NORTHERN ONTARIO'S SECRET RECORD PRESSING UNDERGROUND

By Gordon McKenzie
Senior Archivist, Bud Bungalow Archives
Research Article
Published: Feb 6, 1989
Archive Reference: BBA-RH-2026-001

The stories never made it south, but up along the lakes north of Sudbury and the logging roads outside Thunder Bay, records moved like contraband. Pressing plants weren’t supposed to exist out there, but they did - hidden behind bait shops, tucked under sawmills, or buried in basements that smelled like pine sap and gasoline. Guys who couldn’t get a foot in the door with labels in Toronto started cutting their own wax, hauling secondhand lathes up the highway and wiring them into whatever power they could steal. The sound was rough, full of hiss and warble, but it had something the city didn’t: space. You could hear the lakes in it, the wind through spruce, the low mechanical grind of industry.

By the late ’60s, it wasn’t just music - it was a network. Truckers carried crates of unmarked records between camps, trading them for fuel, food, or cash no one wrote down. Local bands pressed runs of fifty, maybe a hundred copies at most, sleeves hand-printed or stamped with ink that smeared if you touched it too long. Word spread through diners and bush parties, not radio. A record cut in a shack outside Kenora might end up spinning weeks later in a garage in Sault Ste. Marie, passed hand to hand like a secret. No contracts, no royalties - just the understanding that if your sound was good enough, it would travel.

Then, like most things that grow too real, it started to fade. By the mid-’70s, bigger labels crept north, looking to clean it up, standardize it, make it sell. Some of the old pressers shut down overnight; others tried to go legit and lost whatever made them worth hearing in the first place. But every so often, someone would find one of those records - warped, scratched, barely playable - and drop the needle. And through the crackle, you could still hear it: not just a band, but a whole underground that never asked for permission, and never needed it.

About the Author

Gordon McKenzie is the Senior Archivist for the Bud Bungalow Archives and a researcher of Canada's forgotten independent recording culture. His work focuses on uncovering the stories behind the musicians, studios, and lost pressings that shaped Northern Ontario's underground music scene between 1961 and 1982. His research draws from surviving recordings, studio documents, private collections, and oral histories gathered throughout the region.

About the Bud Bungalow Archives
The Bud Bungalow Archives preserve the stories, artists, recordings, photographs, and folklore of Northern Ontario's legendary independent recording scene (1961–1982). Each article combines archival research, oral histories, and recovered studio documents to celebrate Canada's fictional - but wonderfully believable - Lost Pressings™.