The original owner of CHAU was Dr. Charles Houde of La Télévision de la Baie des Chaleurs, who put the station on the air for the first time on October 17, 1959. Initially, like all other Quebec private TV stations, CHAU was a dual CBC/SRC affiliate airing both English and French shows. For CHAU, the ratio of English to French programs was 7:13. The station entered Radio-Canada's microwave network on March 24, 1960, and became an all-French station in 1968 when Montreal's CBMT opened a rebroadcaster in Carleton. In 1978, it became one of the last Canadian stations to air local programming in colour.
