CHU’s QSL card used in the 1980s, depicting Sir Sanford Fleming, father of uniform time zones.

I was saddened to learn this morning (from multiple readers) that Canada’s venerable shortwave time station, CHU, may soon fall silent.

According to a notice posted by Canada’s National Research Council, CHU’s shortwave broadcasts are scheduled to end on June 22, 2026.

For many listeners outside of the shortwave community, this may seem like an insignificant footnote in a world dominated by smartphones, GPS timing, and internet-connected everything. But for those of us who have spent decades tuning the HF spectrum, stations like CHU and WWV are far more than the typical gov’t/utility broadcasts.

They are constants.

When I tune to CHU or WWV, I’m not simply checking propagation conditions or listening for a time tick. I’m reconnecting with something deeply familiar—something that has changed very little since the very first days I turned on a shortwave radio as a child. Their steady pulses and calm voice announcements have always been there in the background of the hobby: reliable reference points amid an ever-changing radio landscape.

In many ways, they are the sonic equivalent of “all things held constant” on the shortwaves.

A year ago, we experienced an unexpected loss of both power and mobile internet service in my neighborhood. The timing was unusual enough that the very first thing I did was tune to CHU. The moment I heard its steady, metronomic broadcast, I knew instantly that what I was experiencing wasn’t some larger, global outage—just a freak local loss of both services at the same time.

A WWV Time Code Generator

This news feels especially discouraging, coming so soon after Canada discontinued much of its weather radio service earlier this year. One can’t help but wonder how many legacy public-service broadcasts remain vulnerable simply because they no longer fit modern cost-benefit calculations.

In the United States, we narrowly avoided losing WWV nearly a decade ago when funding for the station was threatened. Thankfully, enough support emerged to keep it alive. I sincerely hope we never lose WWV—or NOAA Weather Radio, for that matter. These systems still serve practical purposes, especially during emergencies and outages, but they also represent something more difficult to quantify: continuity.

Services like CHU also remind us that resilient communications infrastructure still matters. A simple shortwave time station can provide a reliable point of reference completely independent of local internet providers, cellular networks, and modern digital systems. In an age when so much depends on fragile, interconnected infrastructure, there is real value in maintaining at least a few systems that remain accessible with nothing more than a basic radio receiver.

If CHU truly does go silent next month, the shortwaves will feel just a little emptier.

And for many of us, that steady Canadian voice and ticking seconds will be deeply missed.