Meet Our Team

Robert Williston established the Museum of Canadian Music, a national institution dedicated to preserving and providing public access to Canada's recorded music heritage. He serves as Founder, President and Director of CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society, the not-for-profit organization governing the Museum.

Williston's four-decade involvement with Canadian music began with collecting. His first LP purchase was Helix's Breaking Loose, and he became particularly drawn to Vancouver and Victoria punk and new wave records, with the Subhumans ranking among his favorites. Throughout the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, he created Canadian music mixtapes, beginning with "The True North Strong & Free" and continuing through his 57th tape, "Canadian By Any Name."

Starting in Vancouver during 1987, Williston constructed a comprehensive database of Canadian recordings from his personal collection. From 1991 to 1992, he hosted The Peaking Canuck Show on CiTR, training under Nardwuar the Human Serviette. The program ran for 42 bi-weekly episodes, each featuring NoMeansNo's rendition of 'Oh, Canaduh,' and established what he termed Canadiana Mixing: combining recordings with archival audio, interviews and historical context.

In 2009-2010, Williston published over 200 Canadian artist biographies through ItCameFromCanada.com. The Museum launched online on July 1, 2010, when he converted his database into 50,000 web pages. The Globe and Mail profiled him then, calling him "the ultimate musical patriot."

Williston has authored approximately 2,500 Canadian artist biographies and reviews, emphasizing regional, independent and self-released recordings. He continues to handle much of the hands-on work himself, including research, biography writing, audio transfers, website development and project management.

Alongside the Museum, Williston built a 34-year career in industrial engineering design across Western Canada, most of it as a civil, structural and architectural lead designer. He led design on heavy industrial projects ranging from about $5 million to more than $20 billion, managing budgets, schedules and design teams of up to 30 people. He brings that discipline in planning, cost control, scheduling and technical documentation to the Museum's projects and governance.

In 2026, he established CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society to implement board governance and ensure the Museum's sustainability beyond his leadership.

Elena Williston is Treasurer and a Director of CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society, with responsibility for financial administration, collections management and governance for the Museum of Canadian Music.

Elena is a trained elementary school teacher. She holds a Bachelor of Education in elementary teaching, recognized as comparable to a Canadian bachelor's degree, and taught elementary school for five years. In Calgary she earned a Child Development Assistant certificate and worked in early childhood education, including as a lead teacher planning children's daily learning activities and programs.

Before joining the Museum's leadership team, Elena co-owned and operated several cafés and a licensed bar in Alberta and British Columbia. As an owner-operator, she was directly responsible for the financial and day-to-day operation of the businesses, including cash and financial controls, inventory and purchasing, staff supervision and vendor administration.

As Treasurer, Elena oversees the Society's financial records, budgets, expenditures and grant administration and coordinates with its external bookkeeping and accounting professionals. As a Director, she participates in financial oversight, policy adoption and the governance of the Society.

Her Museum responsibilities also include collections documentation, inventory control, organization and handling of physical materials, and field and project administration. Elena is the Museum's designated Field Producer and Videographer for field projects, with responsibility for video, photography and field documentation as that work develops.

Her current focus is building the financial, collections-management and field-documentation systems required for the Museum's next stage of institutional growth and long-term stewardship, and leading the development of the Museum's education modules.

Najam Us Saqlain is a Director of CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society and leads IT and technical services for the Museum of Canadian Music. Najam is responsible for the Museum’s websites, servers and hosting, cybersecurity, data management and technical support, as well as planning for the continued development and resilience of its digital infrastructure.

Najam brings 20 Years of experience in software engineering and application development. His day-to-day work includes Ruby on Rails, Python, TypeScript, AWS and Linux systems administration.

The Museum operates a large public platform supported by a continuously growing digital archive of recordings, images, metadata and research. Najam develops and maintains the systems that keep those resources reliable and accessible, protect the underlying data, and provide the tools required to manage, catalogue and search the collection.

As a member of the Society’s Board, Najam also contributes to technical governance, cybersecurity planning, data continuity and the long-term development of the Museum’s digital systems.

Richard Harrow is a Calgary musician and recording, mixing and mastering engineer whose career in Canadian music spans five decades.

An early home-recording enthusiast, Richard opened The Living Room recording studio in Calgary in 1976. The studio operated from his home through the 1980s and early 1990s, and during that period he worked on recordings for hundreds of artists. His credits include work with Ian Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot, Ry Cooder, Bourne and MacLeod, and Peter Puffin, among many others.

Richard's long association with Ian Tyson included engineering work on a number of Tyson recordings, among them One Jump Ahead of the Devil, Old Corrals and Sagebrush, and Cowboyography. For the Old Corrals and Sagebrush sessions, he took apart his Calgary studio and set it up in Tyson's living room. His engineering and mixing credits also appear on later Tyson releases and compilations.

