🎙️ From MuchMusic to CKWS to Lionhearts: Turning the Camera on Bill Welychka

When I asked Bill Welychka about himself, he steered me to a particular wall. Inside the Lionhearts warehouse, it's covered in faces and short stories of people who got a hand up when they needed one. Lionhearts calls it the Why Wall. For the man who spent decades interviewing famous faces on MuchMusic, these faces are the new job.

Bill Welychka is a longtime Kingston broadcaster, author and now the Director of Storytelling and Media at Lionhearts, a charity that rescues surplus food and essential goods and gets them to people who need them. Canadians know him from his years as a host on MuchMusic and MuchMoreMusic. Kingston knows him from more than a decade on CKWS, from his radio shifts on 96.3 Big FM, and from emceeing what seems like half the charity events in town.

Bill grew up in Welland, then moved with his mom, Barb, to Richmond Hill, Thornhill and Barrie. She was a huge role model for helping others, and in the book he credits her with passing on her compassion and her habit of giving to charity.

As a teen he taped band photos from Creem magazine inside his locker and covered his jean jacket in band patches. In his best-selling memoir, A Happy Has-Been, he writes that many of those bands later became people he interviewed.

He studied radio and television broadcasting at Seneca College, where he fell in love with editing. The week he graduated in 1988, MuchMusic hired him as a video editor. Bill writes that the biggest thrill was working at the station he had watched in high school. He calls moments like that "perfect circles."

In his first year at Much, Bill pitched a weekly country music video show. Outlaws & Heroes launched soon after, with Bill as its editor, and by 1992 he was hosting it. In late 1994 he became a MuchMusic VJ, and in 2000 he moved to the sister station, MuchMoreMusic. By his count he has done more than 5,000 interviews, with everyone from Garth Brooks and Madonna to Prince, all three surviving members of Led Zeppelin and The Tragically Hip (several times).

Those Much years still have a following. In 2023, Bill was interviewed for 299 Queen Street West, a documentary about MuchMusic's glory days, and joined several stops on its cross-Canada tour.

In the summer of 2005, Bill walked away from national TV to co-host Citytv Edmonton's new Breakfast Television. It meant a pay cut and a smaller market. In the book he writes that he realized "making less money but being happy meant more to me than making a whole lot of money but being frustrated." That choice would come up again. From 2006 to 2011 he was a weather anchor and host at A-Channel in Ottawa.

In June 2012, CKWS-TV in Kingston called. Bill was hired to host and produce Live at 5, which grew into The WS Daily, and he later co-hosted and co-produced Global News Morning with Maegen Kulchar. From 2014 to 2019 he also wrote a monthly column for the Kingston Whig-Standard. Off camera, he became one of Kingston's go-to emcees for charity events. In the book's foreword, The Tragically Hip's Paul Langlois writes that Bill "does so much for our community, like, constantly!"

When Corus cut back its Kingston TV programming in 2023, Bill moved to radio. He hosted middays on 96.3 Big FM and became music director for 104.3 Fresh FM. In the book he calls it "yet another perfect circle," back in full-time music broadcasting 35 years after he started. In 2024 Corus cut its Kingston stations again, and this time Bill was among those let go. He had radio offers in other parts of Ontario and turned them down to stay in Kingston. Late that year he took a job as a sales consultant at Gananoque Chevrolet Buick GMC. Then Lionhearts came calling.

Bill liked selling cars more than he expected to. At Gan Chev he saw a vehicle as more than a commission. "A vehicle provides economic means, it provides freedom," he told us. The money was good, too. But something was missing. "I need to feel like I'm contributing to the community somehow," he says.

The something was Lionhearts. Bill had interviewed founder and CEO Travis Blackmore several times at CKWS, and one trait stuck with him. "He doesn't say no," Bill says. A pallet of laminate flooring? Travis finds a shelter that needs new floors. Open in Ottawa? Yes. London? Yes. "I consider him a hero," Bill says. "I have musical heroes, but this is a different kind of hero. This is a life-changing hero."

It was Travis who pitched Bill on coming over to do media. When Bill asked what the job would be called, Travis came back with Director of Storytelling and Media. "And I thought, 'Perfect,'" Bill says.

For someone who started out in a MuchMusic edit suite, it's the latest perfect circle in his life. In Lionhearts' announcement of his hire, Bill put it this way: "Everything I have done professionally, from engaging the community to interviewing to telling stories to bringing people together, has paved the way to this moment in time."

The short answer: Bill finds the stories behind Lionhearts' work and turns them into video. He interviews volunteers, donors, partner agencies and the people Lionhearts helps, then edits the footage himself and posts it to YouTube and Lionhearts' social channels.

