With plans to be back in Ottawa during the latter half of the first week in April (tickets purchased back in July for a Saturday evening concert at the National Arts Centre), subsequent plans for more music fell into place a few months back for a show just across the river in Chelsea, QC for the Friday night too. With no gigs found on our concert tracking apps for the Thursday night, this would remain wide open on our calendar – at least until about a week prior to our travels, when the arrival of an email into the GDW inbox presented a wonderful opportunity. How could we resist?
Thanks to the public relations team at “Indie Montréal / IMTL Promotion,” we learned that the 2025 Canadian Folk Music Awards were taking place in the Ottawa area during the same four days we were in town. With media credentials being offered – even to this little non-Canadian ‘Canadian music-loving blog’ of ours – the Thursday night opening event was quickly circled on our calendar. Held at the prestigious Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, QC, the lower level ‘Grand Hall’ provided the perfect location to bring musicians, fans, and media together for an evening of awards and performances.
Picking up our passes from the wonderful team of volunteers, we made our way to the stage area and found some seats that guaranteed great sight lines for the events that would follow. As the Grand Hall began to fill with people, many familiar faces of artist friends were spotted in the crowd. Plenty of press and photographers were in attendance too – we noticed a few familiar journalists who we have interacted with at other events over the years. We were honored to be included – representatives from beyond the Canadian borders (not sure if any other international media outlets were present) covering a folk-roots music event and scene here on our pages with our own community of like-minded people.
Having watched televised awards ceremonies over the decades (I fondly recall the Canadian Country Music Awards being one I watched back in the mid 1990s on television back in the UK – with actor Paul Gross hosting the show), this Thursday evening would be our first experience in the flesh. We were excited to see artists being recognized by their peers (and jurors) for their creativity – and even more so for the handful of live performances (naturally) in-between the award announcements and speeches. Tagged as the “Songs & Stories Songwriter Concert,” the diverse and inclusive programming of artists embraced within the folk-roots spectrum was very well curated, and represented English language, French language, and Indigenous music.
Following a beautiful a cappella cover of Tragedy Ann’s “I Hope This Finds You Well” from French language narrator Alex Millaire (Moonfruits – and event co-host alongside Jean Hewson), Montréal-based bilingual artist Geneviève Racette would commence the main stage performances. Flanked by two bandmates, the all-female trio would deliver a pair of French language tunes, before closing with “Same Old Me,” a nominee for Single of the Year at the event this year.
“I wrote this song for myself. It’s about self-doubt and that feeling of never being good enough. Trying to reach a perfect version of yourself, every day, and failing over and over. It’s not a good feeling, and I’m going to be honest, nights like tonight and tomorrow are definitely nights that put fuel to the fire for that little voice in my head,” Geneviève shared. “Award nights are amazing, they can be inspiring, they’re magical … but they are also hard, because we tend to compare ourselves to others, and the competitive essence of an award night can really trigger that little voice inside your head that tells you that says you’re not good enough. So, I wrote Same Old Me to quiet down that little voice of mine, and I want to dedicate Same Old Me tonight to all the nominees hoping that I can quiet down your little voice as well.”
Manitoba-based duo Burnstick landed on our listening radar a couple of years ago – thanks to both a press release and a recommendation from Julian Taylor – but we had somehow never made the time to discover their music. Performing on this evening, we suddenly kicked ourselves for not paying attention sooner when marveling at the wonderful on-stage chemistry and musicianship between spouses Jason Burnstick (a Plains-Cree guitarist) and Nadia Burnstick (née Gaudet – a Francophone-Métis singer-songwriter). With a three-song set at their disposal, the duo opted to commence with “Go Back,” a track from their 2024 “Made Of Sin” album. Progressing into their 2019 breakthrough single, “Some Kind Of Hell,” they would wrap up with a song that Jason dedicated to his late mother.
“So, my mother was a lover of music. She loved to strum guitar and sing horribly – but she loved it. She loved Elvis Presley. Yeah, you know that guy? He’s alright! So much so that she had a massive picture of him hanging in our living room that was bigger than any of my pictures or anybody else’s pictures,” Jason shared. “And I had asked her one day, I said ‘mom, if you could leave the old man for Elvis Presley, would you do it?’ And she smiled, and she closed her eyes, and she said, ‘oh yes’.” Pausing as laughter bounced around the hall, Jason would continue. “She also loved to hunt, and she was very small, but she was very feisty and very powerful. She went out hunting one night … and stumbled upon a moose. The snow was coming down, the wind was blowing, and this moose was sleeping, it didn’t hear her come up. Just at that moment, the moose stood up in front of my mom. And what you do think my mom did? She punched that moose right in the nose. And sure enough, that moose went down. Now when she told that story, she would always have you believe that it was the punch that took the moose out, but the reality is, that if you knew my mom, it was definitely the punch that took the moose out. This is for the mom’s here tonight.”
