Author Meets Readers | The Record Keepers: Digging for Stories in Canada’s Record Stores
Thursday, September 24, 2026 from 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm
- In-Person event
- Irene’s Pub Restaurant , Ottawa , ON , K1S 3W4
About the Book
The Record Keepers drops the needle on the stories of Canada’s record stores and the people who sustain them. Join the author as he goes crate digging from coast to coast to coast, meeting the owners of long-running neighbourhood institutions, new shops shaping local scenes, women-led record stores, family-owned businesses, and independent regional chains. Readers will meet the Alberta teen who became the country’s youngest record store owner at just 17, the Saskatoon collectors who quit their day jobs to save their beloved shop, the 19-year-old Winnipegger who nervously slept on his shop floor the night before his grand opening, a Hamilton owner whose record store was founded with wartime internment redress payments, and a Vancouver owner who uncovered a Beatles recording so rare he personally delivered it to Paul McCartney.
About the Author
Josh Greenberg is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and currently serves as Associate Dean, Research and Graduate, in the Faculty of Public and Global Affairs. He mostly writes about crisis and risk communication, but his side hustle explores vinyl music and its cultural economy.
Josh bought his first record around the time he was 10, with money earned from his paper route. Over the decades he’s collected vinyl, cassettes and CDs, had a brief fling with MiniDiscs, and then tumbled down the rabbit hole of BitTorrents. In the mid-2000s, he found his way back to vinyl and has been rebuilding his record collection on record store trip at a time.
He lives in Ottawa with his family and ever-growing vinyl and vintage hi-fi collection.
About the Panelists
Vincent Andrisani is an Associate Professor in the Communication and Media Studies program at Carleton University. His work explores the role of sound and listening in everyday life, with interests in soundscape research, audio media practice, and popular music studies. His current research examines the relationship between listening and citizenship, with particular attention to the role of education in developing listening as a civic competency. Vincent is the founder of The Place of Sound, a student-led radio show and podcast featuring student audio work from across Carleton University.
Tara Connolly, M.A., RP, is Assistant Director of Research at the Accessibility Institute at Carleton University and a psychotherapist in private practice. As an accessibility leader with expertise in neurodivergence and transitions, her work examines how institutions can move beyond compliance into proactively fostering participation, belonging, and choice. She has been collecting records since she was 14 and has spent decades exploring record stores, drawn by the sense of community they create and by the endless possibility of finding something new.
Brett Popplewell is an associate professor of journalism at Carleton University and the author of Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain, and the Search for a Hidden Past. His writing has appeared in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best Canadian Essays. He is also a contributing writer for The Walrus and the founding editor of The Feathertale Review, a National Magazine Award-winning humour publication that released a 90-minute comedy album on vinyl in 2025.