"I love a lot of the behind-the-scenes things of media. I love editing. I love producing," he says. A good interview can mean a couple of hours in the edit suite for a five- or six-minute piece. He's thinking of two audiences when he cuts it. Supporters get to see what their money is doing. And people who have only heard the name get a reason to look closer. "Oh, I didn't know they do that," is the reaction he's after.

He isn't short of material. Lionhearts has dozens and dozens of volunteers, and "everyone has a story," Bill says. Right now he's interviewing the donors behind Lionhearts' fall matching campaign about why they stepped up. Community groups keep asking him to come out and speak, too.

He also has trouble leaving it at the office. One recent Sunday he came in to edit a couple of stories he couldn't finish on Friday, alone in the warehouse. "That's when you know you love your job," he says, "when you can go in on a weekend and want to. Not have to. But want to."

It's an old habit. Back at MuchMusic, he says, he would go in on weekends when he was editing a special, so the phone wouldn't ring and he'd have the edit bay to himself.

Bill has been showing donors where their money goes for a long time. In 1999, World Vision Canada asked him to host the video for its 30 Hour Famine, the fundraiser shown in high schools across the country. Bill noticed that every year's video looked the same: the need, and how dire it was.

His pitch was to keep the need in the video, but also "show where last year's money went," he told us. "Let's show the village with its new wells. Let's show the farmer's field of lush green crops." World Vision agreed and sent him to Kenya to help write and produce it. In the book he writes that the video helped raise record funds.

At Lionhearts, that idea is on the wall. The Why Wall greets visitors at the warehouse with portraits and short stories of people Lionhearts has helped. "This is a direct result of donations," Bill says. "This is why we do what we do." Telling more of those stories is now his job.

He's off to a fast start. Travis told him recently that he'd posted more stories in one week than Lionhearts had all of last year. Bill's reaction? "I don't think I've done enough."

Singer Poe, one of the many artists Bill interviewed at MuchMusic, once told CBC Music that "the first question he asked was always, 'How are you feeling?'" So when we sat down with him in September, we asked him. He told us he's "one of the happiest people in our region right now."

After the Corus cuts, Bill had choices. "It would've been easy to move somewhere else to take another media job. I had offers," he says. "It would've been easy to continue to sell cars. It's very lucrative." He knew what he didn't want, though. Cuts were happening everywhere in media, so moving to a bigger market was no guarantee. And more to the point, "I love our region. I love Kingston."

Some people still don't get it. "Why are you leaving? You're making less money," Bill says, repeating what he's heard. "And it's like, it's not about that." What it is about, he says, is what everyone wants out of life: "to feel like you've contributed, and to feel that you have made a difference in your tiny, tiny way."

He knew Kingston was home within about a month of arriving in 2012, once he started booking local guests and promoting local charities. "There's just a sense of community, a sense of taking care of each other," he says. "I'm honoured to call this home, honoured to be part of this community, and I would do anything to elevate it."

He has been doing just that for years. Bill emceed the Kingston premiere of The Tragically Hip documentary No Dress Rehearsal at the Isabel, which raised $80,000 for United Way KFL&A. On CKWS, he made a point of featuring local musicians alongside national and international acts. He has called Chinlock Wrestling cards and Queen's Gaels games, hosted the YGK Craft Beer Fest at Fort Henry and Rockin' the Rock on Howe Island, and helped the Kingston Brain Cancer Walk.

Kingston has noticed. In A Happy Has-Been, Bill shares what Mayor Bryan Paterson told him after the Corus layoffs: "Bill, you are probably one of the most enthusiastic, authentic, heart-felt community ambassadors this city has ever had."

"I always have time for everyone," he says with a smile. His fiancée, Amanda Alves, often jokes that they can't go anywhere without someone stopping to say hello. But it's something she admires about him: his genuine ability to connect with people and make everyone feel welcome. For him, those interactions are never an inconvenience. "I've never had a bad experience," he says.

The two met in 2016 on Brock Street, around the corner from the TV station. In A Happy Has-Been, he puts it this way: "I now know a happy life means being loved and giving love. (Thank you, Amanda!)"

If there's a music lover on your list, or you would love a behind-the-scenes peek at Bill's life, check out his memoir. A Happy Has-Been: Exciting Times and Lessons Learned by One of Canada's Foremost Entertainment Journalists came out in 2023, with an expanded second edition in 2025 that adds more stories and photos. The foreword is by The Tragically Hip's Paul Langlois.

