Joni Mitchell's mom honoured


Regina Leader-Post
March 28, 2007

SASKATOON -- Myrtle Anderson's life was celebrated Tuesday afternoon at a funeral attended by close friends and family, including her daughter, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.


SASKATOON -- Myrtle Anderson's life was celebrated Tuesday afternoon at a funeral attended by close friends and family, including her daughter, singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.

About 55 people gathered at the Saskatoon Funeral Home to remember Anderson, who died on March 20. She was 95.

"Myrtle Anderson could play a piano, plant a garden or plaster a wall with her talented hands. ... She was a strong, caring woman with a spirit of vitality," said Rev. Dale Morrison in his eulogy. No one else spoke at the funeral.

Anderson's husband, Bill, and Mitchell sat in the front row of the pews and sang two hymns along with others in attendance.

Anderson's life was celebrated rather than mourned: Before the ceremony started, her close friends and family chatted in a room adjoined to the main chapel. As they visited, laughs could be heard.

"(Anderson) survived many hardships and she never forgot the lessons of those hardships," Morrison told the mourners. Born in Heward, about 125 kilometres southwest of Regina, Anderson eventually moved to Regina to complete her teacher training. It's there she met Bill. The two were married within a month of meeting and had Mitchell about a year later.

Mitchell's poem, Passion Play, was included in the funeral program.

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