About Radio Ville-Marie (CIRA)

Radio Ville-Marie (CIRA)

Radio Ville-Marie (CIRA-FM) — now stylized as Radio VM — is a French-language Catholic radio station broadcasting from Montreal, Quebec, on 91.3 MHz with 36,200 watts from Mount Royal. A non-profit broadcaster that carries no paid advertising, the station has aired religious, cultural, and social programming since 1995, addressing what it calls the human, social, cultural, and spiritual questions of its listeners. With rebroadcast transmitters in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivières, Victoriaville, and Rimouski, it is the centre of a small Quebec-wide Catholic radio network.

Overview

CIRA-FM is a French-language religious FM station licensed to Montreal, owned by the non-profit organization Radio Ville-Marie. It broadcasts on 91.3 MHz with an effective radiated power of 36,200 watts (Class C1, horizontal polarization only) from an omnidirectional antenna atop Mount Royal at 242.5 metres above average terrain. Its studios are located at 5000 d'Iberville Street (bureau 303) in Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal district.

The station is Catholic in orientation and non-commercial: as a non-profit licensee it does not carry paid advertising. Its slogan, "Au coeur de l'essentiel!" ("At the heart of what matters!"), reflects programming built around talk, culture, and spirituality rather than music formats.

History

On October 14, 1994, Radio Ville-Marie received a CRTC licence (Decision CRTC 94-813) for a predominantly religious French-language FM station in Montreal on 91.3 MHz at 36,200 watts. The new station would offer at least 60 hours a week of local programming. As a non-profit, it was limited to no more than six minutes of advertising per hour — averaging four minutes per hour, for a weekly total of 504 minutes. In licensing the station, the CRTC noted that Radio Ville-Marie had exceeded expectations, citing its ecumenical orientation and its plan for training volunteers.

CIRA-FM "Radio Ville-Marie" began broadcasting in 1995, identifying with that name from inception. The network grew through rebroadcast transmitters: CIRA-FM-1 in Sherbrooke on 100.3 FM (licensed to Radio-Soleil-Estrie, launched September 20, 1998); CIRA-FM-2 in Trois-Rivières on 89.9 FM (approved March 24, 2003; launched September 9, 2005); CIRA-FM-3 in Victoriaville on 89.3 FM (approved September 23, 2003; launched January 5, 2006); and CIRA-FM-4 in Rimouski on 104.1 FM. A proposed frequency change for the Victoriaville transmitter from 89.3 to 103.5 MHz was denied by the CRTC on April 29, 2005.

The network also briefly extended to Ontario: CIRA-5, a 1350 AM transmitter for the National Capital Region in Gatineau, received CRTC approval on September 23, 2009 and operated from 2012 to 2015, when it was shut down for lack of money to keep it running. (The 1350 frequency had previously been used by CHVR in Pembroke, Ontario, until that station moved to FM in 1996.) The FM transmitters were unaffected by the AM closure.

In recent years the station has restyled itself as "Radio VM," modernizing the historic Radio Ville-Marie brand while keeping its Catholic religious format.

Programming

Radio VM's programming addresses human, social, cultural, and spiritual questions through talk programs, cultural magazines, and spiritual broadcasts. The schedule includes interviews, discussions of faith and ethics, cultural programming, and prayer — produced largely by trained volunteers, in keeping with the volunteer-training commitment noted in the original licence. The station's ecumenical orientation, recognized by the CRTC at licensing, shapes a tone that welcomes broader Christian and spiritual perspectives alongside its Catholic core.

The Four Pillars of the Schedule

Radio VM's programming is organized around four pillars: information, music, religious culture, and meditation. The information block includes news reports and bulletins from Radio Vatican; the music pillar ranges across classical, religious, jazz, world music, and film music; religious culture offers reflections, meditations, interviews, and engagement with social questions; and the meditation block carries liturgy, prayer, open forums, and testimonials.

The daily rhythm is unmistakably Catholic and liturgical. Mass is broadcast from Saint Joseph's Oratory in the early morning; Gregorian chant features regularly in the schedule; a "chapelet de louanges" (rosary of praise) is prayed around 18:35. Perhaps most distinctive is the station's interreligious dialogue service, which gives airtime to programs on other religions — Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy — a deliberate ecumenism that the CRTC praised when licensing the station and that remains rare among Canadian religious broadcasters.

Voices of the Church on the Air

Over its three decades on air, Radio VM has hosted some of the most prominent voices in Quebec Catholicism. Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte spoke on the station frequently, drawn to its diversity and to its distinctiveness in an otherwise thoroughly secularized media landscape. The Archbishop of Montreal, Christian Lépine, is a regular guest — for example on the weekday current-affairs program "La dignité humaine, notre socle commun," hosted by Philippe Labrecque — and the station's cultural programming includes shows such as "Les chemins de l'humanité," hosted by Aziz Farès, which conducts long-form interviews with guests from across civil society.

The station has had intellectual heavyweight patrons too: the politician and intellectual Claude Ryan sat on Radio Ville-Marie's board of directors until the end of his life. Some of the programming has drawn on the theology of Eugen Drewermann, author of La parole qui guérit, and the dissident theologian Hans Küng has been received on air — evidence of the station's willingness to air challenging voices within the Catholic tradition. And the station's reach has occasionally broken into the mainstream: listenership briefly surged during the final days of Pope John Paul II, as Quebecers turned to the one broadcaster treating the story as spiritual news rather than celebrity coverage.

A Volunteer-Powered, Donation-Funded Model

Radio VM's business model is the mirror image of commercial radio. As a non-profit licensee, it carries no paid advertising — the original CRTC licence allowed a small advertising ceiling, but the station operates as a genuinely non-commercial service sustained by listener donations and community support. Much of the programming is produced by trained volunteers, fulfilling a commitment to volunteer training that the CRTC singled out when awarding the licence. The toll-free line (1-855-212-2020) and the Montreal studios at 5000 rue d'Iberville serve a community of listeners who are also, in effect, its patrons.

That model has shaped the station's survival. The brief Ontario expansion to CIRA-5 in Gatineau — a 1350 AM transmitter approved in 2009 that ran from 2012 until 2015 — was shut down explicitly for lack of money to keep it running, a candid admission that reflects the economics of donor-funded radio. The core Quebec network, however, has endured for three decades, and the "Radio VM" restyling has carried the historic Radio Ville-Marie identity into the streaming era without altering its Catholic religious format.

Coverage and Audience

CIRA's 36,200-watt Class C1 signal from Mount Royal covers Greater Montreal, and its rebroadcast network extends the service to Sherbrooke (100.3), Trois-Rivières (89.9), Victoriaville (89.3), and Rimouski (104.1) — giving the station a presence across much of southern and eastern Quebec. The station targets francophone Catholics and spiritually inclined listeners seeking an alternative to commercial radio. It also streams online, reaching listeners beyond its terrestrial footprint.

Ownership

CIRA-FM is owned by Radio Ville-Marie, a non-profit organization. The non-commercial licence prohibits paid advertising, and the station is supported by donations and community support. Contact points include studios at 5000 rue d'Iberville, bureau 303, Montréal, QC H2H 2S6, phone 514-382-3913 (toll-free 1-855-212-2020).

Digital Presence

Radio VM streams live online and maintains social media presences for its programming. The station is associated with the radiovm.com web domain.

The station's history — from the 1994 licence through the regional transmitter expansion to the Radio VM restyling — is documented by the Canadian Communications Foundation's broadcasting-history.ca project and in CRTC decisions including 94-813, 2003-100, and 2003-471.