Taking home the award for Contemporary Singer of the Year, SK-based singer-songwriter Jeffery Straker would close the first half of the show with a pair of solo tunes – pulling out “Sing Your Song” from his latest “Great Big Sky” album, before digging deep into his back catalogue to raise the roof with a blistering performance of “Birchbark Canoe.”
“The record that helped me get the award is called Great Big Sky. It has a lot of prairie themed songs on it. So, to release my prairie themed record, I wanted to do something very prairie, so before i toured it across Canada, I did nine shows in a series of concerts performed in grain elevators across Saskatchewan,” Jeffery shared in-between songs. “One of those grain elevators was still full of grain when we did the show … as I was singing and the boards creaked a little bit, yellow peas fell down on the audience. And people were so into it … and it was also the only show in my life where because the people were sitting on their chairs on the big elevator scale. It was the only show where I got to weigh the audience.”
Toronto-based blues-Americana artist Sandra Bouza would kick off the music following the intermission, and along with bandmates Jose Batista (guitar/vocals), Chad Coats-Butcher (bass/vocals) and Dan Legault (percussion), brought plenty of swagger to the Grand Hall stage. Performing both “Shine” and “A Sound In The Dark” as a quartet, the band would bid us farewell and leave Sandra alone on stage to deliver a fabulous solo-acoustic version of a popular tune from a music idol for her closing number. “I want to end with a cover, I hope you don’t mind,” Sandra offered, before performing “Tell My Why.” “This is the man that taught me about songwriting, and I think also is a really good example of the incredibly beautiful music that has come out of this country, Mr. Neil Young.”
Scheduled Francophone artist Michel Robichaud reluctantly had to be a healthy scratch on this given night, which presented an opportunity for emerging Montréal artist Marie Onile to make her first official performance following time taken away to raise a family – travelling to Ottawa/Gatineau for this event with her five-month-old son in tow. “Oh my god, thank you guys. I’m going to try a little bit of English here, but I’m mostly French, I have to say,” Marie shared. “So yeah, I’m a new mom and … I’m really stressed out because it’s been almost a year since I was last on stage, and it’s a little bit like returning home, I think, after a visit.” Seated behind her keyboard, Marie would perform her 2023 single “Clarté mobile” and an older album track “Le blizzard,” before switching instruments to close with her latest single, “Entrez dans ma demeure.” Not having heard Marie’s music until now, I found myself drawing instant comparisons to Coeur De Pirate during the piano pieces, whilst sensing both Jill Barber and Beyries vibes once Marie had the guitar in her hand – before adding this talented Québecois artist to our future listening library.
Awarded the co-winner of the Indigenous Songwriter of the Year (alongside Alan Syliboy & the Thundermakers), Edmonton, AB folk-roots/soul artist Celeigh Cardinal would perform a pair of tunes from her 2025 JUNO-Award nominated “Boundless Possibilities” album. Accompanied by Brennan Cameron on keyboards, Celeigh delivered a beautiful rendition of her latest single, “Light Of The Moon,” before bringing the evening to a close with a powerful and emotional performance of “The Wandering River” – a song she co-wrote with David Francey.
“I love David Francey, what a man. I’ve been doing this for a really long time, twenty-five years, Celeigh shared in-between tunes. “Coming from northern Alberta, the way to make money playing music meant a lot of pub gigs, a lot of cover gigs, weddings, doing whatever you can to just get by. …I was working full time through the week and then, on the weekends, I would go and play these gigs wherever I could to continue playing music as much as possible. Because I hated real jobs. I needed to play music to be happy.”
The opening night of the 2025 Canadian Folk Music Awards proved to be the perfect ‘last minute’ addition to our music calendar, and once again, our thanks go out of the publicists and volunteers for inviting us to this event. It is always wonderful to connect with good friends in a room (and there were several – too many to list), and to simply sit back and enjoy some amazing live music. The awards presented on this evening have already been published, but for those who may have missed out – we’ve posted the awards (and key presenters) below.
Awards:
New/Emerging Artist of the Year: Winner: Maggie’s Wake (presented by Briana Doyle).
Songwriter of the Year: Winner: Ruth Moody (presented by Lynn Miles).
Contemporary Singer of the Year: Winner: Jeffery Straker (presented by Scott Merrifield).
Producer(s) of the Year: Winner: Joshua Van Tassel & Christine Bougie (presented by Ian Tamblyn).
French Songwriter of the Year: Winner: Alexandre Poulin (presented by Melanie Brulée).
Indigenous Songwriter(s) of the Year: Winner: Celeigh Cardinal & Alan Syliboy & The Thundermakers (presented by Kaloosit Dunn).
The British guy that crossed the ocean and crash landed in central Pennsylvania (to quote Greg Keelor, “And I wonder what am I doing here?”). As the youngest of four siblings, exposure to music from a very early age nurtured my passion and appreciation for many musical genres. Continuing to discover some amazingly diverse and talented musicians based in Canada, I gravitate to live music experiences and remain devoted to spreading the word about such a vibrant music scene.
