Canada rocks. (Terrible pun, but seriously!) This weekend the Juno Awards were in Ottawa (for those of you who don’t know, it’s our version of the Grammy’s…but a tad smaller) and it was awesome. There was music all over the city: baby grand pianos were scattered around town, concerts on downtown corners, almost every bar, pub and club had awesome live acts all weekend long, and then the big awards show on Sunday night.

Deadmau5 at the Juno Awards

My friend and I volunteered as “seat fillers” for the Junos, which meant we got to see the awards show for free — awesome! We were told we’d be sitting in areas that were going to be on TV during the live broadcast and that meant we might not get a great view of the stage…well they ended up putting us on the floor RIGHT beside the presenters’ stage, it was pretty cool! (Only downside, had we known we would be standing for such a long time, we wouldn’t have worn our killer heels!)

William Shatner, a Canadian also known as Captain Kirk, hosted the awards on Sunday night

The bands got started on Friday night at Mavericks at 9 and didn't stop til the wee hours of the morning....so good.

After seeing more bands than I can actually remember in one weekend, and artists like Feist, Dallas Green, Hey Rosetta!, Blue Rodeo, Sarah McLachlan, Deadmau5, Lights, Dragonette, Oh Susanna, Jenn Grant, The Beauties, Simple Plan, The Good Lovelies and more, we were happy campers!

There's a little something for everyone at the Junos!

So I’ve been on a Canadiana music kick for a bit now — there really is an enormous amount of talent and it was amazing to see so much of it in town! Who are your favourites?

Hope April is off to a great start for everyone!