Joni Mitchell's childhood home

Joni Mitchell -- born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943, in Fort Macleod, Alberta -- grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, after her family moved there when she was a child. The family lived at addresses in the Nutana neighbourhood, a residential area south of downtown Saskatoon on the east bank of the South Saskatchewan River. She attended Queen Elizabeth School and later Nutana Collegiate before studying at the Saskatoon Teachers College. Her childhood in Saskatoon was marked by a bout of polio at age nine -- contracted the same year she first became fascinated with Christmas carols, a detail she has cited as the beginning of her love of music.

Saskatoon is essential to understanding Mitchell's imagination. The prairie landscape -- the wide sky, the flat geometry of the Prairies, the particular light of a Saskatchewan winter -- runs through her work as a recurring visual and emotional reference. 'Both Sides Now', written when she was in her early twenties, has the sky-watching quality of someone who grew up watching enormous prairie skies. 'Cherokee Louise', about playing under the Broadway Bridge with a Cree childhood friend named Louise, is set with documentary precision in the Saskatoon of her girlhood.

Saskatoon has embraced Mitchell as one of its defining cultural figures: a trail of Mitchell heritage sites connects her Broadway Bridge, her schools, her family home, and other addresses into a walking tour of her formative world. The childhood home in Nutana is in a pleasant, tree-lined residential neighbourhood that retains much of its mid-century character. Mitchell received the Order of Canada, the Polar Music Prize, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award; Saskatoon continues to count her among its proudest contributions to the world.