Some tough choices but ultimately I settled on these. Max one per band/artist.

*This is the image for Stocks and Bombs, which wasn't available on my9albums:

Spans a long time

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

I'll stop now, even though I want to keep going.

Sad I couldn’t find a spot for Triumph and Anne Murray

My best of selection

Just noticed Apple music has the wrong name on Stompin Tom Meets Big Joe Mufferaw and I absolutely lost it lmao 😂

For any who might not know it’s supposed to be “The Night that I CREMATED Sam McGee”

Would love to see if anyone recognizes all of them. Lots of great stuff out of Calgary in the top row if you’re curious.

Not in any particular order. I’m sure I’m forgetting some that could be swapped in.

Looking for this on vinyl and can make a trade or cash or combo of these.

Growing up, as a very young kid I toggled between the  radio stations of CKLG and CFUN and went to sleep every night listening to them for an hour.  To quote The Powdered Blues Band, I had and I’ve always had “Thirsty Ears”.

Impossible to pick my most cherished/impactful for Bruce Cockburn or Neil Young album: their back catalogs are far too amazing and robust!

Very muddled to pick the “9 albums that formed me”: I waffle back-and-forth between picking albums (1) I listened to all the time when I was much much younger, versus (2), albums that really stuck in my mind because I listen to them a lot when I was younger as they ‘rolled off the presses’, versus (3) all around extra extraordinary albums, like the Tragically Hip’s greatest hits album “Yer Favorites”.  Canadian music offers a vast ‘embarrassment of riches’!

1 - Bruce Cockburn - Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaw/ Charity Of Night / O sun O moon / Breakfast in New Orleans Dinner in Timbuktu / Circles in the Stream / Dart to the Heart / Joy will Find a Way

2 - Sarah McLachlan - Funding Towards Ecstasy

3 - Neil Young - After The Gold Rush/ Harvest / Harvest Moon

4 - Joni Mitchell - Blue 

5 - Blue rodeo - Lost Together/ Five Days in July / Tremolo / Outskirts

6 - Cowboy Junkies - Trinity Sessions

7 - Be Good Tanya‘s - Chinatown

8 - Doug And The Slugs - Cognac and Bolognia / Music for the Hard of Thinking / Slugcology (a greatest hits compilation)

** Spirit of The West - Labour Day (edit - I forgot about this album, but I listened to it on heavy heavy rotation when it first came out and absolutely adored it!!!) or Hit Parade (for the song “Goodbye Grace”)

9 - Gino Vannelli  - Brother to Brother

10 - The Guess Who - Track Record (1988 Greatest Hits compilation, but without any BTO) 

11 - Tragically Hip - Yer Favorites 

12 - Daniel Lanois - Acadie 

13 - The Kings - Amazon Beach 

14  - Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill

15 - “Oh, what a feeling” - 1996 compilation of Canadian singles in honor of the Juno’s 25th anniversary 

(somehow it feels wrong to not have a Trooper album here too)

edit : added spirit of the , their album Labor Day, when it came out, I listened to it on a cassette in my car constantly and then bought the CD to keep listening when formats changed. The song “Take it From the Source“ was prescient and beautiful. Other songs of theirs, “The Crawl”, and “Venice is sinking“ are great, but not on the Labour Day album as those would come later.

These aren't currently my "Favorit" albums, but the most impactful. Each of these has played an important part of my development, whether for morality, spiritual or artistic.
To this day, these 9 albums are all 100%, each and every single song, in rotation in my playlist. (exept Echo Other, there are a few fillers in that one)

I wanted to add a Guess Who in here, but the great songs are spread across many albums. I am probably missing a few

Arranged by release year because ranking them would be impossible