Title: Founder, Director, all website work
Email: ryder@robertwilliston.com
Updated November, 2023:
I started this "Canadian Music Discovery Project" back in 1988, building a Canadian music database from my own personal collection of Canadian music. I had a bi-weekly radio show called The Peaking Canuck Show on CiTR in Vancouver, British Columbia from 1990-1992 and was trained by The Human Serviette. He taught me how to spin a record on air. The show featured all-Canadian music spliced with 'Canadiana Mixing' - interesting snipits of Canadian historical audio soundbites. Since then I have never stopped this 'Canadiana Mixing' and the collecting of Canadian music.
Over the years, the collection has grown to contain over 110,000 Canadian music artifacts, representing perhaps the largest private collection of Canadian music. This project has made this important collection accessible.
In 2009-10, I published 200 discographies of Canadian artists on www.itcamefromcanada.com.
In 2010-11, I re-issued for streaming rare Canadian music by Artok, Borealis, Class Info, D'arcy Draper, Dr.Philter Banx, Folklords, Free Beer, Heavy Cruiser, Huckle, Neil Merryweather, Philip John Lewin, Stan Martin, Psycho, Everett Haughton, Dave Baker, Martin Wall, Hush, Ivar Avenue Reunion, Bill Bissett and the Mandan Massacre, Honey Novick, Luddites, John Lyle, David Sinclair, Kaos, Love Cyrkle, Sugar & Spice and many more. Now there are more than 2,300 artists featured here. A significant portion of the music here is unique and not available on any other music streaming platform.
Every day that I have worked on this project, I am humbled by its' breadth and greatness. Many musicians, Canadian music lovers, and other collectors of Canadian music and memorabilia have provided additional information and have brought this project to fruition.
But the work continues.....still a long way to go....