Medicine Hat transmitter named after veteran AMMSA board member

The Aboriginal Multi-Media Society of Alberta (AMMSA) continues to honour some of its long-serving board members.

The latest honouree is Dr. Chester Cunningham. At an AMMSA board meeting on Aug. 2, Cunningham was recognized by the organization as it named and dedicated its new Medicine Hat transmitter site (106.3 CJWE FM) after him.

The building is now called the Dr. Chester Cunningham Medicine Hat Regional Transmitter Site.

AMMSA publishes Windspeaker.com and has four radio stations in Alberta.

AMMSA founder Bert Crowfoot said as the organization’s distribution system expanded it started to recognize some of its dedicated board members by naming and dedicating a site to them.

“We were waiting for our Medicine Hat site to go online and then we wanted to dedicate that to Dr. Chester Cunningham who has been with us for so many years,” Crowfoot said. “He played an instrumental role in establishing our board as a policy-only board and not getting involved in day-to-day (operations).”

Cunningham attended his first AMMSA board meeting more than four decades ago. At the time the organization’s board meetings would last as many as 10 hours.

“At his very first board meeting in 1983 he looked at the agenda and said ‘Management. Management. Management. Let the man do his job,’” Crowfoot said. “And we had an hour and a half board meeting.”

AMMSA meetings have for the most part been 90-minute affairs since then.

“They deal strictly with policy and overseeing the direction that the organization is going,” Crowfoot said. “They’re a policy board, not a micro-managing one.”

And Crowfoot believes that is one of the reasons why AMMSA has prospered.

“He kind of set the tone for the rest of the board,” Crowfoot added of Cunningham. “And since then it’s one of the reasons we’ve been successful because it starts at the board, and then staff and management and on down.”

Cunningham wasn’t expecting to be part of the focus at the Aug. 2 meeting.

“I was expecting a board meeting,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting them to come up with this other part.”

Cunningham recalled that he had some trepidations speaking his mind at his very first AMMSA meeting.

“I wasn’t quite sure where to go but I was quite happy that Bert agreed with what I was saying,” he said.

Cunningham added he is surprised at AMMSA’s longevity.

“I didn’t think it would make it,” he said. “But after we started picking board members, then it developed.”

Cunningham’s daughter Rosalie joined the AMMSA board herself a couple of years ago.

She said having the organization acknowledge her father is meaningful.

“He’s had many honours,” she said. “But to have one anchored in the Indigenous community is special.”

Rosalie Cunningham added she’s thrilled to be part of the AMMSA board herself.

“As I was explaining to my siblings, it’s not just a radio station,” she said of one of the organization’s holdings. “It actually preserves and takes the culture forward.”

Chester Cunningham, who is Metis, has held various positions during his life.

He was born in the Alberta town of Slave Lake. He quit high school to play semi-pro baseball.

After his playing days were over he worked as a coal miner and then in the construction industry.

He was hired in 1964 by the Canadian Native Friendship Centre as a program director and court worker, assisting Indigenous people with the justice system. A year later he was promoted as the centre’s executive director.

Cunningham then founded the Native Courtworker Services in 1970. It was later renamed the Native Counselling Services of Alberta.

He received an honourary doctor of laws degree from the University of Alberta in 1989 for his contributions to the correctional system.

Cunningham was also appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 1993.