Buffy Sainte-Marie Still Carries It On

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE IS HAVING A BUSY YEAR. When we connect by phone in late July, she has recently returned from playing a concert in Toronto and has had to cancel upcoming tour dates in western Canada due to a bout of COVID. But the singer-songwriter is cheerful and bright despite the disappointing turn of events. She’s also happy to be home at her farm in Hawaii, where she’s lived for decades. “I’m too doggone busy,” she says. “What I really want to do, what I live for after I get done with all my Zoom calls and my writing and my checking this and providing that—I go out and I garden. I pull weeds, then I come in the house, and I do dishes. It’s so lovely.” Tending to these daily tasks helps ground the 81-year-old artist. “When I go on the road, I miss having a house and a home, so if I go to somebody’s house, I always want to do the dishes,” she laughs.

Besides touring and performing again after the pandemic took her temporarily off stage, Sainte-Marie has also been occupied doing what she does best: creating. Pulling threads of memory and inspiration together to produce her art. The latter has occupied much of her time over the past year in favour of a particularly special project: participating in the first full-length documentary about her life and work, . Produced by Toronto’s White Pine Films and Manitoba’s Eagle Vision and directed by