New documentary 299 Queen Street West tracks how MuchMusic became a star

Former MuchMusic VJs, from left, Chris Ward, Denise Donlon, Mike Williams and Erica Ehm.MuchMusic

When an independent Canadian director sends their film as a blind submission to the annual South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, the chances of getting a premiere there are slim at best. If it is a documentary about the long-forgotten glory days of a Canadian music-video channel, with no star power or big-name executive producer attached to it, the probability drops even lower.

And if it is obscurely titled 299 Queen Street West, well, basically, return to sender – postage due.

And, yet, the documentary about MuchMusic from Sean Menard is making its bow at SXSW this month, against all odds. Moreover, enthusiasm and anticipation for 299 Queen Street West (the address of the MuchMusic studios) is sky high.

"I’m getting hundreds of e-mails about the film," Menard says, speaking from Hamilton. "And the head of the festival phoned me personally."

Menard is not an unknown quantity. He produced, edited and directed 2017′s The Carter Effect, a documentary about Vince Carter's influence on Toronto and on basketball in Canada. But that film, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, was produced by hoop superstar LeBron James's digital video company. As well, former National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern and pop music superstar Drake appear in it.

Though Menard's microbudgeted 299 Queen Street West has none of The Carter Effect cachet, the two films share an important theme: legacy. Carter's high status inspired a generation of Canadian basketball talent. Likewise, the dominant international presence of this country's current musical star power (particularly in the genres of hip hop and R&B) can be traced back to the diversity of MuchMusic's programming and on-air personalities from the 1980s to the early 2000s.

The rise of Justin Bieber, Drake, Shawn Mendes, the Weeknd, Alessia Cara and others didn't happen out of thin air. Call it the MuchMusic Effect.

Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez at the 2011 MuchMusic Video Awards, in Toronto on June 19, 2011.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press/The Associated Press

Making 299 Queen Street West was a learning experience for Menard. Born in 1984, the same year MuchMusic was launched (three years after the creation of MTV in the United States), he knew little about the channel's history. "People of my generation and younger don't know the origins of MuchMusic, and I wanted to let them know what happened."

What happened was wild. Patterned after independent Toronto station CITY-TV's weekend rock music show City Limits, MuchMusic existed on a shoe-string budget and thrived on the passion, vibe and chummy likability of its original video jockeys, including Christopher Ward, J.D. Roberts, Erica Ehm (who had no experience at all – she was a receptionist in the building) and Michael Williams. There was little in the way of fancy sets. Live-to-tape spots and interviews with A-list talent took place in control rooms, loading docks, sidewalks or just about anywhere.

"We had cameras, we had tape and we had artists," says Williams, one of several former VJs and programmers who spoke to The Globe and Mail. "They let us do we what we did, and the music we played became incredibly popular."

Like the music-video channel it documents, Menard's film had humble beginnings. He began making it during the pandemic, after stopping work on another project because the U.S. border was locked down. Initially without access to archival footage from Bell Media (the parent company of the channel, now branded as Much), Menard plowed ahead with his passion project by interviewing the station's former VJs, including Ehm, Williams and others.

CITY co-founder Moses Znaimer and broadcaster John Martin were the visionaries behind MuchMusic, which was originally owned by CITY's corporate parent CHUM Limited. They delegated responsibility liberally, though. "We were a bunch of loonies," Martin would later say. "My gig was to sort of mould the anarchy."

When it came to the on-air personalities, never has an asylum been run by such telegenic and affable inmates. "I was a superfan with the best job on the planet, which was to promote the artists I loved, bonus points if they were Canadian," Ehm says. "We were music fans with a national megaphone."

A 1994 publicity photo of Erica Ehm.Handout

Though 299 Queen Street West is something of a love letter to the VJs – "They all belong on Canada's Walk of Fame," Menard says – there's much more at work than nostalgia.

The documentary begins with a news clip from early 1984, when the CRTC was taking applications for a 24/7, national television channel dedicated solely to music. Stan Kulin, at the time president of WEA Canada, told a CITY news reporter (J.D. Roberts) that he would welcome a station like MTV in this country. "I think it would be great for us," he said, referring to his label. "I also think it would be great for Canadian artists."

He was correct. For example, the channel gave rapper Wes Williams – better known as Maestro Fresh Wes – a more prominent platform than radio. "We knew he was a star," says Craig Halket, a former MuchMusic senior music programmer. "At the end of the eighties we knew hip hop was moving toward the mainstream more and more, and we embraced it."

Thanks to steady airplay for the video to the groundbreaking 1989 single Let Your Backbone Slide, the career of Williams – sometimes referred as the Godfather of Canadian hip hop – was launched.

Like commercial radio, MuchMusic was required to play a minimum percentage of Canadian content. But where radio typically resisted the "Cancon" regulation, MuchMusic went above and beyond. "We treated the percentage as a floor, not a ceiling," says Denise Donlon, who joined the station in 1985 as the producer and host of The NewMusic and later became vice-president and general manager.

The money that paid for a lot of memorable videos came from VideoFACT, a MuchMusic-funded grant program for Canadian recording artists. The hip hop and R&B genres in particular benefited, with programming that included Rap City, hosted by Jamaican-Canadian VJ Tony (Master T) Young, and Electric Circus, with the India-born Monika Deol.

"There was a very conscious effort to uplift that music," says VideoFACT co-founder Bernie Finkelstein. "It was great programming, and it was the smart thing to do. It was also the right thing to do."

Much of what happened at MuchMusic could have been relegated to the dustbin of history – literally. According to Menard, tons of tapes from the early days were thrown away. To compile his archival footage, the director jumped down the YouTube rabbit hole and was helped by Toronto cultural historian Ed Conroy, who operates the Retrontario website.

Eventually, Bell Media came on board. "We were thrilled to open the vault to support a filmmaker like Sean," says Justin Stockman, the company's vice-president, content development and programming, as well as an executive producer on the film. "He understands that the launch of MuchMusic was a flashpoint for Canadian culture and that it should be celebrated."

The celebration begins with a pair of SXSW screenings on March 13 and 17. Although it will stream on Crave in Canada at some point later this year, it is Menard's hope to have the domestic premiere at this year's TIFF, headquartered just three blocks away from 299 Queen Street West.

"I really want this film to come home and put the VJs on the biggest stage at the hometown festival in front of the audience that grew up watching all of this," Menard says.

That's not asking for too much, is it?