It all began in the coal mining community of SPRINGHILL, Nova Scotia. Not known for its beauty, SPRINGHILL was a gray, hard-scrabble industrial town. I know that because my father worked in the mines and we lived there for a short while.  ANNE MURRAY grew up in SPRINGHILL.  Her parents and family remained in the town and Nova Scotia.

ANNE’s television debut was on CKCWtv, Moncton, New Brunswick. Then along came CBC television (‘Sing-a-long Jubilee’), and not long after that TORONTO recording sessions & concerts at Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, the London Palladium, and Las Vegas.  And through it all, Anne went back to her hometown regularly to visit family and friends.

<Anne with Gordon Lightfoot & Stompin’ Tom Connors, 1973 Juno Awards, PLUM Communications Inc.>

Now in her seventies, Anne has given an extensive archive to the University of TORONTO Libraries. The collection includes 70 boxes containing 188 LP albums, nearly 900 photographs, 253 audiotapes and cassettes going back to the time she was 18, videotapes of her television appearances, scrapbooks of clippings, fan mail and letters.

“She embodies the Canadian popular music industry,” said Brock Silversides, director of U of T Libraries’ Media Commons, an audiovisual & media archive within the Robarts Library. “She’s been so successful in Canada and internationally. Even one of her songs Snowbird, that’s so Canada . . .  Just with her voice alone, she’s become enormously successful and has affected a lot of people. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, Anne’s music has been the soundtrack to many people’s lives.”

ANNE MURRAY, Now & Forever, indeed!