Meet Our Team

I began the Canadian Music Discovery Project in 1988 with a single goal: to document, preserve and celebrate Canada’s musical heritage before important recordings and stories could be forgotten. What began as a personal cataloguing effort built around my private record collection gradually developed into a substantial archive of Canadian recordings, photographs, documents, artwork and music-related artifacts.

From 1990 to 1992, I hosted The Peaking Canuck Show on CiTR in Vancouver, where I was trained by Nardwuar the Human Serviette. The program combined Canadian music with archival audio, interviews and historical material in a format I called Canadiana Mixing. By weaving historical context directly into the music, the show helped shape the philosophy that would later guide the Museum of Canadian Music.

In 2009 and 2010, I published more than 200 Canadian artist biographies through ItCameFromCanada.com. This was followed in 2010 and 2011 by the authorized reissue of rare and long-unavailable Canadian recordings by artists including Artok, Borealis, Dr. Philter Banx, Folklords, Neil Merryweather and hundreds more.

That work has evolved into the Museum of Canadian Music at CitizenFreak.com—a living archive with more than 76,000 public pages, 6,000+ artists and over 1,000,000 digitized recordings and images, many available nowhere else.

In 2026, the Museum entered a new phase with the federal incorporation of CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society / Société canadienne de musique CitizenFreak, a not-for-profit organization established to support the preservation, governance and long-term public development of the collection. The Society is also registered in Alberta, where we are working toward a permanent institutional home for this nationally significant archive.

This work has always been collaborative. It continues to be strengthened by musicians, collectors, researchers, families, estates and music lovers who share a belief in preserving Canada’s cultural history. I remain humbled by their support, inspired by the stories behind the music and committed to ensuring that this collection remains accessible for future generations.

What began as a personal passion has become a national cultural resource. The work continues—one recording, one artist, one page and one nearly forgotten piece of Canadian music history at a time.

Robert Williston
President and Director
Museum of Canadian Music
CitizenFreak Canadian Music Society
CitizenFreak.com
MoCM.ca

As Treasurer and Director, Elena supports the financial administration, collections management, and governance of the Museum of Canadian Music. She oversees financial records, budgets, expenditures, grant administration, and collection documentation while coordinating with the Museum’s external bookkeeping and accounting professionals.

Elena brings extensive hands-on experience in business administration, financial record keeping, cash management, purchasing, inventory control, and staff supervision. Her focus is on helping ensure the Museum operates responsibly and efficiently while maintaining the financial and administrative foundation needed to preserve and develop its collection for the future.

As Director, IT and Technical Services, Najam is responsible for the technology and digital infrastructure behind MoCm.com and the Museum of Canadian Music. He oversees website development, servers and hosting, security, performance, data management, technical support, and ongoing platform improvements.

Najam's focus is on building a stable, secure, and modern digital environment that allows the Museum’s extensive collection of Canadian music history to remain accessible, discoverable, and preserved for future generations.

Scott Edward has been creatively involved in music—and in promoting the work of other artists—since 1990. He began DJing at the age of fifteen at a small teen club in his hometown of Strathroy, Ontario, an opportunity he credits to Neil. That early experience opened the door to a wide-ranging career encompassing music production, live performance, radio, visual art, audio restoration, record collecting and artist promotion.

Scott soon became directly involved in creating music and forming local groups. He served as the producer and DJ for the first rap group in the Strathroy area and worked extensively as a live DJ, performing at clubs, pubs and bars as well as participating in turntablist competitions. His broadcasting work included serving as a director, host and on-air personality with Radio Ethos, an early internet-based, community-oriented radio station that operated from 1997 to 2001.

After attending Sheridan College in the mid-1990s, Scott worked for a time in the professional film-animation industry. He has continued to develop and promote his talents as a visual artist, working across a broad spectrum of disciplines within the arts community.

Throughout his career, Scott has collaborated directly with musicians and other creative artists, contributing arrangements, production, musical ideas, technical knowledge and an individual creative perspective. He has also fully produced recordings for other artists, drawing upon his combined musical, technological and visual abilities to help create distinctive Canadian content.

Scott’s work on the technical side of audio grew from an intense curiosity about how music was professionally recorded, preserved and reproduced, as well as from his own experiments with original music and soundscapes. In the mid-1990s, while producing hip-hop and electro mixtapes for Soul Choice Productions, its operator, Andrea, asked whether he could transfer rare jazz recordings from vinyl into a digital format.

Although he initially had limited knowledge of the process, Scott accepted the challenge, developed a method from the ground up and achieved professional-quality results. The experience inspired him to devote considerable time to studying the art and science of audio transfer and restoration. Over the following decades, he became a trusted resource for a wide range of clients, most of whom found him through personal recommendations and word of mouth.

His technical work also extended into the period when DJ culture was moving from vinyl toward digital performance systems such as Serato. Scott assisted DJs and collectors with the preparation and preservation of their music as digital files, helping them carry rare and personally important recordings into a new technological era. This long-standing commitment to recorded-music preservation eventually led to his direct association with the Museum of Canadian Music.

Scott has also been an international seller of carefully selected vinyl records since 1999, working through online platforms including Discogs as well as at record shows and flea markets. For nearly as long, he has promoted rare and overlooked artists online by sharing their music under the name Spinning My Wheels.

One of Scott’s most meaningful experiences as a collector and seller was collaborating with his friend Ty Scammell of Vancouver prior to Scammell’s passing. That relationship reflected the personal connections, shared knowledge and passion for recorded music that have remained central to Scott Edward’s work throughout his career.

Greg’s behind-the-scenes contributions help make the Museum of Canadian Music and CitizenFreak.com a richer experience for everyone who visits. His dedication, generosity and genuine passion for Canadian music have become an invaluable part of the archive’s continued growth.

Greg grew up in Toronto in a household where music and broadcasting were part of everyday life. He remembers his parents tuning in to CBC Radio for programming, music and the Saturday opera broadcasts. Before long, he had his own transistor radio and was listening closely to 1050 CHUM-AM, whose studios were only a short walk north on Yonge Street.

That early fascination with radio led him into broadcasting. While attending Glendon College in Toronto, Greg became a broadcaster and Music Director at CKRG-FM Radio Glendon. He later earned broadcasting certification through Humber College. Although broadcasting did not ultimately become his long-term career, the experience deepened his lifelong connection to music and sound.

Over the years, Greg became a passionate collector across nearly every format imaginable, from 78 rpm records and 45s to LPs, cassettes, CDs and MP3s. In more recent years, he has focused increasingly on the many forms and eras of Canadian music, bringing that same enthusiasm and knowledge to his continuing work with the Museum of Canadian Music.