Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

It was like an IQ test question asking which was the apple among the oranges. In the summer, Canada's Barenaked Ladies had been booked to play Chicago's Rockfest at the city's motor speedway. But the fun-loving popsters found themselves sharing top billing with heavy-metal road warriors Metallica and white-trash rapper Kid Rock. As soon as the Ladies hit the stage, rap-metal fans in the audience realized that this group didn't share their "Rage Against Anything" credo. First there was booing, followed by dozens of middle fingers being thrust angrily in the air. Things turned uglier as the rabble started hurling beer bottles and homophobic insults towards the stage. Drummer Tyler Stewart...

Oscar Peterson peers up through the glass ceiling of his sunroom and apologizes for the faint noise coming from a distant jet passing overhead. “We’re right in their flight path,” explains Peterson, whose split-level house in Mississauga, Ont., sits due west of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Happily, the spacious home he shares with his fourth wife, Kelly, and their seven-year-old daughter, Celine, is also smack in the middle of the flight path of many migrating birds. Peterson loves birds. His sunroom is filled with artists’ renderings of them—some cast in bronze, others shaped in shards of brightly coloured glass. “My favourite is the loon,” says Peterson. “I've always loved its ...

It’s mid-morning in a quiet hotel restaurant and Diana Krall is having a love affair with an artichoke. One by one, she peels off the leaves and dips them into a small bowl of balsamic vinegar before gently lifting them to her mouth and slowly pulling the tender flesh off with her teeth. It’s a ritual she clearly relishes, washing down each morsel with a sip of chardonnay. But for Krall, this is also lunch. Having already done a photo shoot, and with an in-store appearance scheduled for noon, the Canadian jazz star is taking her meal while she can—even if it means being interviewed at the same time. Briefly distracted as she finally reaches the artichoke’s prized heart (“Pardon me,” she says...