Checking in on Chase the Ace

The Reviving Kanehsatà:ke Radio (RKR) 101.7 FM Chase the Ace jackpot is now at $12,862 as fundraising continues in a bid to build a new home for the station.

A new building would help make the radio a permanent fixture in Kanesatake, said Karahkóhare Syd Gaspé, president of Mohawk MultiMedia Inc., the organization which oversees the radio station. He hopes the building will also give the community a space to create or host multimedia projects and events.

“It’s part of the process of saving and reviving the radio station,” said Gaspé.

Gaspé has already made a sketch of the potential future building. It includes a multimedia space to create videos or audio content, a recording studio for musicians, and theatre space for movies, plays, music shows, and a myriad of events.

“I’d also like to have an outside space where we can sit around the fire and have a discussion and record it or broadcast it,” said Gaspé.

“There’s a lot of ideas, it is a matter of organizing them, getting them down on paper, and finding out what it costs.”

Gaspé knows the effort it takes to raise the money for the radio.

From 2019 to 2024, enough money was raised to put up a long-range, $300,000 antenna for the radio station. Half of the funding for the antenna came through government funding, while the other half came through fundraisers run by Gaspé.

A previous Chase the Ace fundraiser for the antenna contributed $50,000.

The antenna was installed outside the Riverside Elders Home, where the radio station has operated since 2023.
Sterling Mallette, who has worked as a morning radio host for nearly a year, said having a separate building would allow the radio station to expand its services, and to turn up the volume.

“I like to think of if we were going to have a musical guest come in,” said Malette. “We can’t bring a drum set in here. We can’t bring a full-on setup in here, because we do have the elders downstairs,” said Mallette.

“Also, we have the director of the elders here, right next door to us. We don’t want to be crashing cymbals and making all this noise and disrupting her while she’s trying to work either.”

The latest jackpot amount for Chase the Ace was posted on RKR’s Facebook page on January 14.

“We said, when we started this off, that we were going to be very transparent and very controlled,” said Gaspé.

He said he welcomes questions from the community.

For the fundraiser, Gaspé is allocating 20 percent to the consolation prize, 28 percent to the jackpot, 45 percent to the fundraiser, and seven percent to administrative charges.

Malette hopes that someday soon the radio station will have the chance to let loose.

“Having our own building would give us a kind of a little more freedom to do more things for the radio,” said Malette.

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