A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with some of my journalism students about the annual parade of awards shows – the Grammys, the People’s Choice Awards, the Oscars and the rest. The subject of this year’s Canadian music awards, coming up in April, eventually cropped up. They had all heard of the Junos, sure. But then I asked if anyone knew the origin of the Junos.
“Oh, it’s the name of the Canadian beach on D-Day,” one said.
“Yes, you’re right on the D-Day reference,” I said. “But not the musical one.”
“I know,” said one of my more erudite students. “Juno is the Roman goddess of marriage and queen of the gods.”
“Right again,” I said. “But she’s got nothing to do with the Juno Music Awards in Canada.”
I was nearly at the end of keeping them in suspense, but not quite. I asked if they had ever wondered where Canada’s popular music industry came from – its recording studios, record labels, music distribution system, music production industry, hit parade, a.k.a. its star system. Oh, did I mean where Justin Bieber or The Sheepdogs or Feist came from? Well, sort of. Clearly, my students needed a short lecture about the birth of an independent Canadian music industry. And, yes, it’s tied to the Juno Awards.
I reminded them that Justin Trudeau had a father named Pierre, who was Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 (then again from 1980 to 1984). I explained that among Trudeau’s priorities were justice, multilingualism, the family, free lifestyle choices, multiculturalism and participatory democracy, “a just society.” But Trudeau, I suggested, was perhaps most passionate and proud of Canadian culture.
That’s when Trudeau enlisted the talents of a contemporary of his, a Montrealer from a working-class family, a fellow student at the University of Paris and co-founder of the dissident magazine Cité Libre. Pierre Juneau joined the National Film Board in 1949, founded the Montreal International Film Festival in 1959 and became the first chair of the Canadian Radio and Television Commission (CRTC) in 1968.
So, Trudeau challenged Juneau to research the Canadian music industry with an eye to saving it from being totally overwhelmed by the American pop music scene, its youthful energy, its powerful traditions, its vast radio signal reach and its multi-million-dollar star system. North of the 49th Parallel, Juneau’s investigation listened to producers, record label reps, artist and repertoire scouts, musicians, sound technicians, radio DJs and even the public to find a way to save Canadian music.
On Jan. 18, 1971, Juneau, as chair of the CRTC, introduced Canadian Content regulations. The CanCon rules required AM radio stations to give no less than 30 per cent air play to Canadian artists from 6 a.m. to midnight each day. The result, of course, was a veritable boom in Canadian music production and the flourishing of such Canadian artists as Anne Murray, Lighthouse, Blood Sweat and Tears, Bruce Cockburn, The Guess Who, Edward Bear, Gordon Lightfoot, Leonard Cohen, Ian and Sylvia and Crowbar, to name a few. That same year, 1971 (42 years ago this month) the Juno Awards (named in Pierre Juneau’s honour) were handed out at the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto.
“From an industry that has barely begun to burgeon,” wrote Marci McDonald in the Toronto Star, “(the Junos) was a ceremony that made all those interminable glory shows, the Grammys and the Oscars … look like amateur night at the high school gym.”
And that first year of the Juno Awards, the creators of the awards, RPM Magazine in Canada, recognized Pierre Juneau as Music Industry Man of the Year.
I remember the earliest years of CanCon. In those times, I worked both on air and in print covering the Canadian music scene in earnest. As a disc jockey on such stations as CKLY AM in Lindsay, Ont., and in Toronto on CJRT (now Jazz FM) I programmed my music ensuring that one in three record choices I made was Canadian.
It wasn’t a chore. I loved the idea and most often preferred playing David Clayton Thomas to Jim Morrison, Joni Mitchell over Joan Baez, Ronnie Hawkins over Kenny Rogers, Salome Bay over Aretha Franklin, Murray McLauchlan over Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young over Bob Dylan, even The Band over the Beatles. And it wasn’t just the colours of the flag; it was the resonance of the music that delivered, defined and distinguished us and from the rest.
As much as I take pride in recounting his story to my journalism and my broadcasting students, I can never say that I met Pierre Juneau face-to-face. I spoke with him on the phone once. I thanked him for his life’s work – being granddaddy to a Canadian music scene that thrives today because of his foresight. Pierre Juneau died a year ago this week.