Walt Grealis

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Walt Grealis (February 18, 1929 – January 20, 2004) was a Canadian publisher and music industry leader from Toronto. He co-founded Canada’s national music awards, the Juno Awards, with Stan Klees and helped popularize the term CanCon for Canadian content. He started his career in policing—first with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and then as a Toronto police officer—before moving into the music business in 1960. In February 1964 he started RPM, a weekly magazine for the Canadian music industry, which ran until 2000. With Klees, he created the Gold Leaf Awards to honor Canadian music; from 1964 to 1969 winners were announced in RPM, and in 1970 the ceremony became a formal event and was renamed the Juno Awards. Grealis was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993 and was inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999. After his death, the Junos created the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award in his honor in 2004. He died in Toronto from lung cancer; he was a non-smoker.