Galcom began in 1989, when Allan McGuirl and Ken Crowell shared a conviction: the Gospel could travel farther on the airwaves than in any suitcase. Working from Hamilton, Ontario, they set out to build a radio rugged enough for the field, simple enough for anyone, and locked to a Christian signal so the message that arrived was the one that was sent.
The first fix-tuned radios shipped to missionaries who had been asking for exactly this — a way for new believers and unreached neighbours to keep hearing after the missionary went home. Word spread the way it always does on the mission field: one partner told another.
Growth we didn't engineer
Over three decades, more than 1.2 million radios and audio players have gone out to over 130 countries, and Galcom technicians have helped put more than 700 local Christian radio stations on the air. The workshop is still in Hamilton. Much of the work is still done by volunteers. The requests still come from the field first.
Today
Galcom serves from offices in Canada and the United States, with a network of ministry partners on every inhabited continent. The tools have improved — solar panels, digital audio, whole stations in a suitcase — but the story hasn't changed: someone still hasn't heard, and someone else won't accept that.