It’s Canada’s 156th birthday today, and it’s no coincidence that it’s also the birthday of the Canadian Pop Music Encyclopedia. Back in 1998, Jaimie Vernon was commissioned by Toronto Sun music editor John Sakamoto to write a new online Canadian music encyclopedia. It went live on the CANOE Jam! Music website Canada Day – July 1st, 1998.

It’s been a long road since then with the Canadian music scene exploding exponentially both here at home, and internationally. There is nowhere you can’t hear great Canadian music! We eventually moved the Encyclopedia to a dedicated website so updates and news could be added in real time. Since March of this year we’ve been actively expanding the online pages of the CPME as a reflection of our country’s fluid and growing musical history. There’s always more to learn about our past heroes, and there’s always more new artists to investigate – the Canadian musical farm teams are strong!

And we’re not done yet. A 25th anniversary re-issue of the print version of the Encyclopedias is in the works – as soon as we get another 800+ artists added to the database!! We will also be adding ancillary topics to the website including producers, songwriters, and record label histories as well. This, of course, is a mammoth task and will be rolled out in stages over the next few years.

We would like to thank the thousands of readers who’ve perused and shared our pages, and watched our videos on YouTube, and bought the books; and to the artists and their associates who’ve sent us revisions for this work-in-progress over the last 25 years, we are truly grateful. Your collective memories and insight have made us the go-to CanCon music reference on seven continents (yes, there are readers in the Antarctic).The CPME will continue to grow, and we’re proud to document and share our musical findings with you.

CA-NA-DA. We love you!!