James William Bain was born in St-Polycarpe, Quebec, in 1883. He matriculated from Abingdon School in 1901, and must have spent some time working because he joined Scien ‘14 at McGill for the 1913-14 session and graduated in 1914.

 

Bain was for a while Assistant Enginerr to Montreal’s Electrical Commission. He went overseas with Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry in September 1914, in the 1st Division, and from mid-1917 he was in intelligence work with the 1st Army. On his return to McGill in 1919, he was appointed Senior Demonstrator in Electrical.

He came to Queen’s for the 1922 session as Lecturer in E.E., replacing Robert Leland Davis. Bain taught courses III and VII and the laboratory for course XI, Lester Gill’s old “Telegraphy and Telephony,” through the 1925-26 session. His trail is lost after 1926, but in 1946, he was working for the Radio Branch of the Department of Transport in Ottawa.

Professor Bain started into his new charge at the radio station CFRC at Queen’s with a real zest and very ambitions plans. He carried out many ambitious broadcasting projects in his two years with CFRC, including the re-building of the Mark II to create the Mark III transmitter in 1925-26. (excerpt from the book “ In the shadow of the shield, the development of wireless telegraphy and radio broadcasting in kingston and at Queen’s University 1902-1957 by Arthur Eric Zimmerman, Ph. D)

 

It is then quite probable that Bill Bain was in Ottawa from 1926 onwards. Ed Davey wrote that Bain was in charge of the Radio Test Room in Ottawa in 1932 and later negotiated with General McNaughton to keep the Strathburn Monitoring facilities when the Canadian Broadcasting Commission became the CBC in 1936.