VOWR St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada is a station that can be heard regularly in The Netherlands with a fair to good signal. Overnight their schedule features “Music for Relaxation” : non-stop oldies with now and then a VOWR station ID. Ron LeDrew, manager of VOWR was so kind to confirm my report with a brief email reply.

There are only 3 stations that carry a call sign that doesn’t start with a “C”: VOCM, VOAR and VOWR. These stations were founded before Newfoundland joined the Canadian Confederation in 1949. The ITU prefix VO was originally assigned to Newfoundland and remains in use by radio amateurs.

VOWR was started in 1924 by Reverend Joseph G. Joyce from the Wesley Methodist Church to allow people that couldn’t make it to church to listen to the services. Soon afterwards they added more general programs, but today a fair bit of their schedule still has a religious background. On their excellent website you can learn a lot about this historic station.