There are plenty of star stories, from Ozzy Osbourne and Dave Grohl to Duran Duran and Public Enemy, along with the moves that eventually brought Bill to Kingston. What you won't find is gossip. When the book first came out, Bill says, some people expected a tell-all about parties and rock stars. He has no time for the kind of entertainment coverage that's about "who's in rehab and who's got cellulite now." "So the book is not that," he says. His stories are told with respect, and his values come through on nearly every page.

It isn't all backstage passes, either. On a MuchMusic trip to India, he tossed a banana toward a tree full of monkeys and had to dive back into the van when about twenty of them charged. Later, his A-Channel assignments in Ottawa had him skydiving, polar-dipping into the Ottawa River and driving in a demolition derby. He also let the Ottawa Police Service pepper spray him and hit him with a Taser in the same hour, because he figured it would make good television. The camera missed the Taser shot. When his cameraperson asked if he could do it again, Bill writes, his answer was "REALLY? NO WAY!"

Then there's the wrestling. Bill was MuchMusic's resident pro wrestling fan, and in Kingston he met Jan Murphy, a Whig-Standard writer and editor who co-ran the local Chinlock Wrestling with Justin Cousineau, with the proceeds going to charity. Bill kept saying yes to stepping into the ring. He won tag-team matches, took two DDTs on Bill Welychka Appreciation Night in 2018 before his hero The Honky Tonk Man ran in to rescue him, and wrestled his first singles match at Chinlock Wrestling 5 at the Leon's Centre on June 15, 2019. The day's net proceeds went to Youth Diversion.

He never planned to write it. "I just started scribbling down stuff in a notebook one day," he says, "and it just sort of evolved." In the book he writes that he believes "everyone has a great story worthy of a published book."

Bill's official launch of A Happy Has-Been at the Tir Nan Og in Kingston, September 2023.

The book has even inspired a movie. Still Alive in Kingston, written and directed by Kingston filmmaker Jay Middaugh, is loosely based on A Happy Has-Been, with plenty of creative liberties, and Bill plays a version of himself. Part comedy and part music documentary, it showcases Kingston's music scene, and it had its world premiere at a sold-out Grand Theatre during the Kingston Canadian Film Festival in March 2025. Jay told the Whig-Standard what struck him when he first pitched Bill the idea: "This guy doesn't have an ego." On his website, Bill says he signed on because the script is "big and brilliant and also very funny," and "the thread throughout the film is music."

And your purchase does some good. Partial proceeds go to the White Ribbon Campaign, which works to end men's violence against women, and to women's shelters across Canada. Bill has supported it since he emceed its benefit concert with The Tea Party in 1997.

You'll find A Happy Has-Been at Indigo in Kingston, and online from Amazon, Kobo and FriesenPress. Bill's own site links to all of them.

We asked Bill who in Kingston is doing good work that deserves more attention. It's a hard question for someone who seems to know everyone, and he warned us the list could go on forever.

His first answer came without a pause: Travis Blackmore, the former touring musician who founded Lionhearts in Kingston in 2014 by arranging to rescue surplus produce from a local Costco. Today it runs in Kingston, Ottawa and London.

Then the names kept coming:

He also gave a nod to the Nature Conservancy of Canada for buying and protecting land in the region. "There's another organization that is motivated to make it even better."

Want to see Bill in action, or back his new cause? Here's where you'll find him over the next few weeks.

Double your donation to Lionhearts, until Sunday, November 8. Through Lionhearts' Big Hearts. Bigger Impact. campaign, every donation is matched dollar for dollar, up to $70,000. The matching partners are the estate of Dr. Tony Ashworth, the Britton Smith Foundation, Revell Ford and Revell Lincoln, Janet Lee, Kids 4 Kids, the Ritchie Fund and the Rotary Club of Kingston. Bill has been interviewing them about why they stepped up, and you can watch those stories on Lionhearts' YouTube channel. Give at lionhearts.ca/match.

Travis Blackmore and Bill give an update on the Big Hearts. Bigger Impact. matching campaign, in a video Bill produced for Lionhearts.

Wednesday, November 4: Bill interviews Rick "The Temp" Campanelli. Kingston WritersFest hosts Tempted: An Evening with Rick Campanelli and Bill Welychka at the Tett Centre. Two MuchMusic alumni talk about Rick's new memoir, Tempted, about life in music and entertainment and his gambling addiction.

Friday, November 27: Christmas with Lionhearts. Lionhearts' first Christmas concert comes to the Isabel, with Brett Emmons of The Glorious Sons, Tiny Horse, Canadian Idol winner Ryan Malcolm, Abby Stewart and the Lionhearts House Band. Bill co-hosts with Reid & Ben, Big G & Matty, and Sideshow. Bill expects the Why Wall portraits to be on display in the lobby. Tickets are $49.99.