Richard's work has contributed to two Juno Award-winning recordings. Bourne and MacLeod's Dance and Celebrate won the 1991 Juno Award for Best Roots/Traditional Album, and Peter Puffin's Proud Like a Mountain, which Richard mastered, won the 2011 Juno Award for Children's Album of the Year.

Richard has also received one Platinum record and two Gold records during his career.

In the early 1990s, his work increasingly shifted toward mastering. For approximately sixteen years he operated audiomastering.com, a mastering facility and division of Canada Disc Inc. In 2010 he established HB Media Services Inc., continuing his work in recording, mixing and audio production.

Beyond the studio, Richard provided sound for the Calgary Folk Club for more than eighteen years and has taught audio and media courses at SAIT.

Richard serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, contributing expertise in recording and studio history, audio transfer and preservation, historical recording practices, mastering, and the Canadian music and recording community.

Dan Donahue is a Winnipeg producer, recording engineer and broadcaster with more than four decades of experience in Canadian music.

Dan began as a folk performer and released two albums under his own name, Long Distance Runner (1978) and Motion (1980). He played the Winnipeg Folk Festival four times in its early years. Working with Daniel Lanois at Grant Avenue Studio on Motion drew him into production, and by 1982 he was producing Heather Bishop's records.

He has since produced more than 300 albums, and close to 400 counting his engineering work, for artists including Connie Kaldor, Valdy, Heather Bishop, Carmen Campagne and Fred Penner. Kaldor and Campagne's Lullaby Berceuse won the 1989 Juno Award for Best Children's Album, and projects he has worked on have drawn more than twenty Juno nominations. He has also recorded orchestras, choirs and classical ensembles, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and the Winnipeg Singers.

In 1998 Dan received the Prix Manitoba for distinguished service. He was a founding member of the Manitoba Audio Recording Industry Association, which became Manitoba Music, and has served on the boards of Manitoba Music, the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra and the Music Professionals of Manitoba. He was vice chair of Artists in Healthcare Manitoba, and from 2018 to 2022 he chaired Manitoba Film and Music.

Dan hosts Transcontinental on Winnipeg's CJNU and produces short radio histories of Manitoba music. About 25 years ago he secured federal funding toward an online archive of Manitoba music, a project that stalled when the province did not come on board.

Dan serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, contributing expertise in recording and production, Manitoba music history, industry networks, archival documentation and the people and institutions that have shaped Canadian music.

Paul Zaza is a Toronto composer, producer, songwriter and recording artist whose career spans more than five decades and more than 160 film and television productions.

Classically trained at the Royal Conservatory of Music in piano, harmony, orchestration and composition, Paul entered professional music as a performer. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he played bass in the Toronto production of Hair at the Royal Alexandra Theatre and later toured with The 5th Dimension.

By the mid-1970s he was established in Toronto's recording community as a performer, arranger, producer and studio musician, and was releasing his own records. He founded Zaza Sound Productions Ltd. as a 24-track recording studio. It later became a post-production and film-scoring operation as his work moved toward screen music.

His breakthrough in film came through his work with director Bob Clark and composer Carl Zittrer. Their score for Murder by Decree won the 1980 Genie Award for Best Music Score. Paul went on to become one of Canada's most prolific screen composers, scoring or co-scoring Prom Night, My Bloody Valentine, Porky's, Curtains, A Christmas Story, Turk 182!, From the Hip, The Brain, Iron Eagle IV, Baby Geniuses and many others. His catalogue also includes soundtrack albums, instrumental releases and production work for other artists.

Paul has received multiple SOCAN Awards. His papers, manuscripts and production materials are preserved as the Paul Zaza fonds at Library and Archives Canada.

Paul has donated a large collection of his recordings to the Museum of Canadian Music, including his best-known soundtrack albums, and CitizenFreak.com features an extensive body of his work along with his authorized biography and full credits. He serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, bringing extensive experience in composition, arranging, recording, production, studio practice, film and television scoring, copyright, publishing and the professional Canadian music industry.

Jason Flower is the founder of Supreme Echo, the Victoria, British Columbia, archival label and record shop he established in 2003. In more than twenty years, Supreme Echo has issued more than 60 releases and become one of Canada's most prolific archival labels, devoted to rare, lost and unreleased recordings, with a particular focus on Canadian underground music.

Each Supreme Echo release is built from original sources. Jason oversees every stage of the work: locating surviving tapes, acetates and cassettes, restoring the audio, recovering period artwork, and researching the history of the music through interviews with the musicians and their own photographs and papers. Much of this work begins with a single surviving copy, and bringing it back can take hundreds of hours before anything is released.

