Handsome Ned's real name was Robin David Masyk. His 1987 death sparked tribute events on the anniversary of his passing.Supplied
The 2010 documentary You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story begins with the titular urban cowboy singing Webb Pierce’s fifties rockabilly hit Teenage Boogie with gusto at Toronto’s Cameron House in 1984. “Saturday night about eight o’clock, this old place begins to reel and rock,” he sang.
Handsome Ned (real name, Robin David Masyk) was an ever-grinning go-getter who helped create the city’s Queen Street West alt-country scene in the 1980s. He died of a heroin overdose on Jan. 10, 1987; ever since, tribute events on the anniversary of his death commemorate a cultish legacy.
You Left Me Blue screens in Toronto and Hamilton this Saturday, representing the first proper presentations of the film since its one-off premiere at Toronto’s NXNE festival in 2010. Filming for the doc began in the early 1980s. Why have Ned-heads been made to wait so long?
“We were busy doing other things,” said co-director Chris Terry, who made the film with Ross Edmonds on their own time and their own dime. “Careers got in the way, and we just didn’t have the time to finish it at the time.”
Handsome Ned died of a heroin overdose on Jan. 10, 1987.Supplied
The film’s origin stretches back to an experimental seven-minute short, 1981’s The Ballad of Handsome Ned. The National Film Board helped with production services, but otherwise there was little interest in the film.
“We ran into a brick wall,” Terry recalled.
Plans to expand the short to a half-hour 16mm doc with new footage in 1984 did not result in a finished film. “We could not proceed without some TV broadcast help,” Terry said. “That was in the predigital days. Cost of production was prohibitive.”
Around 2004, the filmmakers noticed how popular the yearly Handsome Ned tribute concerts were and resurrected the project. “The annual celebrations became the cornerstone,” Terry said. “We realized Ned’s story was still alive in the culture of Queen Street.”
With an eye toward a feature film length, they interviewed musicians such as Blue Rodeo’s Greg Keelor (who said Ned was “quite inspirational). Ned’s brother, Jim Masyk, provided archival footage to the filmmakers. “That was a gold mine,” Terry said.
There was some interest by a film distributor and Canadian television networks, but nobody was willing to help finance the film.
“Show it to us when it’s done,” the cash-strapped filmmakers were routinely told.
It got done in time for NXNE in 2010, but You Left Me Blue has sat on the shelf ever since.
“We went around the block with Canadian networks several times,” Terry said. “You would think they would like this kind of stuff, but it was always the same thing. They told us it was a local story and it didn’t fit their mandate.”
He helped create Toronto's Queen Street West alt-country scene in the 1980s.Supplied
In Dale Heslip’s 2024 documentary Blue Rodeo: Lost Together, members of that band rave about Handsome Ned’s indirect but important role in their career. When founding members Keelor and Jim Cuddy returned to Toronto in the summer of 1984 after an unsuccessful stint in New York, they were amazed at the revitalization of the city’s indie-country scene.
“And it was all because of Handsome Ned,” Cuddy says in Lost Together.
The Blue Rodeo doc, which uses footage of Ned purchased from Terry and Edmunds, was released in Cineplex theatres and currently streams on multiple CBC platforms. The Handsome Ned doc, meanwhile, will be screened in Toronto’s Paradise Theatre (180 seats, sold out), Hamilton’s Gaba Gaba Gool Club (60 seats) and, on Feb. 26, Montreal’s BBAM! Gallery (capacity, 45).
“Ned was a community figure, and the community was small,” said Gary Topp, who is presenting the film. “It will be old home week at the Toronto screening.”
You Left Me Blue screens in Toronto and Hamilton this Saturday.Supplied
The Toronto and Hamilton screenings happen on Saturday at 3 p.m., which was the set time for the musician’s packed weekly Saturday matinees at the Cameron in the 1980s.
Ned was niche, but his fame did and still does extend beyond the M5V 2A7 strip. He received a posthumous Juno Award nomination in 1990 for his album of archival recordings (The Ballad of Handsome Ned); was given plenty of ink in 2001’s Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance 1985–1995; had his song Put the Blame on Me featured prominently in Bruce McDonald’s 1989 film Roadkill; and was granted a full chapter in Ray Robertson’s 2025 book, Dust: More Lives of the Poets (With Guitars).
One of the wilder scenes in You Left Me Blue is a Valentine’s Day show Ned organized in 1984 that involved square dance instruction and a quick-draw contest with a stuntman billed as Black Bart. Unfortunately, an opening set by a nascent Blue Rodeo wasn’t captured for posterity.
“We didn’t have enough film,” Terry said. “It was that kind of seat-of-your-pants production.”
You Left Me Blue: The Handsome Ned Story screens Jan. 10 at Toronto’s Paradise Theatre and Hamilton’s Gaba Gaba Gool Club; and Feb. 26, Montreal’s BBAM! Gallery.