Great Canadian Song Quest

Great Canadian Song Quest is a Canadian songwriting contest, presented by CBC Music. The competition has been presented in three editions to date, in 2009, 2010 and 2013.

For the inaugural installation of Great Canadian Song Quest 13 Canadian musical artists, one from each province and territory, were asked to write a song about a location in their home province which was selected by a listener vote.

The resulting songs subsequently aired in a special presentation on the network, and were released to iTunes as a compilation album.

The competition was announced on September 7, 2009, and officially launched on September 28. Promoted primarily by Tom Allen's Radio 2 Morning and Rich Terfry's Radio 2 Drive, the first phase of the contest asked listeners to nominate a location in their province on the network's website. Listeners could then use various online tools, including Twitter, Facebook, online photo and video galleries and Blogger or WordPress blogs, to create a promotional campaign for their nominee.

In the second phase, listeners were provided with a shortlist of songwriters from each province, and were asked to vote on which artist would be chosen to write a song about their province's winning location.

The winning artists and locations were announced on October 26. The songs premiered on a network broadcast, and were released in album form on CBC Records and iTunes, on November 23.

All of the artists except Wainwright also performed their songs in a live concert at Toronto's Glenn Gould Studio theatre on December 15; Wainwright was unable to attend because she had recently given birth to her first child. The concert was aired on Radio 2's Canada Live in January 2010.

...
Wikipedia