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Contrary to the East Coast network, Marconi was not involved in the development of the marine radio network on the West Coast. It was the business of the Government of Canada.

In 1907, the Government choose five strategic locations to erect the first Pacific coast radio stations. Pachena Point on the west coast of Vancouver Island was one of them.

The Pachena Point radio station was opened on November 25, 1907 and used KPD for call sign. In 1912, the call sign was changed for VAD.

The role of that station was to receive the weather observations from ships three times a day; observations that contained information on wind force and direction, sea conditions, air temperature, barometric pressure and cloud cover.

At first, all messages were handled free of charge. The station transmitter was a 1.5 kW sparks transmitter, which was far from being powerful enough. Which meant that the operator regularly had to ask other radio stations to relay the information if the ships were more than 125 to 150 miles away.

At times, Cape Flattery, Washington was asked to relay messages. American radio operators were using a Morse code that was different from the International code that was in use in Canada. This anomaly was resolved by the adoption of the International Morse code by all countries following the disaster of the Titanic in 1912.

We are not sure when Pachena Point closed but most probably around 1940.

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