Joni Mitchell accepts the Lifetime Achievement award onstage during the 2026 Juno Awards at TD Coliseum on in Hamilton, Ont., on Sunday.Cindy Ord/Getty Images
The late-career celebration of Joni Mitchell as pop music’s grande dame continued Sunday at the Juno Awards gala held at the TD Coliseum in Hamilton, where the maverick legend accepted a lifetime achievement award.
She was introduced at the end of the national broadcast by Prime Minister Mark Carney: “Born in Fort Macleod, Alta., raised in Saskatoon, the songs of this Prairie girl brought to life beauty in everyday Canadiana. Geese in Chevron flight, a little money riding on the Maple Leafs, a river to skate away on.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney presents the Lifetime Achievement award to Joni Mitchell.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The beret-wearing 82-year-old walked on stage with the help of a cane and an assistant. She said her brain aneurysm in 2015 had changed her life – for the better: “My house filled up with the most wonderful nurses. I was on the road with men for years and years. Now I live with a house full of women.”
The last time Mitchell showed up for the Junos was Feb. 5, 1981, at Toronto’s O’Keefe Centre (now Meridian Hall). There, another prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, inducted her into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. She was honoured, Trudeau said, “for her contribution towards the greater international recognition of Canadian artists and music.”
The notion of a hall of fame for music was foreign to her. For hockey, sure, but music? She said the induction made her “feel like Boom Boom Geoffrion.”
Mitchell was 38 years old at the time. Career recognition must have seemed premature to an artist in it for the long run. Sunday’s lifetime achievement award is more appropriate – and much more exclusive. She joins a rarefied club that includes only Pierre Juneau (the namesake inspiration for the awards and the pioneering champion of Canadian content requirements for radio and television) and singer Anne Murray, inducted last year.
For a pop artist of her stature, Mitchell does not have a lot of Juno trophies on her mantelpiece. Just two, not including her career honours: 1976, for female vocalist of the year; and 2001, best vocal jazz album, for Both Sides Now. Her classic 1971 album Blue was not recognized at the 1972 Junos.
In Rolling Stone’s 2020 poll of the 500 greatest albums of all time, Blue was ranked third. The same magazine had ranked the same album at No. 20 just eight years earlier. Mitchell is making progress. In 1971, the one-time rock-music bible named her “Old Lady of the Year,” a dig at her successful dating life.
Mitchell’s 1998 song Lead Balloon attacked the boorishness of Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and addressed rock music’s misogyny in general: “An angry man is just an angry man / But an angry woman, bitch.”
Things have gotten better, particularly in the world of rock music. We saw evidence of that on Sunday when prog-rock titans Rush opened the telecast with their first public performance since 2015. The band, which recently announced a worldwide reunion tour, includes female drummer Anika Nilles. She sits in for the late Rush drummer Neil Peart.
Toronto all-women rockers the Beaches followed up their own performance by accepting the award for group of the year. The band raises more hell than Trooper ever did.
Nelly Furtado was ushered into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. Hip-hop star Drake broke his years-long Junos boycott to pay tribute to the I’m Like a Bird singer through a video message.
Female artists rule the pop world today. Calgary pop phenom Tate McRae won a dominating four awards, including artist of the year.
But the night belonged to Mitchell, a songwriting giant and defiant artist whose career has been marked by dynamic evolution, blazing authenticity and a fierce spirit.
Sarah McLachlan and Allison Russell sang A Case of You and Both Sides Now (which Mitchell memorably performed at the 2024 Grammy Awards).
Joni Mitchell, centre left, performs with Sarah McLachlan, centre right, Allison Russell, second right, and Jully Black, right, as Prime Minister Mark Carney, left, and host Mae Martin look on.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Mitchell hasn’t sung in her home country since 2013, when she participated in a tribute event at Toronto’s Massey Hall to mark her 70th birthday. The artist had been long retired when she recited a new poem set to music (This Rain, This Rain, inspired by the writings of painter Emily Carr) and sang two songs, including Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow. She introduced the 1975 deep cut as “the closest I ever came to being a feminist.”
On Sunday, she joined a stage full of musicians for a show-closing rendition of Big Yellow Taxi. “Don’t it always seem to go,” she sang, “that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
It doesn’t always go like that. We know what we’ve got in Mitchell.