Meetings With Remarkable Women

Meetings With Remarkable Women

One of my most favourite movies is Meetings With Remarkable Men . It is a very esoteric cult movie, known only to a few, that is a biography of the early days of George Gurdjieff, a philosopher, spiritualist and teacher. Often when I have the time to think deeply about the meaning of life and why I am here I watch that movie. But when I saw a recent article about Alanis Obomsawin posted by Kavika, it made me think about some of the remarkable women whom I have met. Some I got to know over a long period of time, and others only for a fleeting moment, but I would like to tell you about a few of them.

Many years ago, in fact in the mid 1960s, I travelled to Toronto from my home town with the owners of The Black Swan coffee house that I frequently attended. We went to see the Mariposa Folk Festival, which only days earlier had been banned by the town where it had been previously held, and had ended up being in Torontos Maple Leaf Baseball park (well before the start of the Blue Jays and their Skydome home). We stayed in a rooming house on Madison Avenue, and I got to sleep on the couch in the living room. I was just falling asleep when a thin waif-like young girl with long straight blond hair and buck teeth carrying a guitar case walked into the room. That did wake me up. She had just arrived in Toronto for the first time from her home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and had no place to sleep. We talked for a while and she told me she wanted to see the Mariposa festival had heard that Buffy Ste. Marie was going to perform. After a while she took her guitar out of her guitar case, and played and sang some songs for me. Most of them were songs that Judy Collins had sung, but then she put her guitar into a strange open tuning I had never heard before and played some of her own music. It was haunting and impressive. The last time I heard someone with a voice range like that was an opera singer from South America whose exotic name I cant remember. We had no sleep that night, and I was very impressed. I talked my travel mates into hiring her to sing at their coffee house, and that was the first gig she got in Ontario. Her name was Joni Anderson then, but later on she married an actor/folk singer from Detroit named Chuck Mitchell, and kept his name (but not the marriage) ever since.

That is a photo that I believe I took the first time she appeared at the Mariposa Folk Festival. It was published in a Folk Music magazine that I edited, called Hoot Magazine , which was also the first publisher of her song The Circle Game . I think I took the photo, but if it wasnt me it resembled one I did take. Unfortunately most of my early photos are in storage back in Canada.

Joni and I remained friends over the years, even after she moved to California. I recall that when she came to Toronto with her then beau, David Crosby from the Crosby, Stills, Nash (and eventually Young) group, they came to my apartment to do what she had done many times before, played her newest songs for me for my opinion and asked my advice about a commercial she was asked to do. She was gracious as always, and he was an absolute prick.

Some years later, when I was the President of the Mariposa Folk Festival, the year that Dylan came with his wife and kid to see what he had heard about from his friends for years, Joni, who had by then become famous, was there and I will always remember the last words I ever heard her say to me: You and I have come a long way from back then, eh Buzz?

It was at the Mariposa festival that I also met and became long time friends with Alanis Obomsawin, a most amazing woman, and since I have already written an article about her you can, and should, read about her. Here is the link to the article about Alanis:

Eventually I became much involved with a childrens charity called The Variety Club. It has chapters in many countries (called Tents, because it uses the terminology of the circus) and I eventually became Chief Barker (President) of the Tent for the Province of Ontario, located in Toronto. Its a show business charity and its membership is made up of people in or connected with that industry. We held big lunches for the public, most of the time with famous head table guests. Sitting next to me at the head table for one lunch, a person whom we all know to be extremely talented, an actress and director, with whom I was able to converse for a while, was Jodi Foster. This is a photo of her and me, with a young physically challenged boy presenting his painting to her at the luncheon.

Finally, my position as Varietys Chief Barker earned me an invitation to attend a very private and small gathering of dignitaries at a school for children with disabilities in order to meet with Princess Diana. I remember we all had to be schooled in the protocol of meeting with royalty. At one point during the event she was standing across from me, saw me and walked up to me, shook my hand and asked what my duties were at the school. I told her that I was the Chief Barker of the Variety Club of Ontario, and that we give financial support to the school. Oh yes she replied, I saw your coach outside. (We had donated a van to the school that resembled this one.)

She was familiar with the Variety Club since it is a very high profile charity in London, England, and provides many of these coaches there for wheelchair children. Here is a photo that shows me near her. I could kill the photographer for not taking a photo when she and I were standing together.

Fortunately I have had the experience of meeting with such magnificent women. I hope that many others get to enjoy such privileges.