I'm a subscriber to the Saturday Star and that means you automatically get access to their online edition with no paywalls. But this week, the paper - which stretches all the way back to the early 1890s - had a surprise for its customers: free access to all its archives going back to the very beginning of the paper.

Naturally, the first thing I looked up was May 27, 1957 - the day CHUM became Canada's first fulltime rock and roll station. The listings for that day (and the next) are below. It looks like Allan Waters' surprise for listeners was also something of a shock to the paper, because there doesn't appear to have been any advance word about the change.

In fact, the only CHUM listing for that day is a 7 PM program called "The Rosary Hour," which certainly does not fit into a Top 40 (or 50 at the start) format. In any event, if you ever wondered what was on the radio that fateful day, here's a look at what you would have heard if you'd been touching that dial. 

CHUM may have been the first to do it fulltime, but notice what it says at 10PM on CKFH: "Rock and Roll." Proving, it would seem, that others were playing The Devil's Music before 1050 launched it that day. 

A couple of other notable listings: Keith Rich on CFRB at 7:45 PM, the same guy who would one day compete with them doing mornings on CKEY, and something at 7 PM on CHML: The Top Forty Show, although whether this was strictly the meaning of Top 40 as we came to know it isn't clear.