Before the sun rises on Oct. 9, Charlotte FM broadcaster Mark Downey will carry his microphones into the Charlotte County Hospital in St. Stephen and flip on the “on air” sign for a 12-hour broadcast.
It’s the station’s 12th annual Radiothon, a homegrown fundraiser that has become part telethon, part town meeting, and—judging by the equipment now in use at the hospital—part infrastructure plan.
The day has a simple structure and an ambitious goal. For 12 straight hours, neighbours call in or walk over to the hospital to give, and volunteers shuttle pledges to the tally board. Last year’s edition brought in $164,753; the year before, a record $533,180, aided by a single $400,000 estate gift.
“It’s definitely a long day, but it’s well worth it,” Downey said in an interview with The Courier. “The amount of money that we bring in to help our local hospital foundation is just amazing. In the last 12 years—I got my calculator out the other day—we’ve raised $1,560,415.”
Downey, who also hosts the station’s morning show at 6 a.m., will be on air from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for the Radiothon. The phones—and the parade of familiar faces in the hospital boardroom—are the point. Donations are accepted in person during the broadcast, by phone the day of, and year-round through the foundation—credit card, cheque, cash, and e-transfer all in the mix.
“The foundation’s board members answer phones alongside local volunteers like my mother-in-law, Elaine Gowan, and community groups like the Kiwanis Club and St. Stephen-Milltown Rotary Club,” Downey said. “Certain people show their support by bringing cupcakes and whoopie pies. Matt from Subway in St. Stephen always donates subs to feed our volunteers throughout the day. It’s community support all around.”
If the mechanics seem straightforward, the effects are cumulative.
Steve Backman, president of the Charlotte County Hospital Foundation, said the first Radiothon was a major turning point when the community tackled an urgent local need: funding the hospital’s dialysis unit. Downey pitched the idea; the community answered.
“The Radiothon was a huge success and allowed us to cut a year and a half off the planned fundraising time for the dialysis unit,” Backman said. “Dialysis is exhausting—getting up early, travelling, receiving treatment, coming home tired, needing a day to recover, and then heading back again the next day. Now we have a very modern dialysis unit at Charlotte County Hospital, and patients no longer have to travel three days a week to Saint John. That was the kickoff, and it’s become an annual event ever since.”
Dialysis set the tone for how the community could come together to safeguard its hospital. In 2022, the region rallied again—this time around a new CT scanner. The foundation expected the campaign would take years; instead, donors met the target in months. The scanner went live this winter. The practical meaning is small-town plain: scans that once meant a long drive and a long day can now be done a few minutes from home.
“With the CT scanner, people still call me to say what a godsend it is because they don’t have to go to Saint John,” Backman said. “They can get a scan locally—15 minutes to the hospital and home, instead of waiting all day.”
This year’s Radiothon target is $250,000 for priority equipment selected with patient impact in mind: CCU beds ($35,000); an ECG machine for the ER ($26,000); eight specialized wheelchairs ($13,500); a digital portable X-ray machine ($150,000); an obstetrical stretcher ($7,000); an ENT cabinet ($2,500); and two crash carts ($5,000). It reads less like a shopping spree than a plan to keep the place working.
Backman also points to the headline item he hopes to secure: a digital portable X-ray. The current unit, he said, has reached end-of-life. A reliable mobile machine would let clinicians image patients at the bedside and, crucially, serve as a temporary backup while the new fixed X-ray suite is installed, so the hospital never finds itself without imaging. New digital mobile systems routinely run into six figures—one reason small markets so often turn to small donors.
Not every purchase is about speed or convenience. Some change how people feel in their own skin. In 2023, donors funded a Paxman scalp-cooling system—cold capping—to help reduce hair loss during certain chemotherapy regimens. Charlotte County became only the second hospital in New Brunswick to offer it, and many local patients have already used the system to keep their hair while undergoing treatment.
“From what I’ve heard, it’s very important psychologically,” Backman said. “Hair loss is a daily reminder of cancer, and this helps improve outlook because people aren’t impacted as much as they feared.”
The Radiothon has a way of turning the abstract into the visible. Each year, Backman is struck by how completely the community shows up. The boardroom fills; service clubs rotate through phone duty; food appears as if on schedule. People who can give two dollars stand alongside people who can give two thousand, and the effect—watching the tally board climb—makes the hospital’s work legible in a way spreadsheets don’t. The annual broadcast may last half a day, but it is built on months of quiet triage: department heads listing needs; approvals; the foundation sorting priorities by patient impact and feasibility; and, finally, a list ordinary enough to be persuasive.
Backman measures success in the time people get back and the care they get closer to home. The Radiothon has changed what people imagine is possible in a rural county.
For the uninitiated, the Radiothon may sound like radio nostalgia. In practice, it functions like a yearly audit of what the hospital is and what it could be. The telephone lines, the drop-ins, the volunteer shifts—they are a choreography the county understands, and they yield tangible things: beds that adjust without a fight, a crash cart where it’s actually needed, a portable X-ray that arrives in the room instead of requiring the room to arrive at it. The medium is secondary; the movement is the point.
By nightfall, the voices will be hoarse, the tally board crowded with names, and the hospital a little better equipped than it was at dawn.
“I can’t overstate the importance of community support—that’s what’s keeping the doors open and helping us grow,” Backman said. “We’ve been able to add services every year because people stand up and say, ‘We’re demanding this.’”
In a county where distance and weather are variables you plan around, the Radiothon has become a fixed point—12 hours each October in which Charlotte County collects itself and decides, again, what “local” should mean.
How to give: Charlotte FM broadcasts live from the hospital on October 9, 7 a.m.–7 p.m.; donations are accepted in person and by phone during the event, and year-round through the Foundation by e-transfer, credit card, cheque, or cash.
