Some people just have that energy; the feel-good type that draws you in, captivates, and entertains all at once. Meredith Shaw, recently named one of our People to Watch in 2024 and part of our Power 60 List, is one of those people. There’s just something about her. To call the Breakfast Television and Feel Good Brunch host multifaceted is an understatement. She’s a television host, radio host, model, style expert, fashion icon, passionate advocate, and a former professional singer (frankly, we’re probably missing something). With a star steadily on the rise, Meredith Shaw is becoming a household name from coast to coast across Canada (if she isn’t already), thanks to her authenticity, refreshing approachability, and game-changing advocacy for body positivity.
RELATED
Early years: Fuelled by female empowerment—and Sarah McLachlan
Growing up in Toronto the 90s – the beloved and bygone Lilith Fair era – Shaw says she was heavily influenced by female artists like Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden, Natalie Merchant, and Sheryl Crow. When it came to her own talent, Shaw credits her parents for first recognizing it. “I have to phenomenal parents who worked really hard in their life, but were very attentive and wonderful for myself and my brother, so I started off in a great spot and they just realized early on, ‘Whoa, this kid is singing and performing and is an outward kind of kid, so let’s get her into some stuff,’” recalls Shaw. “So, I was basically in some lessons, then I listened to Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Fumbling Towards Ecstasy’ – it’s the 30th anniversary this year, what’s up! – and there’s just something about that record that really blew my mind and heart wide open and then I was like, ‘I don’t want to do lessons, I just want to write my own stuff.”
“I think teenage girls are the coolest.”
Meredith Shaw
So, Shaw took a pen to paper and started to write songs when she was very young. “And I just didn’t stop; I just was obsessed with it,” says Shaw. “I loved music.” While high school was a time of angst for most, Shaw credits going to an all-girls school as something that was both positive and instrumental in her outlook and attitude. “I think it played into the development of my confidence, my voice, and who I was, and I really appreciated that experience,” says Shaw. “I think it can happen in so many different ways, but for me, that’s how that worked and I really developed who I was, my sense of humour, and my talents. I think that time, especially in young girls’ lives, can be tricky, and that’s why I love working with girls of that age and that I’m a bonus mom. I’ve got a girl in my life who is 14 and I think teenage girls are the coolest.”
While Shaw says that the teenage years are a time when some may get “a little quieter and shier,” she was able to recognize her own worth and power in high school. “I had a great group of friends at school and it was a good time,” recalls Shaw. “I was also just super musical and into drama and all that stuff.” She’s downplaying this: Shaw actually had a development deal at just 15-years-old.
PRESENTED BY
ADVERTISEMENT |
So, come high school graduation, it was only natural that Shaw set her sights on a degree in vocal performance and drama at Kingston’s Queen’s University. “My opera teacher was the same person who Sarah Harmer studied with and I thought, ‘I love Sarah Harmer and I love the songs she writes. So, maybe this opera thing isn’t that crazy,’’ says Shaw. “I had to take care of my voice and breathing and all sorts of things. It’s weird; you don’t really realize all the bits and pieces in your life until you kind of look back and see how it fits all together. But Queens is a huge part of my development, not only in music, but also in my friendships and connections. I had an amazing time there.”
Making music and career moves
Naturally, Shaw dove deep into her music career as soon as the ink dried on her degree. This would see her hear her own songs on Canadian radio, clock countless hours in Nashville, and even make a record at Willie Nelson’s studio. “When I look back at all of that, music really was the love of my life,” says Shaw. “I had some great opportunities. It was my passion, but it also taught me to collaborate. It really honed my skills on how to work with people, how to create with people, how to get a message across, and how to be honest and vulnerable. So many of those things came from my time in music.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
Shaw says that the greatest challenge that came with navigating the music scene in her 20s was that there wasn’t a roadmap on how to do so. “There’s just no path – like zero…it’s like, ‘Good luck to you,’” says Shaw. “So, I just basically had no idea what I was doing, but at least I was doing – that’s the key. I remember, my parents saying, ‘We’re all for you doing what you do, but you got to do it.’ I couldn’t just sort of be waiting. So, I got out in the mix. I was driving to Halifax with two of my bandmates and playing some shows and figuring this out over here, and over there, and I had the great fortune of having the time to figure it out. I had a little bit of success on the radio at CBC and I appreciated some of the grant programs that exist in Canada. I had a label and a publicist and all the things and was trying to make my way in a super competitive world, and in a world that wasn’t necessarily accepting, especially at that time.”
It was a time of Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, and Paris Hilton. “Being someone who looks a little different – someone who was bigger and not totally Britney Spears’d out – was challenging for me,” says Shaw.
