There are plenty of holiday destinations around the world suitable for the discerning music fan. There's the Copacabana, where music and passion remain the fashion. Dead Kennedys fans may wish to take a short trip to Cambodia. The Sex Pistols' "Holiday in the Sun" could refer to a broad range of resorts, but let's guess that they meant Majorca, or Rhyl.
Toronto seems a relatively unlikely candidate for the rock 'n' roll atlas: but the largest city in Canada has a healthy music scene, if an unshowy one. In fact, it's said to be one of the best places in the world to be a musician. There are grants and loans available to bands of various levels of success, doled out to help with the expensive business of touring and making videos. This comes partly from the government and partly from the country's TV and radio broadcasters, who are legally required to pay into a "talent development fund" as well as to give a certain amount of airtime to local artists (there is a similar model in place in France). And some of this music money goes to events such as the Polaris Prize, which has just given its sixth award for best Canadian album of the year.
I arrive in the city the day before the ceremony, just as the Toronto International Film Festival is finishing. The queues for cinemas around the entertainment district are beginning to dwindle as music takes its turn in the spotlight. The Polaris Prize is a bit like the Mercury Prize, though it's smaller, indier and a lot more fun.
On a drizzly afternoon, the day of the event, I take a stroll down Canada's Walk of Fame, which honours its celebrities with a Hollywood Boulevard-style series of stars in the pavement. I pass Bryan Adams and Nelly Furtado, take a snapshot of Celine Dion, and step over Neil Young and Nickelback. Across town, Coldplay have erected an outdoor stage for a free concert to launch their latest album. When I speak to local musicians, they all tell me it's hard to get radio airtime in Canada, that the stations fill their playlists with the music celebrated by the Walk of Fame. More independent music doesn't get much of a look-in.
I start to wonder if this really is the best place to be a musician or a music fan. There's nothing wrong with Celine Dion or Bryan Adams, of course, but it doesn't feel very lively or fresh.
The Polaris ceremony rolls around. I am driven to the grand old Masonic Temple Concert Hall, where I meet artists on the shortlist. There's a broad range of ages and styles here – from singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, who has been performing since 1978, to the witchy electro of Austra's debut album and the world-conquering, Grammy-grabbing smash of Arcade Fire's The Suburbs. They talk about how nice it is to be nominated, that it gives them a boost in terms of exposure and sales. And the night itself is beery and cheery.
Arcade Fire, predictably, walk off with the honours, and when they climb up on to the stage to collect a giant cheque for $20,000 they promise to use the money to build a studio where other Canadian bands can go and record more great Canadian albums. It feels supportive and inclusive.
Later, the city's music scene congregates at the boutique Drake Hotel in the studenty west of the city for an afterparty laced with the locally brewed Steam Whistle beer and Jägermeister. After the afterparty, I'm whisked off to a local 24-hour diner to try the national dish of poutine, a much-discussed delicacy which comes in many different, mysterious, delicate combinations. Being from the north of England, I am thrilled to discover that it's essentially chips and gravy, with the innovative addition of cheese curds. We sip smuggled-in booze and listen to the diner's music selection. Like the rest of the planet, they are playing Adele.
The day after, having had a solid three hours' sleep, I meet up with Damian Abraham, who had hosted the ceremony the night before. Right now he's a radio and TV presenter for the local music channel Much Music, but in his other life he's known as Pink Eyes, the singer from hardcore band Fucked Up who set fire to a bathroom in the Masonic Temple Concert Hall a few years ago, during a live MTV broadcast. He's still officially barred from the venue; they can't have recognised him in his suit.
Damian shows me how record shops are thriving in the city. While the chains have gone, the independents are plentiful, and strangely busy for a Tuesday. The sprawling Sonic Boom, in the Annex district, is filled with CDs and a massive secondhand vinyl section, and I come away with armfuls of records. Along the way he gives me a potted history of the city's music scene and suggests bands with appealing names like Revenge Abortion and Molested Teen (though I've since Googled both, with a reckless disregard for my cache, and I wonder if he was pulling my leg).
From Sonic Boom we head to the similarly healthy Soundscapes, Rotate This, and Planet of Sound, though when we drive out to the east to find Rick's Emporium, a secondhand CD shop Damian used to go to when he was younger, we find a doughnut store standing in its place. We console ourselves with a burger from the tiny, shack-like Burger's Priest. I still dream, and drool, about it: an unspecified melty cheese is sandwiched between two mushrooms, and the whole thing is coated in crispy Panko breadcrumbs and then fried. I think it could be the best burger in the world.
Damian drops me off in a coffee shop on Queen Street West, where I meet up with Steve Jordan, the founder and organiser of the Polaris. He's nursing a sore head, but tells me he's already planning next year's ceremony. He reels off a list of venues I need to go to, from the tiny Bovine Sex Club, which has hosted everyone from the Strokes to the Kings of Leon, to the Horseshoe Tavern, open since 1947, hosting acts as varied as Loretta Lynn and the Ramones.
But there are no bands playing that night – there's a post-Polaris feeling in the air – so I hop on the streetcar to meet up with new friends from the night before, and prop up a few bars with farewell gin and tonics. There's a chance my flight home will be cancelled because of a strike, but as I meet more and more people who know DJs or are in bands or who work in record shops or who put on nights, offers of floors to stay on, of shows to see, of clubs to go to, flood in. I think that, yes, this is a good place to love music, and I start to hope that the strike goes ahead after all.
Way to go
The 2012 Polaris Music prize (polarismusicprize.ca) takes place on 24 September 2012. British Airways (britishairways.com) flies to Toronto from £469 return including taxes. Rooms at the Drake Hotel (thedrakehotel.ca) start at $169. For more information,
go to seetorontonow.com
