A Nation of Tinkerers: A History of Canadian Electronic Music from 1945–1985

The untold story of Canadian electronic music from post-war labs to global pop.

For decades, the history of Canadian electronic music has existed in fragments—footnotes, anecdotes, and half-remembered stories preserved by enthusiasts and archivists. A Nation of Tinkerers gathers these scattered pieces into the first comprehensive account of how Canada helped shape the global evolution of electronic sound. Beginning in the post-war years and spanning four decades, the book uncovers a vibrant culture of invention, experimentation, and collaboration rarely acknowledged in mainstream histories.

Michael Rancic situates these developments within a broader story about technology, creativity, and politics. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and decades of music journalism, he reveals how early electronic music was shaped not only by breakthroughs in engineering but by collaborative communities spanning avant-garde composition, psychedelia, reggae, disco, hip-hop, and experimental pop. What appears, at first glance, as solitary tinkering emerges instead as a profoundly social practice rooted in shared curiosity, improvisation, and play.

The book also examines the pivotal moment when public support receded and the free market took hold, reshaping both the tools available to musicians and the visibility of Canada’s inventors on the world stage. This shift produced lasting consequences: instruments once made in university labs or independent workshops struggled to secure mass production, even as electronic sound became central to mainstream music.

By illuminating the work of overlooked engineers, composers, and scene-builders, Rancic shows how their innovations paved the way for contemporary electronic and pop artists—from Caribou and Grimes to The Halluci Nation and Kaytranada—and for the digital production environments that shape the music of Drake, The Weeknd, and Justin Bieber. In doing so, A Nation of Tinkerers reframes electronic music as a key site for understanding Canada’s cultural identity, technological imagination, and artistic legacy.

Expansive, incisive, and richly detailed, the book provides an essential account of how Canada’s early electronic musicians and inventors helped build the sonic world we now take for granted.

Michael Rancic is a freelance arts and culture journalist based in Toronto. He’s the co-founder of multistakeholder music journalism cooperative New Feeling and has written for Maisonneuve, The Walrus, Hazlitt, Spacing, CBC Music, and Bandcamp Daily, among other outlets. His work often looks at the intersection of emerging art, public policy, and technology.