On the inner sleeve of Rush's 1980 album Permanent Waves, a line reads: "Dedicated to the Spirit of Radio, alive and well and living in Brampton so far," according to A Journal of Musical Things. The station behind that dedication was CFNY-FM, and the broadcaster who built its identity was David Marsden, who died on September 25, 2026, at 85. Marsden spent nine years as CFNY's program director, turning a struggling album-rock outlet into one of the most influential stations in Canadian radio and prompting Rush to write a song carrying the station's tagline.

When Marsden took over as program director in 1979, CFNY was broadcasting out of a small yellow house in Brampton on an underpowered transmitter, according to Global News. He rebuilt the station's sound around punk, new wave and alternative music that mainstream Toronto radio would not touch. The result was a free-form format that a generation of Canadian listeners came to know simply as the Spirit of Radio.

He was born David Michie on March 2, 1941, in Toronto and raised in Stratford, Ontario, where as a teenager he produced sock hops and managed a local band called the Revols, according to A Journal of Musical Things. He broke into radio at CFCO-AM in Chatham and CHLO in St. Thomas, then took evening shifts at Toronto's CKEY-AM on air as "Dave Mickie," crossing briefly into television on CBC's Music Hop and CHCH's Mickie A Go Go. A move to Montreal in the late 1960s, working CKGM-AM and CHOM-FM, brought the on-air name David Marsden; back in Toronto at CHUM-FM, he helped persuade promoters to book Pink Floyd's first Toronto concert before CFNY called in 1977.

Ivar Hamilton, CFNY's import music director during the Marsden years, said the format worked because Marsden trusted the people he hired. "David was an incredible visionary broadcaster who let the DJs play what they wanted in a library with 20,000 songs that extended to Jazz, Blues, folk, classical, imports and local independent music," Hamilton said. "David also encouraged the team at CFNY to be themselves and take chances and be creative, not only with the music but with all specialty programming," he added, in a remembrance carried by Broadcast Dialogue.

CFNY's reach under Marsden extended well past Brampton. He served as Canada's voice for the international radio broadcast of Live Aid in 1985 and worked with CBC Television to launch the CASBY Music Awards, putting emerging Canadian acts in front of a national audience. He was later named to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Hall of Fame and became one of only two Canadians featured in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Dear Mr. DJ" exhibit in Cleveland.

Alan Cross was among the broadcasters Marsden hired into the building. "I will be forever grateful to David for hiring me back in the fall of 1986," Cross wrote in a remembrance, crediting Marsden with shaping the careers of the CFNY alumni who followed him into Canadian radio.

Marsden left CFNY in 1988 and kept building free-form radio elsewhere. In 1990 he took over Vancouver AM station CKST, rebranding it Coast 800: The Spirit of Radio for about three years. In 1999 he launched Iceberg Media in Toronto, billed as Canada's first online radio hub, and through much of the 2000s he hosted "The Marsden Theatre" on Oshawa's CKGE-FM. He later co-founded NYthespirit.com with business partner Igor Loukine, an online station that carried his free-form format into the 2020s.

Igor Loukine announced the death on the station's behalf. "The team at NYthespirit.com remains entirely committed to keeping David's vision alive, and the station will continue to broadcast in his honour, maintaining the independent musical ethos he championed his entire life," Loukine said, in a statement carried by Broadcast Dialogue.

His radio instincts stayed sharp well past his CFNY years. In September 2023 he returned to Toronto's Massey Hall to induct the new wave band Rough Trade into Canada's Rock of Fame alongside entertainer Brooke Lynn Hytes, one of thirteen acts honoured that night for shaping Canadian rock across the 1970s and 1980s, according to Canada's Walk of Fame.

Toronto Mike, host of the Toronto Mike'd podcast, interviewed Marsden across more than a decade of episodes. "I had all the time in the world for David Marsden," he wrote after learning of the death. "I loved his energy, his stories, and his philosophy when it came to radio," he added.

What Marsden built outlasted the yellow house in Brampton. The station he shaped gave Rush a song, gave a run of Canadian musicians their first national airplay through the CASBY Awards, and gave a generation of broadcasters, Cross among them, their start. His name hangs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's DJ exhibit alongside a short list of two Canadians, and NYthespirit.com keeps his free-form mix of jazz, blues, punk and new wave on the air, still playing the songs commercial radio was too cautious to try.