This was not necessarily a new feeling for the 20-something Shaw. After being discovered as a teen – “I think it was in line in a Sunrise Record store to get Sarah McLachlan tickets,” she recalls – Shaw entered the world of modelling. Fresh from the industry’s infamous waif era, the space looked different back then. “I was in those spaces that were sort of telling me things about my body and how I showed up that weren’t necessarily productive for my own mental health and my own sense of self,” says Shaw. “I really had to persevere through that and get pretty tenacious and it didn’t always lead me down the right path. I wasn’t on my own team for a while. A lot of people in their 20s kind of lose themselves to please other people.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
Shaw recalls not being allowed in to the Toronto Fashion Week tents because the security guard didn’t believe that she and two other plus-sized models were walking the runway. That’s not to say Shaw’s modelling career didn’t take off – it did. And it would lead to shoots in places like New York and Miami with famous faces like Ashley Graham.
The other side of radio
Whether she had a song on the air or not, radio has always intrigued Shaw. “I always loved going to radio stations whenever I was doing music,” says Shaw. “Whenever I went in to do an interview or some promo or whatever, I was like, ‘Man, these radio stations are cool and these radio people are awesome.’ Growing up, I listened to CHUM and loved Marilyn Denis and thought it was so cool to be able to talk to people and interview musicians, have fun, share information, and just be part of people’s lives in that way. I mean, she didn’t know me but, man, I knew her, she was such a part of my growing up.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
But Shaw wasn’t quite sure how she could land a job like Marilyn’s. So, she Googled how to host a radio show. “A radio station website called Milkman came up – I believe it’s still around – that lists radio jobs across the country…on-air, off-air, everything,” says Shaw. “So, I decided to do a demo, which I now know from being in radio was actually a really a long weird voice message. It was just me telling a story about getting my dress caught and escalator, and who knows what I said, but I said enough that Troy McCallum at Boom 97.3 in Toronto gave me a shot and hired me. He said, ‘I don’t know what this is that you sent me, but I have a hunch about you and I’d love to hear you behind the mic, and I learned from there. I got the gig and then kind of figured out how to do it. I didn’t know much; I just knew that I wanted to know. It went from 2am to 6am, and I couldn’t have been prouder.”
“I met Marilyn and it just blew my mind,”
Meredith Shaw
With solid ratings and numbers at Boom 97.3, Shaw, who had developed a loyal fanbase, got hired at CHUM 104.5 – Marilyn Denis’s station. “I met Marilyn and it just blew my mind,” says Shaw.
At the time, Shaw was still in the thick of a busy music career that saw her tour with Big Sugar. She says that balancing the two careers would ultimately prove to be an unsustainable challenge. “Music was an incredible exciting, disappointing, heartbreaking, and fun career – all the things,” says Shaw. “But it wasn’t always in flow. And as soon as I got into radio, it just seemed to work. I was sad about my music career ending. I had to step back and admit that this wasn’t going to work the way I’m hoping it will. And that was hard to do. But the other thing just felt so good and it’s led me to what I’m doing now. So, it was the right move.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
During this period, the modelling campaigns kept rolling in. “It was a funny combination, because I was sort of a model and a radio host, and those don’t often really go together,” says Shaw. Shaw was a fixture on 104.5 for nine years. It wasn’t long before she turned her sights to TV, with regular appearances on The Marilyn Denis Show, The Social, CTV’s Your Morning, and etalk, becoming a fixture for promoting diversity in the fashion industry.
In her Breakfast Television era
When she got the gig as the new host of Breakfast Television, a live morning show that airs from 6am to 10am EST, in September 2023, Shaw felt she’d landed her “dream job” – even if it means an early morning start. “I mean, I was a kid growing up in Toronto – Breakfast Television was an iconic institution in the city,” says Shaw. “And now it’s a national show across the country. There have been three women before me that have done it, and I’m the fourth host of the show. I was really excited when they contacted me with their interest. A the time, I was at another network, so it was a bit complicated. But, as soon as I met Sid [her co-host], I just had a very strong feeling that this was what was going to happen.”
Shaw praises her co-host Sid Seixeiro’s broadcasting skills. “We’re very good friends and you work with people in all kinds of businesses,” she says. “They’re just certain people you meet you’re like, ‘This is great. This is fun. This is chemistry without us even trying, so what’s gonna happen when we start trying?’’ And so that was really exciting and I just got really interested and invested in the show.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
With the shift in hosts, Shaw says came the opportunity to evaluate that they were saying on Breakfast Television. “What is Breakfast Television now and what voices can we bring to it?,” says Show. “And who is not being heard from in this country that can be? It was all of those things. It was my dream job, and it’s gotten dreamier as we go.”
