Canadian rap artists such as Michie Mee and Maestro Fresh Wes." Other artists such as Blue Rodeo and k.d. lang received airplay on CKLN prior to being picked up by mainstream radio. The Globe and Mail says of the station that "it sat at the forefront of independent music and radical politics in the city for more than three decades, working with a shoe-string budget, and yet it somehow always managed to survive." In the 1980s, the station helped create a news service to share content among left-wing stations worldwide including those run by the African National Congress and the FMLN in El Salvador. The station aired live coverage of the release of Nelson Mandela from prison. CKLN was the first broadcast outlet to air Toronto's Gay Pride Day Parade. In its coverage of the Rwandan genocide, CKLN aired an investigation of the colonial history behind the events. In 1985, the station was estimated to have 50,000 weekly listeners. By 1991, its audience had grown to an estimated 140,000 listeners a week. In 1989, The Toronto Star voted CKLN as "best radio station" in its annual Sammy awards. In April 1992, one student successfully petitioned for a referendum to decide if the station should continue to receive student funding; CKLN won the referendum. Former station manager Adam Vaughan, later a Member of Parliament, said in a 2015 interview that "What was great about CKLN is that it combined the strength of Ryerson with the diversity of Toronto... The diversity of the city and the diversity of the voices and the culture on air came to define CKLN and it was a huge part of our success." He added, however, that "The station, after I left, got very heavily invested in identity politics. And instead of bringing diversity together, groups kind of started to fight with each other and it was hugely problematic in terms of trying to unify an audience... You could see the station drifting further and further away from a position of strength and experimentation into bitterness and at times, straight up incompetency." By September 2003, following the departure of station manager Conrad Collaco, CKLN was teetering on the brink of insolvency. As a result, the Ryerson Students' Union bailed out CKLN of $110,000 in debts. An earlier proposal by Collaco to deal with the station's financial problems with a $6 increase to the student levy was not