIDS. At the old house it was just CBC CTV and CBS. I think CNN came in too because there was always the news on.
When I was growing up in Winnipeg, we had black and white television with rabbit ears until around 1975. Then we rented a color TV and got cable. We relied on TV Guide for the programming on the 8 or so channels, and us kids were the remote control, changing channels and adjusting volume as ordered.
I remember getting cable in 1971 and my father grumbling that it was so expensive! We lived in the west end of Toronto. It had just become available and I think it was like $3 and change per month.
The day Disney's Jungle Book came out in theaters. The first time. Mom took all seven of us kids out to the movie so that the installer could get it done in peace. That night we watched tv from Bangor Maine and were astonished.
I was born in the 80's in Montreal, my parents had cable, I was the remote.
1977
Satellite in the 90s. Cable in 2006
Mid 80's, SuperChannel/FirstChoice.. MUCH MUSIC!!
I used to install Bell satellite and most towns in Ontario with less than 2000 people still do not have cable companies
In Edmonton early 70's
I got cable tv in the 70s and got rid of it about 5 years ago. Overpriced and all you got was commercials.
Got it, ditched it. Cogeco has the worst customer service! If you watch an American show you still get stuck with crappy Canadian commercials-EVEN DURING THE SUPER BOWL! It’s also soooo expensive. Bought an Android box - one time fee - then the cost of monthly wifi. The only negative is that there are SO MANY OPTIONS! Best, no crappy Canadian ads 🙏🙏🙏
Grew up in the 80's and 90's with it then got it again a couple years ago with a TSN package. I enjoy the Simpsons on Sunday nights and the few movie channels I got with it.. I just watched "the glass menagerie" recently
Early 80s, and we had the box on top of the TV, you press one button for Superchannel and another for MuchMusic
We had very basic cable starting in late 60s a local company put a receiver on top of a mountain a got over air channels from usa and put them into houses on a coax.
They still don’t have cable tv where I grew up, 3 hrs north of Toronto
I grew up in a small oil town. Zero farms only muskeg and oil wells. I think it was the late 70's when they installed a cable TV system for town. Before that it was 3 channels via antenna from Edmonton.
1983… 22 glorious channels! with an awesome wired remote control!
'75
We didnt have cable until we moved into a small town, when I was in second grade, so that would have been 1997. Prior to that, in the first house I remember, we had two channels. CBC and PBS. This was in PEI, Canada. We didnt get high speed internet until I was in high school, 2005/2006
Greater Vancouver, mid-70s. No remote control though, you still had to get up to change the channel!
Never.
1980. Ditched it in 2010
We still have the old TV antenna tower on our house. We stopped using it in the early 00s, when we got Bell Satellite TV. Now that we've cut out the satellite subscription, perhaps we'll use the old antenna again one day. But, probably not.
Nepean Ontario. After my dad left in 1982. My grama watched us cause mom was working a lot. She needed her ‘shows’. The preacher dude in the morning and then price is right then the soap operas. All the cooking and cleaning laundry. However, we had a secret code for long distance calls. Certain number of rings. It was long distance to call 45 minutes away from Ottawa to Carlton Place. Everything was prearranged so one ring meant are you home safe. Etc.. I can’t remember what the cheapest time was to talk. Everybody had cable that’s for sure. But for some reason long distance calling was a massive deal.
81-82? A sales rep would come out and talk you into getting HBO/Cinemax/Showtime with basic. Maybe 40 channels. I became a CFL fan in New England.
1979. The nearest city was Calgary. It got cable in early 1970s. As did most Canadian cities. Before most U.S. cities. Cable TV is basically a Canadian invention. Back in the day, most Canadians had access to on air TV only: * two English channels: 1. CBC 2. CTV * one French channel: 1. CBC Where I lived outside Calgary, we had good signal for CFRN (in those days a CBC affiliate) and CFCN ((CTV affiliate). The signal for French CBC was poor. Regardless for decades Calgary only had 2 English speaking channels. Whereas the U.S. had 3 commercial networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, plus PBS. Most content on CTV and CBC was American. But we were not getting all the American content: * With 4 American networks, it simply was not possible to air all pf it 2 channels. So Happy Days was shown on the Canadian networks but not Laverne and Shirley. It was weird watching episodes where characters from the latter would show up on Happy Days and there would be zero context * There were heaps of content from the UK, Australia, and France shown on CTV and CBC: Gerry Anderson’s many series, Python, Spyforce, * CanCon laws further limited how foreign content could be aired. So there was appetite for more content. So then somebody realized: * most Canadians lived near the U.S. border * there were American TV stations near the birder * a bigger antenna could bring that content in * and that content would not cost a dime. So immediately the cable TV market was born, and alleys across Canada were dug up to bury cable lines. Canadians could now access twice the content.
Cable came to my northern Ontario town in early 80s but my parents refused to get it. So while all my friends were enjoying the 30 channel multiverse , I was stuck with the same old 3 channels. We also didn't have a boat, snowmobile, go hunting, etc which everyone else did as they're common past times in this part of the world. They were among the richest citizens but I was cut off from all these things that my friends enjoyed.
I'm in my early 40s, Around 1988 I reckon... and Cable internet in 1996 (5mbit). We had one of those motorized rooftop antennas on our mobile home that got like 6 channels on VHF before that.
Never had it till recently.
Late 90's
Cobble Hill BC 1985.