"It is odd," reflects Brian Robertson on being free from the 7-day-a-week, 10-plus-hour-a-day job he held for 30 years as president of the Toronto-based Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA). He took a phone-free caribbean vacation with his wife, Jo, for a week, which he called "magnificent."

"I never really had a decent vacation," says Robertson. "I've never been absent from a cell phone or email, no matter if I took a week off, and this had been going on for 30 years. When you're clamped to a responsibility like that for that long, to all of a sudden unlock it and step away, it is weird."

The father of three grown children, Sarah, Lisa and Jamie, and a first-time granddad, is looking forward to spending more time with his family, but he's not retiring by any means. "The R word is not in my vocabulary," he assures. "This is just stepping down from one thing and looking for other opportunities."

While Robertson may now indulge a bit more in his favorite pastimes, tennis and golf, and perhaps get to finally travel to Egypt, Israel, Australia and New Zealand, he has plenty to occupy his time. He is working on two musicals, one of which is with composers Marc Jordan and Amy Sky; entertaining a book offer on the Canadian music business; and continuing his relationship with the Royal Canadian Air Farce, for which he helped secure its CBC television show in the early OE90s. He also remains governor of the Corporation of Roy Thomson Hall and Massey Hall and a board member of the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards Foundation.

"It's as busy. It's just interesting being able to clear your head and plan," he says. "I'm looking at a number of opportunities and there will be some clarity in this direction in the months ahead."

Robertson, who was inducted into the Canadian Music Industry Hall Of Fame during Canadian Music Week's Canadian Music Industry Awards on March 3, has been appointed chairman emeritus of CRIA, and is acting consultant to his successor, Graham Henderson. From helping to establish a national awards show to watching vinyl give way to cassettes then CDs to the current digital format, to creating the parental advisory stickering system and helping to update the antiquated copyright laws, Robertson has seen tremendous change in the Canadian music industry over the past three decades.

The two constant issues have been piracy ( both physical and digital) and Canada's "embarrassingly inept" copyright laws. "The original copyright act, when I got involved, referred to sound recordings as perforated rolls. It was in the 1920s language and it took us 10 years to get it changed. All we did is bring it into the 20th century. It was just bizarre, and now we're battling to bring it into the 21st century."

The April 2004 ruling by the federal court against CRIA's motion to begin suing music uploaders and file-sharers for copyright infringement is the main issue Robertson would've liked to have seen reversed before he stepped down. The appeal is still outstanding. "That was total madness in terms of what that decision was," says a still perplexed Robertson. "Based on our appeal, it's got to be reversed. It has to be. It's been widely ridiculed. We're viewed as a third world country, not only for the lack of copyright action but rulings like that. That was disappointing, but it will be resolved in the spring."

Robertson admits he didn't have too many qualifications to prepare him for the career path he eventually took. Born in Lancaster, England, his main area of studies in his teens were arts and literature. One of the first jobs Robertson had when he finished school was running a small independent label called Qualiton for about two years. There, he was also involved in Cliff Richard's career before he signed with EMI.

In Robertson's early 20s, he worked for the Harold Holt Organization, then one of Europe's largest concert agencies, which represented major orchestras, festivals, ballet companies, and touring artists. "Basically I did a lot of their marketing," he says.

While he stayed there for a few years, Robertson admits, "I was never compatible with the English business culture . I was a lot more attune to the American way of doing business. England is a very closed society and it's very steeped in tradition, so they're not necessarily open to new ideas, it's changed a bit now, but at the time they weren't, and I just felt really constrained."

Possessing an entrepreneurial instinct, Robertson took an enormous leap and decided to immigrate to Toronto, Canada, in 1967, barely knowing a soul. Through a journalist friend, he joined the nation's then largest advertising agency, MacLaren Advertising.

Among his unique accomplishments working in the special projects division was devising a way to promote the new Molson Golden brand in Alberta and Saskatchewan where laws prohibited advertising of beer or liquor. "We put together a whole road show which included a discotheque and big performance set up, and took it around to all the towns in the two provinces, and launched the beer that way."

In 1973, after six years with MacLaren and a newly minted Canadian citizenship card, Robertson established his own company, Marketplace Communications, and CRIA was one of his first clients. While still at MacLaren, Robertson had met with a number of the record company heads who had approached MacLaren to do a feasibility study on the restructuring of the association, which at that time was called The Canadian Record Manufacturers Association.

Through MacLaren, Robertson made the recommendations, including the name change. When Robertson left to form his own company, the CRIA principals decided to move with him. "The arrangement was that I would work full time for the association, provided I was given the flexibility to work on some non-competing production opportunities," says Robertson. "Up to that point, I had already produced a number of theatrical projects.

"They agreed and we set up an outside office with me and a secretary," says Robertson, who went on to create the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, head the AV Preservation Trust, and sit on various boards from the Shaw Festival to the National Theatre School.

"When I first got involved, there was no true national music industry here. There were very active regional pockets. So one of the objectives I brought forward was to find something that would link it all together. It seemed to me that a national award format would do it, which is what came to be the Juno Awards," recounts Robertson.

The Junos was then a Toronto awards show put on by since-defunct tradepaper RPM Weekly. Robertson says initially RPM cofounders Stan Klees and the late Walt Grealis weren't interested in expanding to national television, so CRIA and other industry figures went about creating its own award show. Then RPM changed its mind and Robertson and his colleagues were able to negotiate the first television deal for the Junos in 1975.

"I like to think that's what pulled everything together into a national focus," says Robertson, who executive produced the first nine telecasts. CRIA's membership broadened and the Canadian Academy Of Recordings Arts & Sciences was established. Robertson subsequently served as the president of CARAS and administered both organizations from his office, until CARAS got so large it spun into a separate stand-alone organization.

In 84, when MuchMusic launched and began using music videos as programming, CRIA initiated the establishment of the Audio-Video Licensing Agency. "The popularity of the music video had taken it from a modest promotion tool to a major programming commodity," explains Robertson, who subsequently negotiated licensing rights with MuchMusic and any other establishments which used music videos. Today, the AVLA represents 380 rights owners and collects and distributes annual revenues in excess of $16-million.

As both an observer, an artist advocate and an integral voice in the Canadian recording industry the past 30 years, Robertson says he foresaw the advent of the digital medium and all its ensuing problems, as well as the opportunities.

"In hindsight, as the major companies have acknowledged, when Shawn Fanning launched Napster, the strategy should've been to embrace the technology rather than initially fight it, but none of us at the time foresaw the impact the technology would have both on how you access music, and, of course, the devastating effects on the industry. As a consequence, for me, there have been more changes in the last five years than in the previous 25."

So with all his wisdom and experience, where does Robertson feel the industry is headed in the next 10 years?

"Well I can tell you it will be a positive journey. The industry is in the process of building a new business model that will serve it well. Recorded music has never been as popular as it is now and the vibrant blend of legal online services and a resurgent traditional retail base, coupled with consolidation with the major companies, will provide a much healthier business climate."

"The songwriting and performing talent in Canada now is as active and exciting as it ever has been, so the creative juices will still flow, and the opportunities will still exist for them through the major company channels, or the independent sector. I believe the future has never been brighter."

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