The station first signed on March 13, 1923 as CKY, owned and operated by the Manitoba Telephone System, with a transmitter power of 500 watts at a frequency of 665 kHz. It became a partial affiliate of the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission in 1933, and was purchased outright by the CBC in 1948. The station adopted its current call sign a few months after the CBC purchase, and the CKY call sign was reassigned to a new commercial radio station in 1949.