The Supreme Echo catalogue spans Victoria punk pioneers The Dishrags and The Neos, the Calgary punk bands Riot .303 and Suburban Slag, and Northern Haze, the Inuit rock band from Igloolik, along with underground music from across Canada and beyond. His shop on Government Street in Victoria has long been a gathering place for collectors and musicians on Vancouver Island.

Jason has known Robert Williston for around fifteen years, and Supreme Echo shares its releases, packaging and liner notes with the Museum so that each can be documented as it was issued. As an advisor, he contributes his experience in archival research, sourcing and restoring original recordings and artwork, working with artists and estates on permissions, and the independent and underground scenes that larger institutions often miss.

Shawn Nagy is the founder of Super Oldies, an independent reissue label and internet radio station dedicated to the music of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, with a particular focus on vintage Canadian recordings. Born and raised in Saskatchewan and now living in Southern California, he studied broadcasting and journalism in Regina and worked at CJME, Z99 and CKX before spending 27 years as a professional touring musician.

Since founding Super Oldies in 2002 he has issued more than 30 releases, including The Best of Eagle Records, the Franklin Records series, Wes Dakus & The Rebels, Pat Hervey, Buried Treasures: Winnipeg Rock Gems, Canada Rock Archives and Sixties Sounds From The Maritimes. The Super Oldies station streams online and on Roku and Amazon.

He digitized the Norman Petty Studios archives in Clovis, New Mexico, revived Petty's Nor-Va-Jak Music label and has produced more than 30 releases from the Petty estate.

A BMI music publisher, he licenses recordings for television, commercials and film, and published Never To Be Forgotten (2021), a book on the Bobby Fuller Four. Shawn advises the Museum on rights, permissions and licensing across all of its projects.

Greg Volk is a contributor to the Museum of Canadian Music, bringing more than 50 years of record and music collecting experience together with a background in broadcasting and a long-standing interest in Canadian recorded music. He has contributed to the Museum since 2023.

Greg lived in Toronto from 1963 to 1990 and grew up in a household where radio and music were part of everyday life. He remembers listening with his family to CBC Radio, including its music programming and Saturday opera broadcasts, before discovering 1050 CHUM-AM on his own transistor radio. The station’s Yonge Street studios were only a short distance from his home.

From 1980 to 1983, while attending Glendon College in Toronto, Greg worked in broadcasting at CKRG-FM Radio Glendon, including as Music Director, gaining direct experience in programming, music selection and radio production. He then studied Radio Broadcasting at Humber College from 1983 to 1984.

Greg began collecting records and music in 1975 and has continued ever since. His collection has spanned 78s, 45s, LPs, cassettes, CDs and digital audio. Over time, his collecting and research became increasingly focused on Canadian music, including recordings and artists that received limited commercial exposure or have become difficult to document.

Greg became aware of the Museum of Canadian Music around 2018 and began contributing directly in 2023. At the Museum, he contributes his knowledge of Canadian recordings, artists and releases to the continuing development of the collection and its documentation. His decades of experience as a collector, together with his broadcasting background, provide a practical understanding of the recordings themselves and the musical and cultural context in which they appeared.

Beau Levitt is a librarian at the Central Branch of the Calgary Public Library, and a record collector with an interest in and passion for Canadian music. Born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario, Beau completed an undergraduate degree in film studies at Queen’s and then a Masters of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario. He lived in Toronto for about 25 years before moving to Calgary in 2024 and spent most of his time in Toronto working at various branches of the public library system there.

He previously contributed to two blogs with a focus on Canadian music (It Came From Canada and The Revue), and for five years maintained his own site named Five Bucks on By-Tor, which was devoted to the lesser-known heroes of Canadian music. During his time in Toronto he also DJ’d at a Queen St. East bar named The Avro, hosting nights (also named It Came From Canada) devoted entirely to Canadian music.

In 2017, he was tasked with choosing the selections when the Toronto Reference Library added new records to the vinyl collection for the first time since the late 1980s. He also curated an exhibit of Toronto street posters which included a number of vintage concert posters promoting shows at legendary Toronto venues such as The Horseshoe, The Silver Dollar and The Bamboo.

Beau currently oversees the Calgary’s Story local history collection at Central, and can often be found around town digging for vinyl in thrift stores, flea markets and vintage shops.

Beau serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, contributing expertise in library and archival practice, local history collections, music curation and the lesser-known corners of Canadian music.

