David Marsden

David Charles Marsden was a Canadian radio broadcaster whose career stretched from the manic Top 40 persona Dave Mickie in the 1960s to the laid-back freeform voice behind CFNY and the Spirit of Radio. Born in Toronto on 2 March 1941 and raised by a foster family in Stratford, Ontario, he took the surname Mickie from his foster parents and was managing local band The Revols, which included future Band member Richard Manuel, while still a teenager.

He broke into radio at CFCO in Chatham in 1963, was soon heard on CKEY in Toronto as Dave Mickie, and was notable enough for Marshall McLuhan to analyse his on-air patter in Understanding Media. He hosted CBC Television's Music Hop and CHCH's Mickie A Go Go before shedding the Mickie persona in the late 1960s. As David Marsden he worked at CKGM and progressive rock CHOM in Montreal, then returned to Toronto's CHUM-FM. In 1973 he helped bring Pink Floyd to Maple Leaf Gardens and played an advance copy of The Dark Side of the Moon in full on his show days ahead of its planned premiere.

His longest legacy was at Brampton's CFNY. Becoming programme director in 1979, he turned a struggling album-rock station into Canada's first commercially viable alternative outlet under the slogan the Spirit of Radio. Known on air as The Mars Bar, he gave early Canadian exposure to punk, new wave and other new artists other stations ignored. Rush titled a song after the station's spirit, and an animated likeness of Marsden later appeared in a Spirit of Radio video. He also helped bring CFNY's U-Know Awards to a national stage as the CASBY Awards and was Canada's voice for the international Live Aid radio broadcast in 1985.

After leaving CFNY he worked in Vancouver television and radio, helped launch Iceberg Radio, hosted The Marsden Theatre for more than a decade on Oshawa's CKGE-FM, and co-founded the subscription freeform stream NYTheSpirit.com, where he continued live shows into the 2020s. He was openly gay, a CAB Hall of Fame member, and one of only two Canadians in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Dear Mr. DJ exhibit. He died on 25 September 2026, aged 85, after a fall about a week earlier, with the news announced publicly on 28 September by NYTheSpirit and remembered by colleagues including Alan Cross, whom Marsden had hired at CFNY in 1986.