Amateur-radio operator, technical contributor, public-service organizer, mentor and Burnaby’s 2012 Outstanding Citizen.
This is not a Silent Key memorial or an obituary. It honours Lou Beaubien’s continuing place in Canadian amateur radio and the Burnaby community. The page combines published records with personal recollections, and labels the two separately.
Public Canadian call-sign records identify VE7CGE as Joseph Alfred Louis Beaubien of Burnaby, British Columbia. To friends in amateur radio and community service, he is simply “Lou.”
Lou’s record is unusually broad. He helped organize radio communications for one of Canada’s largest road races, kept the Burnaby Amateur Radio Club’s regional swap meet running, supported operators with disabilities, spotted a technical error in an ARRL project, competed in local radio-direction-finding events and represented British Columbia and Yukon within Radio Amateurs of Canada.
His service extended well beyond radio. City of Burnaby records recognize a decade or more of volunteer leadership, including service connected with the Vancouver Sun Run and the 2012 BC Seniors Games.
According to Ted Lee’s personal recollection, Lou obtained the call sign VE7CGE because its final three letters were the initials of Canadian General Electric, the company where Lou worked.
The employment and call-sign connection is a first-hand recollection preserved here for amateur-radio history; it has not yet been matched to a published employment record.
The surviving record is spread among club pages, magazines, civic archives and personal memory. Together, those sources show decades of steady, behind-the-scenes work.
Lou worked for Canadian General Electric. Ted remembers that the company initials inspired the suffix of VE7CGE—an especially fitting call sign for someone whose professional and amateur interests both involved technology.
An ARRL correction to “The Squawker: A Light Detector” thanked Lou by name and call sign for spotting a wiring error. The project converted light into sound so that blind amateurs could make visual measurements. Lou’s careful reading helped make the published design more useful and reliable.
Lou wrote “The Vancouver Sun Run — Burnaby amateurs set the pace at this annual event” for QST Canada. Burnaby ARC and neighbouring clubs supplied communications around the ten-kilometre course, relaying information and calling medical help when it was needed.
QST Canada published a photograph of Lou with Barb Boman, VE7CZM, alongside a note describing Burnaby ARC as a very active club. It is one of the clearest published snapshots of Lou’s long association with BARC.
For years, regional listings named Lou as the contact for the Burnaby ARC swap meet. Club records also connect him with Sun Run communications. Friends remember him helping Walter Hendrickson, VE7BGJ—a skilled blind operator—with transportation and adapted radio equipment.
Burnaby selected Lou as its 2012 Outstanding Citizen and awarded him the Kushiro Cup. In 2013 he also placed third in Surrey Amateur Radio Communications’ annual hidden-transmitter “fox hunt”—proof that public recognition had not displaced the fun of radio.
Radio Amateurs of Canada has listed Lou for many years as an Assistant Director for British Columbia and Yukon, helping the national organization maintain a regional connection with clubs and individual amateurs.
At the Vancouver Sun Run, amateur operators created a human communications network around a large urban race. Lou helped organize that effort and documented it for a national amateur-radio audience.
Lou’s name appears across years of BARC activity: swap-meet organizing, Sun Run coordination, technical conversation and the ordinary work of keeping a local club useful and welcoming.
Lou helped Walter, VE7BGJ, take part in radio events and adapt equipment for a non-visual station. His correction to the ARRL light-detector project is another documented contribution relevant to blind amateurs.
Through Radio Amateurs of Canada, Lou supported the connection between the national association and amateurs in British Columbia and Yukon—one more form of patient organizational service.
The City of Burnaby lists Lou Beaubien as the 2012 recipient of the Kushiro Cup, its Outstanding Citizen of the Year award. The civic honour recognizes a Burnaby resident with at least ten years of volunteer service and a positive influence on community life.
“I always like to see things through.”
Lou Beaubien, quoted by the Burnaby Now, April 2013Contemporary coverage described Lou as a long-serving Vancouver Sun Run volunteer and noted his leadership of the Courtesy Car Division for the 2012 BC Seniors Games. Amateur radio was one thread in a much larger fabric of community service.
If the video does not load, watch Lou’s interview on YouTube.
These original pages preserve photographs and captions from different stages of Lou’s radio life. Select a card to open the source. The historical photographs remain with their publishers and photographers.
Lou’s illustrated QST Canada article about BARC communications, with photographs credited to Shari Sollows, VE7JLS.
Open the magazine PDF ↗A published photograph identifies Barb Boman, VE7CZM, and Lou Beaubien, VE7CGE. Photograph credited to VE7HTT.
Open the magazine PDF ↗Event photographs show Lou among the three winners after locating a hidden transmitter in Crescent Park.
See the event photographs ↗Dates and public-service claims on this page are supported by the records below. Ted’s recollections are valuable oral history and are identified as such rather than presented as independently verified documents.