ROCON COMMUNICATIONS principal ROCH PARISIEN believes that all the world’s problems have a musical solution. Devouring music since a precocious age, he's invested, over the decades, what would amount to the Gross National Product of several small countries into his music collection.

Roch thrives on assessing the work of others, having now served on juries for the Juno Awards, the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards, the Polaris Music Prize, the Canadian Folk Music Awards, the West Coast Music Awards, and the Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards, as well as pulling duty on countless conference panels.

Where does he get off on this? Well, Roch began his career in music while still in his teens at Ottawa's CKCU-FM campus radio station where he created and hosted many specialty music programs, including the legendary NO FUTURE NOW – Canada's first punk rock/new wave music specialty show. It was also as a teenager in the '70s that he began taking way-cool photos of every major band coming through the Ottawa market, a habit he has yet to break.

He launched ROCON COMMUNICATIONS in 1991 to serve as an umbrella organization for his music business activities. This included freelancing for a major daily newspaper and becoming a pioneer in the mid-'90s of music journalism on the Internet. He co-hosted music programs on local TV in Ottawa and produced a radio special for the CBC. He's worked with the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Archives of Canada to evaluate and develop their collections of popular music artifacts, and produced and programmed the Folk/Roots Channel for national digital music network. His writing and production work have earned him three international music journalism awards.

Currently, Roch has been developing an ever-expanding database on the history of popular music. You can find him exploring music history, journalism, reviews, interviews and concert photography via his daily "Roch Parisien's Rocon Communications" music blog on Facebook - also home of 'The Facebook Music Interviews' series. His concert photography has been published in several music biographies, and an Anthology of his photographic work is currently in the works.

His broad knowledge puts him in demand as a consultant, commentator, juror and panelist, and he does his very best to have an opinion on just about anything and everything. Give Roch a world problem to solve, and he will assemble the perfect set list for the occasion.

Roch serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, contributing expertise in evaluating and developing popular music collections, Canadian music history, music journalism and concert photography.

Peter Burnside is the founder of Pacemaker Entertainment, the Canadian reissue label he has run since 1994, and of Fivepin Music, a sync agency that places vintage and current Canadian songs in television shows, films and commercials.

Peter got his start in music at campus radio station CHRW while completing a degree in Electrical Engineering. After graduating he started Spindle Records, a mail-order company selling Canadian CDs that weren't available outside the country. Customers began asking for titles that couldn't be found anywhere, and Pacemaker grew out of those requests.

The label has since released more than 100 titles, and its catalogue reads like a who's who of iconic Canadian cult classics and rarities: The Plastic Cloud, The Jarvis Street Revue, 49th Parallel, The Ugly Ducklings, Christmas, A Passing Fancy, The Folklords, Kensington Market, The Paupers, Mandala, McKenna Mendelson Mainline, Leigh Ashford, Rockadrome, The Staccatos and Chilliwack, to name a few. It runs from 1960s garage and psychedelia through 1970s hard rock and blues, with best-of collections for acts such as Moxy, Fludd and Robbie Lane & The Disciples, and two volumes of The Gaiety Records Story.

Peter serves as an advisor to the Museum of Canadian Music / CitizenFreak, contributing his experience in reissuing Canadian recordings, working with artists and rights holders, and licensing Canadian music for screen and advertising.

Scott Edward has been making and promoting music since 1990, when he started DJing at a teen club in his hometown of Strathroy, Ontario, at fifteen. That start led to music of his own. He produced and DJed for the first rap group in the area, played clubs, pubs and bars, competed in turntablist competitions, and from 1997 to 2001 was a director and on-air host with Radio Ethos, one of the first community-oriented internet radio stations.

After studying at Sheridan College in the mid-1990s, Scott Edward worked in professional film animation, and he continues to work as a visual artist across a wide range of media. He has also collaborated with other musicians and fully produced music for them, bringing his arranging, technical and creative skills to original Canadian work.

His path to audio restoration began in the mid-1990s, while he was making hip-hop and electro mixtapes for Soul Choice Productions. The company's operator, Andrea, asked if he could transfer rare jazz sides from vinyl to digital. He taught himself the process from the ground up, delivered professional results, and went on to study audio transfer and restoration in depth. Clients have sought him out ever since, including DJs moving their record libraries to digital as the scene shifted to Serato, and his work came to the Museum of Canadian Music through word of mouth.

Scott Edward has sold quality vinyl internationally since 1999 through Discogs, record shows and flea markets, and for nearly as long has shared rare recordings online as Spinning My Wheels. One of the highlights of his years as a collector and seller was working with his friend Ty Scammell of Vancouver before Ty's passing.

Scott Edward has supplied the Museum with a significant volume of archival transfers, and he continues to contribute his work to its collection.