Steve’s Music Store is leaving Rideau Street after 42 years

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An iconic downtown business, Steve’s Music Store, will be moving after 42 years of selling guitars, drums and other instruments from its two-storey home on Rideau Street.

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Manager Dan Sauvé said the decision to move from its Rideau Street location was a difficult one, but a combination of factors — chief among them the social disorder wrought by the opioid epidemic — meant the store would move to a new location in early 2025.

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“We’re part of the furniture here, and it’s not something we took lightly,” Sauvé said in an interview.

“At the end of the day, let’s call it what it is: No one wants to shop on Rideau Street right now because they’re scared of getting attacked or harassed or something like that. Whether or not that’s justified, it’s not really for me to say.

“I work here day in and day out, and I don’t necessarily feel threatened, but, for someone who doesn’t see that every day, it’s definitely disconcerting.”

The store’s owners signed a new lease Wednesday at another “central location,” Sauvé said, which means the lights will go out on its bubble-lettered, black and yellow Rideau Street sign early next year.

The site of the new store location will be announced later this year.

Steve’s Music Store has survived at its current location through years of business disruption caused by Rideau Street and LRT construction, the Rideau Street sinkhole, the COVID-19 pandemic and the truckers’ occupation of downtown Ottawa.

“It has been one gut punch after another,” Sauvé said.

But, when Recovery Care and Respect RX pharmacy opened next door — both are part of Ottawa’s safer supply program — the opioid crisis was brought right to the doorstep of Steve’s Music Store.

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Recovery Care is one of three agencies providing prescribing services for the approximately 500 people enrolled in the program run by Safer Supply Ottawa. Those enrolled in the program receive prescription opioids and/or stimulants to protect them from contaminated street drugs.

Sauvé said the program had led to the growth of a criminal ecosystem that preyed on safe supply clients. It has resulted in increased local drug traffic, more crime and aggressive behaviours, he said.

“It’s everything that comes with the concentration of users that’s problematic,” he said. “To me, the question is: How can we help people without causing so much collateral damage to neighbourhoods?”

The music store’s front door is now kept locked, and customers are allowed in one by one.

The loss of Steve’s Music Store is another blow for the ByWard Market. The music store was an anchor tenant and occupied about 6,000 square feet of retail space on the south side of Rideau Street.

Sauvé said the store had only been able to survive by virtue of its dedicated clientele. “Musicians are awesome in that sense: They’re fiercely loyal,” he said. “We’ve always felt their support.”

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Already this year, the ByWard Market has lost fashion boutique Cantas Fashion, butcher Saslove’s Meat Market, the Courtyard Restaurant and Oz Café. One of the neighbourhood’s oldest businesses, Saslove’s had been in the ByWard Market for 70 years.

The original Steve’s Music Store opened in Montreal in 1965 as the Beatles and the rest of the British Invasion popularized electric guitars.

Founder Steve Kirman couldn’t play a lick — “His favourite instrument was the cash register,” his son once said — but he loved people and had an encyclopedic knowledge of guitars and amps, drums and pedals. He expanded his franchise to Ottawa and Toronto.

Steve’s Music Store continues to be owned by the Montreal-based Kirman family.

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