Elton John accepted the 15th Glenn Gould Prize in Toronto on Saturday, closing a gala built around the five-time Grammy Award winner and a roster of Canadian performers who turned the night into a tribute. The 79-year-old took the $100,000 honor at the Theatre at Great Canadian Casino Resort Toronto, where the crowd of about 3,500 heard him salute the country and its artists.
Canada’s Glenn Gould Foundation presents the prize every two years for lifetime artistic and humanitarian contributions, and this year’s ceremony leaned hard into that idea. Eric McCormack hosted the event, while Diana Krall covered Your Song, Sarah McLachlan sang Tiny Dancer, Saya Gray played a bass solo on Honky Cat and Jeremy Dutcher performed I’m Still Standing. Ontario Lieutenant-Governor Edith Dumont, Frank McKenna, Bob Ezrin, Rob Tinline, Edward Burtynsky, Loreena McKennitt, Martin Katz, former prime minister Kim Campbell and Marc Miller were among those in attendance.
John did not sound like a man collecting another trophy for the shelf. “It’s so nice to be in Canada and have a concert full of Canadian artists who I know of,” he said, adding, “It’s also nice to be in a country that has common sense.” He called Canada “part of my life” and said it was “embedded in my soul,” before making plain that it was not the “51st state.”
The remarks landed in a room already tuned to memory and music. John married Torontonian David Furnish in 2014, and they have two children, giving his affection for the country a personal edge that fit the evening. Holding the gold statuette created by Canadian artist Ruth Abernethy, he joked, “Years ago, I’d be doing cocaine off of that, I tell you,” then laughed off the reaction with “Shocking!”
The Glenn Gould Prize is an international honour named after the Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, and a previous recipient, Philip Glass, once called it the “Nobel Prize of the Arts.” By the end of the night, John had made clear why this one mattered to him: “Music is my soul, my driving force. It is everything and has been everything to me for my whole life.” The finale, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, brought the tribute full circle to the 1973 hit with words written by Bernie Taupin, and it left Toronto with the answer to the question the prize asked all evening — why John, why here, and why now: because Canada was not just honoring a star, it was claiming a musician who says the country is woven into his life.
