CHIN Radio-TV celebrates 60th anniversary of 'multi-culturalism' this weekend in Toronto
· Toronto Sun
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CHIN Radio/TV president Lenny Lombardi has a lot to celebrate, even if Italy didn’t qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup with this year’s games co-hosted by Toronto and Vancouver in Canada, along with the U.S. and Mexico.
First and foremost is the 60th anniversary of CHIN, which is bound to be among the highlights of the CHIN Picnic this weekend as part of the Taste of Little Italy festival on College St. between Bathurst and Shaw Sts.
To celebrate this milestone, CHIN Radio/TV, whose headquarters are on College, will host a special 60th anniversary ceremony on Saturday at 4 p.m.
“We’re going to have a cake-cutting ceremony because that’s a traditional thing that we Italians love to do,” said Lombardi, 73. “I’ve got some guest speakers with kind remarks about CHIN’s history and then we’re going to release 60 balloons and then we’re going to give away a couple hundred (balloons) to the audience in attendance.”
Founded in 1966, CHIN became one of the first broadcasters dedicated to serving immigrant communities in their own languages, and today it broadcasts in more than 50 languages each week across Toronto and Ottawa.
“I like to believe that CHIN Radio played an important role in the flourishing of the notion of multi-culturalism,” said Lombardi, who became president in 1985, following in the footsteps of his father, CHIN founder Johnny Lombardi, who died in 2002.
“And I think Toronto is one of the great cities in Canada that truly represents the positive aspect of that. The whole sense of inclusion and diversity and the celebration of one’s culture. And I think CHIN Radio over the last 60 years sort of set that tone that was sort of undeniable in the growth of the city as we move through the different decades. Toronto ethnicity was never ignored and always embraced in so many ways. And our success is also mirrored in the fact that since my dad started in ‘66, he launched two radio stations, we’re now five. So in the last 25-30 years we’ve launched three more frequencies. We’ve got four now in Toronto and one in Ottawa and we’re still very active in television. We’ve partnered with Rogers Communications and broadcast 12 hours a week of multi-cultural programs on Citytv and OMNI.”
Anyone remember the CHIN bikini contest?
There was also the once hugely popular CHIN bikini contest that finally went away a decade ago as times changed.
“It was a big deal,” Lombardi said. “It was born in an era where, back in the early ‘60s, there was a Miss Toronto at the time. So there was a lot of these types of pageants. And it didn’t start off as a bikini contest. It just started off as a Miss CHIN Picnic. And because of the nature of picnic and summer and we were on Toronto Island (at the time) and the water and the beaches, some brilliant person came up with the idea of ‘why don’t we have a bikini contest?’ So that’s how that came to fruition and it was warmly embraced by the people of Toronto and it became pretty famous. Some might even call it infamous.”
Lombardi said with Italy not in contention at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, he’ll be rooting for Canada (Argentina and Portugal are second and third choices when he’s pressed) and expects College St. to be overwhelmed by soccer fans as it has in the past.
“ Our neighbourhood has become soccer central for many, many years,” he said. “It’s where people love to come and enjoy the games because during the festivals past, we’ve had TV monitors in all the cafes and bars, and big screens everywhere, so people love to come down and watch the games and just experience the Taste of Little Italy and CHIN Picnic.”