On June 30, Kathleen Edwards is headlining a free concert in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Canada Day. She’s a highly regarded singer-songwriter whose third album, Asking for Flowers, has placed her on the cusp of an international breakthrough. By next year, she may have emulated her friend and countrywoman Leslie Feist, who recently sold out the Albert Hall on the back of her iPod Nano ad hit, 1234, and left-field album The Remainder.

Edwards and Feist are just the latest Canadian female singers to make international waves. No other country can boast such a successful record in nurturing and exporting female singers, songwriters and performers. Until the end of the 1980s, there wasn’t much, aside from Joni Mitchell and the songbird Anne Murray. Then came a veritable flood: Alanis Morissette, Céline Dion, Shania Twain, kd lang, Diana Krall, Alannah Myles, Sarah McLachlan, Jane Siberry, Loreena McKennitt, Martha Wainwright, Peaches, Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado. What was so intriguing was the diversity of genre, everything from country and power ballads to jazz standards, electronica and R&B.

While Joni Mitchell is viewed by much of the world as one of the California confessionals, back home she is - and always will be – Roberta Joan Anderson, the polio survivor from Saskatoon. “Joni’s importance to songwriters is incalculable,” says Larry LeBlanc, a leading figure in the Canadian music business. “What Canada does best is meat-and-potatoes rock- and folk-oriented singer-songwriters. When I listen to Sarah Harmer, Kathleen and Alana Levandoski, their songs get under my skin, just as Joni’s used to years ago.”

This explosion of songwriting talent shows no signs of abating. Identical twins Tegan and Sara are about to return to the UK, after a recent tour, with their close-harmony folk-rock album The Con. Levandoski created waves with her debut, Unsettled Down, and her upcoming second album, partly recorded in a church in rural Manitoba, has some stunning songs. She is a great friend of Serena Ryder, who just may be the next great Canadian singer. Striking-looking and stunning live, Ryder won a 2008 Juno (Canadian Grammy) for new artist of the year. Her last album, If Your Memory Serves You Well, was a well-crafted, if predictable, selection of songs from the great Canadian songbook. Yet the standout track was one of three originals, Weak in the Knees, demonstrating that her writing may finally be matching her three-octave voice.

Those who enjoy Feist should check out Simon Wilcox, a hit female songwriter with a boy’s name and three albums’ worth of wit and imagination. The internet has helped spread the global word for roots musicians such as the Yukon-based folk singer Kim Beggs and Little Miss Higgins, a pocket-sized powerhouse who mixes originals with 1930s Memphis blues standards. Canada has a relatively small population, so where has all this talent sprung from? And why?

“Historically, the US record industry has used smash-and-grab tactics - taking artists like Joni, Shania Twain and Avril Lavigne, then marketing them to the world as American artists,” explains the BBC Radio 2 DJ Bob Harris, a long-term supporter of Canadian artists. “There is a certain degree of resentment, in that Canadian musicians can feel swamped by American culture, so they love to show that they can match it. For most, though, it is not in their DNA to hunt the dollar. They know they are not going to sell a million copies of their records at home, so there is more small-label infrastructure, more awareness of the concept of building a following one fan at a time. They stand by the integrity of the music, and if that takes them on to success, great. And the Canadian government sees musicians as travelling ambassadors.”

It does more than that. In 1971, because of concern about creeping American cultural hegemony, a law was passed requiring AM radio stations to play at least 30% Canadian content. FM stations followed in 1975, and in 1998 the quota was raised to 35%. In 1982, concerned that there was not enough music to satisfy these Canadian content (CanCon) requirements, three radio networks and two industry bodies founded Factor (the Foundation to Assist Canadian Talent on Recordings), a not-for-profit organisation loaning money to new artists.

Factor started dispensing public money in 1986 and now distributes £7m a year. In essence, the money is a grant to help artists to finance tours at home and internationally, as well as record albums. Sarah McLachlan might never have made her multi-platinum album, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, had it not been for Factor funding.

“Factor is the bedrock of Canada’s music industry,” LeBlanc says. “It has had a pivotal role in the country’s emergence as a player in global music. On a subliminal level, the tremendous success of Alanis, Shania and Céline definitely encouraged the new generation. Now Canada pops up a couple of international singers every year.” Grants and CanCon notwithstanding, Canada is a tough proving ground. Radio prefers to play established artists, rather than newcomers – Kathleen Edwards’s first album contains the gem One More Song the Radio Won’t Like. Musicians have to travel long distances between gigs, though this fosters a community spirit as they keep running across each other on the road, write together and are mutually supportive.

“In America,” says Edwards, who is signed to the American label Rounder, “you are supposed to be in a direct fight with other women. I recently read a review where I was compared with Allison Moorer and Tift Merritt. It said I was the best of the three. That is a load of rubbish. It isn’t a race. In Canada, it is the opposite. Leslie Feist has blown up internationally, which is great for her. I’ve known her for years, we’re friends, we’re peers and she’s a great artist. Canadian girls pursue it for the love of the music, not to get free clothes from Prada. Canadians are instinctively modest and humble, sometimes to our detriment, sometimes to our benefit. We spend a lot of time hiding away in winter and associate ourselves tightly with people.”

Never underestimate Canada’s geography as an influence. In Vancouver, it can rain half the year, while in the Maritime Provinces, on the Atlantic coast, you can have snow up to your waist all winter. On the windswept central prairies, the nearest neigh-bour can be eight miles away. Even in this internet, cable-TV, connected world, girls with poetry in their souls will still retire to their bedrooms to write songs and escape their environment.

Joni Mitchell’s early songs are packed full of prairie imagery; kd lang was raised in a prairie village. Alana Levandoski comes from a Manitoba town, population 300, where she was home-schooled. Leslie Feist was born in Nova Scotia and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, and Calgary. Shania Twain grew up in Timmins, a town that, seen from space at night, is a single spot of light surrounded by darkness. Small wonder, if you hail from such a place, that you yearn to escape and see the world.

“In America,” Edwards says, “people are surprised to learn that I am Canadian. A lot of Canadian songwriters are beating out Americans in an old American genre. In HMV record stores in Britain, I am filed under Americana. Maybe it’s time for a new section - Canadiana.”

Kathleen Edwards tours the UK this month. Tegan and Sara play at Shepherd’s Bush Empire on June 23 and Glasgow ABC on June 24. Canada Rocks Trafalgar Square is on June 30; apply for free tickets at www.canadadaylondon.com. Bob Harris’s Radio 2 shows on Thursday and Saturday will be broadcast live from the North by Northeast music festival in Toronto

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