When Toronto Had Canada's Most Famous Record Store | The Story of Sam the Record Man

In 1961, Sam Sniderman moved his record business into a building at 347 Yonge Street. Over the next forty-six years it grew into three floors, forty thousand square feet and four hundred thousand titles. It became the largest record store in the country, and the place where the Canadian music industry found out what the country was actually buying. Sniderman put Canadian records in the window before there was any commercial reason to. He lobbied for Canadian content rules on radio, helped organise the first Juno Awards, and built a recordings archive at the University of Toronto that earned him the Order of Canada in 1976. Then HMV opened three doors down, Wal-Mart started selling CDs below cost, and Napster arrived. Sam the Record Man filed for bankruptcy in 2001 and closed for good on June 30, 2007. Two days before the doors shut, Ryerson University told the family it intended to expropriate the building. What happened to the store's neon signs after that took eleven years, three city staff reports, a council vote, and more than thirty consultation meetings. References: Globe and Mail: display ad, Sep 4 1961 · Niester, Nov 23 1996 · Strauss & Saunders, Oct 31 2001 · Coutts, Jun 2 2007 · Barber, Jul 4 2007 · "Saga of Sam's," Jul 7 2007 · Church, Feb 11 2010 · Baluja, Nov 10 2011 · Wheeler, Sep 25 2012 · Katawazi, Jul 29 2017 Toronto Star: Black, May 30 2007 · Girard and Kopun, Jun 28 2007 · Quill and Watson, Jun 30 2007 · Girard, Jan 18 2008 · Alam, Apr 15 2017 City of Toronto: Motion M76 (2007) · City Solicitor report and Motion MM22.13 (2008) · Urban Design staff report TE26.34 (2013) · Council decision TE26.34 (Oct 2013) · Deputy City Manager report PG34.5 and staff presentation (2014) Legislation: University Expropriation Powers Act, RSO 1990 c. U.3 · Expropriations Act, RSO 1990 c. E.26 · Ontario Heritage Act, RSO 1990 c. O.18 Other: Jamie Bradburn, Torontoist (2012) · Nicholas Jennings, obituary (2012) and Before the Gold Rush (1997) · The Canadian Encyclopedia · Billboard (2007) · CBC (2012) · CTV (2007) · TMU release (2018) · Global News (2024) · Toronto Life (2015) · Infrastructure Institute, U of T (2022) · blogTO · torontojourney416 · tayloronhistory Credits: Hot Swing by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-... Artist: http://incompetech.com/