visit me as did CBC’s The National. For the latter I was filmed in my New England house and the cameramen took shots of me driving around the quaint town and walking around one of the places I frequented on my meditative walks, a beautiful cemetery where wild ducks nested beside the water-lilied pools, and rabbits and squirrels played hide-and-seek in the shrubbery.
Vivien drove down from Kitchener and convinced me to attend a huge outdoor swing convention with her. She had become an expert dancer, and I was pretty good at faking the steps. My glamorous TV host friend Nancy Merrill also came to visit and kept me up till all hours talking about her life, loves, and constant travels.
In December a writer acquaintance’s Christmas party lured me up to Boston on the train where I hit one of those “storms of the decade” which crippled the whole city. My pen pal Prince Philip had been right. What in the world was I doing living in winter again?
• • •
In March I flew down to join my parents and Vivien, who were holidaying in San Miguel de Allende. The town had expanded so much, with dozens of new restaurants and sprawling developments, but the cobblestones that our leather sandals had helped to polish smooth back in 1967 and the brilliant blue skies of Mexico that never failed to seduce us were still there.
My parents had rented the same little apartment on Huertas, where they often stayed, and it was delightful to reconnect with many of my lifetime amigos — Jaime Fernandez, my short-lived flirtation from back in 1967, his wife, Paquina, and fellow Canadian, Toller Cranston — but most importantly simply to spend time sitting in our beloved jardin, or main square, with my parents who now walked very gingerly hand in hand along the uneven, stony streets.
• • •
In April I returned to Toronto to record the fiddle playing of Oliver Schroer, my childhood friend. He had been diagnosed with leukemia and realized his days were numbered, but Oliver, who had a widespread following across Canada, continued to record his unique, improvised music until the very end.
Although he was hooked up to intravenous machinery, I was able to collect him from the hospital and bring him to the studio. There, he added a lovely viola part to a beautiful melody written by Srdjan’s former duo partner, Buco, which I had made into a song called “Let’s Go to the Mountains.” The title for the song was a quote from the beautifully shot soft-porn film Emmanuelle, and the lyrics are very romantic. It remains one of my favourites.
Oliver and I had dinner afterward, and I was moved to tears knowing I would probably never see him again. Our two young immigrant families had grown up together, and our mothers still keep in touch.
Shortly after our recording session, my friend bravely staged “Oliver Schroer’s Last Concert on Earth,” which sold out immediately and became the subject of a CBC documentary. Regrettably, I was unable to attend. He passed on shortly after that courageous concert. A CD of his music was released posthumously under the title Freedom Row. On the cover was a photo he had asked my permission to use — a black-and-white photo of me at thirteen practising my Nureyev-style ballet leaps on the long, winding driveway of his parents’ Beaver Valley farm. I somehow doubt that his fans ever realized who that young cover girl was.
• • •
In June Jack again came to visit me en route from a family wedding on Long Island and stayed in my guest room. I picked him up at the ferry terminal in Bridgeport and felt a thrill of excitement to see his tall, slender figure walking toward me. There was probably still time to change my mind about living alone. The door was still open should I choose to return, and I knew that any day that door could be closed forever. He had been such a loving husband to me, and many of my friends told me I was a fool to have abandoned the luxurious life he provided, a life most women dream of having. But although I still cared for him and I was filled with gratitude for all he had given me, I still chose my freedom to grow as a musician. As before, I prayed I was making the right decision for both of us.
I had made the choice to leave someone who had loved me. It seemed to be my pattern, and I hoped that my next great love would be my last.
I remembered in 1998 when, on a whim I had decided to call my former amour Pierre Trudeau to see how he was faring. Pierre had been genuinely impressed with Jack when he visited us in 1995. The men had hit it off splendidly on the day he came to our Beverly Hills house for lunch, and the previous day when Jack had accompanied him to see the Getty Museum’s antiquities. Jack had arranged for Pierre to be given a special private tour while I was busy recording the beautiful soundtrack to A Walk in the Clouds with the legendary Maurice Jarre.
It was so good to hear Pierre’s gentle and familiar voice, but he sounded more subdued than I remembered, and I supposed that, now in his late seventies, his life was quieter.
“So do you have a special girlfriend these days?” I asked.
“Mmm … Liona, I have several,” he replied. I could visualize the smile he would have had on his face, even over the telephone.
Yes, that had been the one of the most important issues that we had disagreed on and which ultimately led me to seek a man less flirtatious and not so susceptible to female charms.
Pierre and I chatted on about his sons, Justin, Sacha, and Michel, and he updated me on their expanding interests and studies. He even talked with appreciation about their sister, Sarah, the ultimate gift that Deborah Coyne had given him in bearing his daughter, a proposal that he had suggested multiple times to me, but that I had declined.
Chatting with Pierre felt so comfortable, yet it left me somewhat sad, reminiscing about the eight years when we had shared escapades and dreams. I remembered when he and a very pregnant Margaret were introduced to me one summer afternoon in 1975 up at Harrington Lake and how they and their two little boys had enjoyed my private guitar serenade after swimming in the lake. I remembered the following year when Pierre, now separated, had surprised me with a kiss in Kamloops on Valentine’s Day, and I thought back to my many performances for his friends and world leaders.
It was thanks to Pierre that I had been given the opportunity to play for Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, who had greeted me with that twinkle in his eyes. It was thanks to Pierre that, after I set my guitar aside, I had been offered a seat at the dinner table beside Ronald Reagan and across from Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Schmidt, and it was thanks to him I had spent two hours with Fidel Castro in Havana. I thought of how we lunched in Montreal shortly after I had married, and how Jack and I had met up with him for the very last time in 1996, when he came alone to sit in the front row of my concert for attendees of a palliative care conference at the Notre-Dame Basilica.
A memory collage of our romantic rendezvous in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, and New York washed over me like a warm Connecticut summer breeze. Where were both our lives going now, though? We were both living alone and sensing the passage of time. A sense of mortality seemed to be mellowing Pierre’s spirit.
A few months after our phone conversation, Pierre would suffer a truly tragic blow. His youngest son, Michel, died in an avalanche that November and it was then that Pierre’s life energy began to ebb. I remembered Michel, or Miche as he was affectionately called, as a bouncy, sweet child — the little boy whom Pierre and his big brothers adored. I had wept for Pierre when the news reached me, and I called to offer my condolences. His voice had completely changed, and Justin later wrote how the light began to dim in his father’s soul. I shed tears for Pierre, for his two remaining sons, and for poor Margaret, whom I heard grew closer again to Pierre through their shared sorrow. Losing a child has to be the ultimate heartbreak for any parent.
And indeed both cancer and Parkinson’s disease were to afflict the gentle Canadian