That doesn’t mean that the job doesn’t require a different level of stamina. After all, it’s a four-hour show. “I’m basically doing three hours of live television every day, which in this country, is pretty rare,” says Shaw. “It’s sort of the only one like it, in that sort of news and lifestyle way, so there’s a consistency to that stamina and you understand that once it starts. I also come back to the team, my cohost, and other talent on the show because everyone is really fun. When you come into that environment, it’s early, but you feel awesome. It’s a great crew and it’s a good time and that doesn’t always happen on television. You’re a professional, so you’ve got to be able to do it no matter what, but, man, it’s nice when the camera starts rolling and the same conversations are happening. That authenticity is what people are feeling and seeing in the show. So, it’s a different level of consistency and stamina then I had experienced before, but I like it. I’m okay with it.”
Both Breakfast and Brunch
Most recently, Shaw was named the host of the Feel Good Brunch, a Sunday morning radio show that airs across Rogers Sports & Media’s Adult Contemporary stations. “I love radio truly, madly, deeply – I think it’s such an amazing medium,” says Shaw. “And I think TV gets a lot of shiny stuff and radio – it’s just the goods. Like you’ve got it, you got to be able to do it on radio. What’s interesting about Breakfast Television, if you look at everybody on air, we all came from radio; everyone is a radio person.”
So, when she was asked to host the show, the decision was an easy one. “I said, ‘Absolutely, I would love to do that,'” says Shaw. “And it keeps me in that music space too. I love artists. I love records. I love being able to talk about that. We play new stuff, we play more nostalgic stuff, and it’s just everything you want on a Sunday morning. I get to be able to do that across Canada; I don’t take that lightly. It’s a very special opportunity in this country to be on national television and on national radio, and I don’t not hold that in reverence.”
While Shaw has successfully broken into so many industries, she calls a desire to connect the common denominator. “Connection is the nugget; the start and the center of all of that,” says Shaw. “It’s a desire to connect and to connect honestly. There’s an authenticity and desire to show up as we are; when I do that, other people can. I’ve spent time in my life not doing that. I understand the difference. Sometimes showing up as yourself is the hardest thing to do. It seems so hard to just be exactly who you are because we’re taught so often that we have to fit into something else. But then when you just try it – and I encourage everyone to just try it – you just have to do that. So, I kind of feel like what I do is not that hard. It took a long time for it not to be hard, if that makes sense. When I think back to my song writing all of that stuff, it’s just all about feeling connected at the base of it.”
ADVERTISEMENT |
While she says that how this manifests will “mutate, change, and get bigger,” ultimately, it’s about being creative and being prepared to work hard. “I think that combination of connection and perseverance or persistence and a little bit of humour in there too,” says Shaw. “I take work seriously. I don’t take myself too seriously, because I think you lose people there.”
While she may have made it seem easy throughout her career, Shaw calls the Canadian media landscape a tough one to crack – one that’s not a linear process, nor is it always welcoming. “But because you’re connected to a purpose, you’re connected to your passion,” says Shaw. “I’m really proud of the space I take up in this media scene at the moment. I’m able to bring with me the experience of feeling not a part of it. I still very much viscerally know what that is. And I don’t think I’ll ever not know what that is. So, that will inform how I use my time and how I use my light. I think as you’re in these bigger positions with more clout or whatever, it’s not that difficult to open a door to bring someone else in. It’s not that hard because there you are. It just takes understanding and remembering what it felt like when you weren’t where you are. So, I guess that’s what I’m most proud of is what we’ll be able to do together.”
Next major moves
The word is officially out: Shaw has added the title of fashion designer to her long list of talents. Last week, Canadian plus-sized fashion brand Penningtons announced a new partnership with Shaw that will see her in marketing campaigns, curate collections and even – later this year – launch her own set of designs under the PENN. banner.
The first iteration of the collaboration will come to life next month, with the launch of the Get Dress’d with Meredith edit. The collection will feature ten summer dresses hand-selected by Meredith herself – all of which feature her signature bright colours, fun, flirty silhouettes and bold, beautiful styling. Later this year, PENN. will debut a line of holiday dresses personally designed by Shaw herself.
ADVERTISEMENT |
If you haven’t already, check out our other 2 of the 3 faces, amongst Meredith Shaw, named on our #VIBEPower60 list and the 2024 People to Watch:
Keesa K., Jus Reign and Meredith Shaw.
Credits
Words by Erin Davis with support of editorial team. Photography by: Nick Merzetti; Creative/Fashion Direction, and Co-Produced by: Steven Branco; On-set Styling and Co-produced by: Sharad Mohan (Meredith Co-styled her own looks); Gaffer: Alejandro Silva Cortes; Makeup by: Chloe Szczyglowski and Angela Lee; Hair by: Angela’s Beauty Box Inc. and Duyen Huynh; BTS/PA: Mursal Rahman and Samir Mourani. Shot in studio at: Pie in the Sky Studios, Studio 1; Vintage vehicle: 1979, Chevrolet, Caprice Classic/courtesy of: Jason Miller @sitonfashion. Meredith’s looks curated from: Penningtons Addition Elle, Lane Bryant and Hilary MacMillan.
Special thank you to our valued presenting sponsor: CITIZEN Watches
